ABSTRACT
Urban water sustainability aims to manage water in cities to provide for human health and wellbeing within hydrological and ecological limits. Urban water systems include drinking water supply, wastewater disposal, surface water drains and the rivers, streams, wetlands, and aquifers of urban water catchments. Local hydrology, ecology, urban form, governance, climate, economics, society, and other factors shape the form of urban water infrastructure and responses to problems of water scarcity, pollution, flooding and access to water and sanitation services. Different infrastructure and technology choices have different costs and benefits to different people and the environment. Five distinct but overlapping frameworks can be identified in urban water sustainability – sustainable development, ecological modernisation, socio-technical systems, urban political ecology, and radical ecology. Sustainable development is the familiar framing of the need to deliver the benefits of development to the global population within ecological and resource limits. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
