The Challenges of Water Management and Governance in Cities

“Global population growth is urban growth and, therefore, most of the water-related challenges and solutions reside in cities. Unless water management and water governance processes are significantly improved within a decade or so, cities are likely to face serious and prolonged water insecurity, urban floods and/ or heat stress, that may result in social instability and, ultimately, in massive migration. Aging water infrastructure, one of the most expensive infrastructures in cities, are a relevant challenge in order to address amongst other things Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: clean water and sanitation, SDG 11: sustainable cities and communities and SDG 13: climate action.
Cities and their hinterlands face many challenges. In many places, good water governance is the main bottleneck. Cities require a long-term strategy and a multilevel water governance approach. Research has shown how important it is to involve the civil society and private parties early on in this process to create success. Collaboration among cities and regions by sharing best practices for rapid implementation is crucial not only to cope with SDG6 but also with many of the other SDGs. The choice of good governance arrangements has important consequences for economic performance, for the well-being of citizens and for the quality of life in urban areas. The better governance arrangements work in coordinating policies across jurisdictions and policy fields, the better the outcomes. Rapidly-changing global conditions will make future water governance more complex than ever before in human history, and expectations are that water governance and water management will change more during the next 20 years compared to the past 100 years.
To address these challenges, approaches need to be developed for a directed transition to more sustainable, resilient urban water services, including all stakeholders. In this Special Issue of Water, the focus is on practical concepts and tools for water management and water governance in cities. The contributors to this Special Issue provide a series of papers to create further awareness and solutions by presenting examples of integrated approaches, advanced water management practices and water governance strategies. This Special Issue contains 17 different contributions and includes a detailed introduction followed by 16 peer-reviewed papers. We have grouped these papers into four categories: (1) introduction to urban water challenges, (2) integrated assessment methods, (3) water management practices, and (4) water governance strategies.”

(Citaat: van Leeuwen, C.J., Hofman, J.A.M.H., Driessen, P., Frijns, J.A.G. – The Challenges of Water Management and Governance in Cities – ISBN 978-3-03921-150-0 (Pbk) – ISBN 978-3-03921-151-7 (PDF) – Published: August 2019 – (Open Access) (2019))

This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Water (ISSN 2073-4441) from 2018 to 2019

© 2019 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications.
The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.