Fluid solutions for liveable cities

Around the world, we are seeking ways to deliver cities that are liveable and sustainable. Water is at the heart of this quest.

Water contributes to liveability through the services and values it provides, including productivity opportunities, public health, urban climate control, green space and amenity, senses of place, recreation, irrigation and ecosystem services, among others. To realise these, it needs to be managed sustainably — from how we deal with flood and drought, keep it clean and safe, source and use it, keep it affordable and reliable, and so on.

Recently, the water services industry has shifted its focus accordingly to embrace these ideas. At least in Australia’s capital cities, the utilities and planning authorities are placing customer, community and liveability at the centre of strategic planning and moving towards ‘whole water cycle’ thinking and water-sensitive urban design. The main driver of this is need and good intention — resources are limited and we want to make sure they are properly allocated. Done well, such integrated urban water planning will unlock the opportunity water creates for liveable cities. The hard part is determining what mix of investment in efficiency, infrastructure, community facilities, smart technology and other things will prolong the community benefit.

What’s guiding us? Communities are creating a growing demand for water systems that add value to the urban landscape. At the same time, urban areas are being gentrified and expanded. To keep pace, designers and developers seek quick and accessible guidance on water management. These include:

• blunt instruments such as regulated water planning rules, laws and standards;
• persuasive instruments that include national, state and local guidelines, scientific and academic advice, and industry guidance;
• voluntary instruments such as community liveability and sustainability rating schemes like the Green Building Council Australia’s ‘Green Communities’ scheme, which sets stretch goals for meeting liveability indicators.

Is it working? The increased awareness around integrated urban water planning is something to celebrate. The focus on providing diversity and resilience in water supply and the changes in community expectation and behaviour that bubbled over during the millennium drought will carry on for generations. Streetscapes are changing as rain gardens, permeable pavements, stormwater systems that incorporate wetlands, ponds and water harvesting are routinely being considered and delivered. Water recycling schemes around the country are operating. ‘Water sensitive urban design’ is business as usual, not a buzzword.

However, time and again I have watched planners, designers, engineers and managers be blinded by seeking ‘compliance’ with the various instruments. In our hasty reliance on these, might we be giving away some of our ability to innovate? Consider the story of a recent urban development project:

A greenfield site developer wants to deliver a leading sustainable and liveable community, with the highest ‘Green Communities’ rating targeted as the main measure. A system is developed that goes far towards meeting the most ambitious targets for water-related criteria on peak flow discharges leaving the site, flooding management, water quality and water recycling. The local planning codes had additional requirements, in this case for buildings’ water efficiency and potable demand replacement. Central to the concept is a big stormwater harvesting scheme which alleviates site discharges and flooding, reduces pollution to nearby waterways, meets recycling targets and replaces potable water. But it will cost a lot. Consultation highlights concerns about the ongoing maintenance and diversion from standardised infrastructure approaches. There’s no working model right now to operate and regulate it in these parts. The team goes back to the less stringent design codes and base planning requirements to configure a scheme that meets just these. There’s no need for a stormwater harvesting scheme in this new arrangement, but they find that the same ponds and wetlands layout will be required and these are maintained as community assets. A financial benefit-cost and a ‘triple bottom line’ assessment is undertaken to compare the scenarios. Ways are sought to attribute values and costs to everything. More people are consulted. Does the stormwater harvesting scheme stack up financially? Perhaps not, and then there’s all the other risks to manage. Who will end up paying for it — the householders? Is it worth it all to keep some parks a little greener?

This scenario encompasses many of the issues that hamper genuine attempts to achieve ‘liveability’ centred water management. Here are my main insights:

1. Meeting some aspirational targets around water management that were meant to contribute to liveability didn’t necessarily justify the investment costs based on a ‘first principles’ benefit assessment. But what if the guidance was taken at face value? In this case it was only tested because it was voluntary; how often do we test the blunt instruments to see if they’re achieving what is intended?
2. There is often reluctance to implement something new, based on uncertainties about performance, governance and timelines. The default position is to push back to existing and standardised approaches, to point to basic code requirements and to place faith in the instruments. We feel safe. This sense of security is a barrier to trying new things.
3. Amid all the guidance on environmental and physical systems requirements, there is less on how to go about assessing the social and economic contributions of water to liveability, which would be more useful for decision-making and community building.

What else can we do? A positive from the scenario was in holding ‘liveability’ at the centre of the community development and exploring how water may enhance it, and at what cost, to inform robust discussions. This is in contrast to old models where water was considered as a problem that required management rather than an opportunity to (sustainably) exploit. Here are some other things we could do:

1. Wider adoption of targets based on risk and opportunity. Where possible we could move away from hard and universal targets around factors such as water efficiency, flood control or runoff quality and determine tailored targets based on the risk or opportunity for communities that the local urban context presents.
2. Encourage flexibility. Where outcomes-based targets will persist, could regulators, liveability rating assessors and others be more open to hearing alternative ideas that can still achieve the guidance’s intent? To be fair, these avenues exist widely already. However, there could be greater encouragement to pursue innovation and to work in partnership to enhance community outcomes.
3. Seek alternate funding. We need innovative funding mechanisms so that the ongoing financial support of water infrastructure comes from the places to where the value flows. This could address one cause of reluctance to challenge the status quo. New pathways for revenue generation should be explored that can cross-subsidise the creation of liveability benefits. Suddenly new management approaches might stack up. One concept is known as ‘value capture’, something AECOM is at the forefront of exploring in the water sector.
4. Develop consistent economic and decision-making guidance. Let’s keep working on how to measure liveability to determine the right level of investment in it. To this end, we need to attribute values to all categories of services (like health, wellbeing and productivity) and water’s contributions consistently and in a common currency. The lack of such a framework is something to overcome to justify the wide-scale benefits of managing water for liveability.

*Ryan Signor has spent over a decade consulting to the Australian and international water industry as a strong advocate for evidence-informed policy. He specialises in risk and sustainability management and is AECOM’s Water Advisory Practice Leader for Australia and New Zealand. Ryan will be presenting his paper ‘Shooting for the Green Stars’ on Tuesday 10 May at Ozwater’16 in Melbourne.

Image credit: ©amidala/Dollar Photo Club