Scenarios for a water sensitive city future

Achieving the vision of a water sensitive city requires the buy-in of a broad range of stakeholders invested in urban water management. Government, industry, and the community each bring a particular perspective, which must be considered and integrated across various geographic scales for the envisioned endpoint to become a reality. Beyond the expectations of these stakeholders, some factors – such as climate change, which will directly influence the availability of urban water – are impossible to predict accurately. Given this uncertainty, how can cities be helped to develop a shared vision for a water sensitive future and to bring that vision to life?

Scenarios, visions, and transition strategies

To explore this critical question, the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC) is now working with stakeholder groups to develop tools that can assist their strategic planning. Sub-project A4.2 builds on a pilot case study of the former Cities as Water Supply Catchments program, which involved government and industry stakeholders developing transition scenarios to make parts of Melbourne water sensitive. The pilot revealed the critical importance of well-designed social learning methods that enable a wide range of participants to inform strategic planning, from visionary and aligned perspectives. It also showed that transition scenarios – the term used for a future vision and associated sets of transition strategies – must be clearly explained and made meaningful to different stakeholder groups, so they can consider how their activities might support the transition to a water sensitive city.

The new sub-project will take this process to the next level by incorporating community ideas and research expertise into Melbourne’s transition scenarios. It will develop processes and guidelines to facilitate water sensitive city scenarios, integrating these into formal planning processes at local, state, and national scales. Lessons from the Melbourne pilot will be applied to Brisbane and Perth in collaboration with local industry partners. Co-project leader Dr Briony Rogers explains:

Our aim is to develop process methodologies that support the development and translation of transition scenarios from the city-wide to the local precinct scale, so that the full spectrum of strategic initiatives necessary to put water sensitive city transitions into practice can be identified.

Addressing uncertainty

A critical part of this work will be to understand how the resilience of urban water systems can be enhanced as part of the transition to a water sensitive city. Strategic planning for the long-term future is inherently uncertain; it is impossible to predict accurately how different influencing factors such as climate, population, and urbanisation trends will unfold. Scenario planning can help strategists and decision-makers explore some extreme and unexpected conditions that might occur in the future. New process methodologies developed in this sub-project will help participants understand how future scenarios could impact on the water system’s performance, and what challenges and opportunities they might present for a city’s adoption of water sensitive practices. Dr Rogers expands on the purpose of the scenario planning sessions:

They will bring together policy-makers, practitioners, academics and community representatives to hear and understand each other’s perspectives, develop shared visions, and identify comprehensive sets of strategies that will drive transitions towards water sensitive cities.

Nicola Markus for the Mind Your Way team