Abstract
This chapter explores the literature on urban water governance to answer the following question: What does the literature on urban water governance tell us about how to understand and address metropolitan water challenges? I address this question through a literature review and content analysis.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter draws heavily on Brandeler et al. (2019).
- 2.
Other concepts include Water-Sensitive Cities and Water-Sensitive Urban Design, for instance. The literature review found SUWM and IUWM to be the dominant concepts.
- 3.
Since the turn of the twenty-first century, France has shifted towards the re-municipalisation of water services, defined as the transfer of water services from private companies to municipal authorities, with Paris in 2010 as the most notable case (Pigeon et al. 2012; Hall et al. 2013). This was spurred by corruption between large private water companies and local politicians, and a report by France’s public audit body highlighting widespread lack of transparency and overcharging in the water sector (Hall et al. 2013). In Paris, re-municipalisation led to economic savings and a reduced water tariff (Pigeon et al. 2012; Hall et al. 2013). The focus is the shift from private to public management, rather than the territorial scale of this management.
- 4.
This issue is also referred to as “hydro-administrative mismatch” by the OECD (2013).
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van den Brandeler, F. (2022). Urban Water Governance. In: Scalar Mismatches in Metropolitan Water Governance. Water Governance - Concepts, Methods, and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08061-6_3
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