Water is an essential element in the future of cities. It shapes cities’ locations, form, ecology, prosperity and health. The changing nature of urbanisation, climate change, water scarcity, environmental values, globalisation and social justice mean that the models of provision of water services and infrastructure that have dominated for the past two centuries are increasingly infeasible. Conventional arrangements for understanding and managing water in cities are being subverted by a range of natural, technological, political, economic and social changes. The prognosis for water in cities remains unclear, and multiple visions and discourses are emerging to fill the space left by the certainty of nineteenth century urban water planning and engineering. This book documents a sample of those different trajectories, in terms of water transformations, option, services and politics. Water is a key element shaping urban form, economies and lifestyles, part of the ongoing transformation of cities. Cities are faced with a range of technical and policy options for future water systems. Water is an essential urban service, but models of provision remain highly contested with different visions for ownership of infrastructure, the scale of provision, and the level of service demanded by users. Water is a contentious political issue in the future of cities, serving different urban interests as power and water seem to flow in the same direction. Cities in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and South America provide case studies and emerging water challenges and responses. Comparison across different contexts demonstrates how the particular and the universal intersect in complex ways to generate new trajectories for urban water.

This work considers the city as a gendered space and examines women’s experiences and engagement in both urbanization and sustainability. Such a focus offers distinctive insights into the question of what it means for a city to be sustainable, asking further how sustainability needs to work with gender and the gendered lives of cities’ inhabitants. Vitally, it considers women’s lives in cities and their work to forge more sustainable cities through a wide variety of means, including governmental, non-governmental and local grassroots and individual efforts towards sustainable urban life. The volume is transnational, offering case-studies from a wide range of city sites and sustainability efforts. It explores crucial questions such as the gendered nature and women’s experiences of current urbanization; the gendered nature of urban sustainability thinking and programmes; and local alternatives and resistances to dominant modes of addressing urbanization challenges.

This book contains 11 papers which cover a range of vital topics in the areas of water, agriculture, food security and ecosystems - the entire spectrum of developing and managing water in agriculture, from fully irrigated to fully rainfed lands. They are about people and society, why they decide to adopt certain practices and not others and, in particular, how water management can help poor people. They are about ecosystems - how agriculture affects ecosystems, the goods and services ecosystems provide for food security and how water can be managed to meet both food and environmental security objectives. This is the eighth book in the series.

URBAN WATER INFRASTRUCTURE NATO ADVANCED RESEARCH WORKSHOP SUMMARY 22-27 JUNE 1989 KYLE E SCHILLING P E Workshop Director The Workshop was based on the recognition that all NATO countries are concerned with similar water infrastructure issues. Present problems are aggravated by aging and neglected facilities, by inadequate financing and by water management institutions reflecting the needs of an earlier era. Service needs to be provided for expanding populations, at the same time that corrective measures must be taken for decaying older urban centers, resulting both from neglect and expiring service life. These needs exist within the framewode of other competing and conflicting uses for existing and yet to be developed water sources. The problems have generated some highly visible national debates over financing due to the large sums involved. Despite differences in the age of the North American, European and other societies, the technological ages of water supply and storm water systems are much the same and provide a common denominator in the worldwide trend to urbanization. Examination of approaches to urban water management also indicates that they are generally based on past experience and institutions created in a non-urban era. The physical, financial and institutional alternatives are consequently often out-of-step with current urban environment. Historically, the supply of adequate water and efficient storm water management have also been top priority items with water quality and other aspects of environmental protection assuming a lower priority after basic supply needs have been met.

This open access book reviews the water-agro-food and socio-eco-system of the Seine River basin (76,000 km2), and offers a historical perspective on the river’s long-term contamination. The Seine basin is inhabited by circa 17 million people and is impacted by intensive agricultural practices and industrial activities. These pressures have gradually affected its hydrological, chemical and ecological functioning, leading to a maximum chemical degradation between the 1960s and the 1990s. Over the last three decades, while major water-quality improvements have been observed, new issues (e.g. endocrine disruptors, microplastics) have also emerged. The state of the Seine River network, from the headwaters to estuary, is increasingly controlled by the balance between pressures and social responses. This socio-ecosystem provides a unique example of the functioning of a territory under heavy anthropogenic pressure during the Anthropocene era. The achievements made were possible due to the long-term PIREN Seine research program, established in 1989 and today part of the French socio-ecological research network “Zones Ateliers”, itself part of the international Long-term Socio-economic and Ecological Research Network (LTSER). Written by experts in the field, the book provides an introduction to the water budget and the territorial metabolism of the Seine basin, and studies the trajectories and impact of various pollutants in the Seine River. It offers insights into the ecological functioning, the integration of agricultural practices, the analysis of aquatic organic matter, and the evolution of fish assemblages in the Seine basin, and also presents research perspectives and approaches to improve the water quality of the Seine River. Given its scope, it will appeal to environmental managers, scientists and policymakers interested in the long-term contamination of the Seine River.