Routledge Handbook of Urban Water Governance

This handbook provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of urban water governance.

Of the many growing challenges presented by rapid urbanization, water governance is a critical one and while urban water governance is now regarded as a critical field of research, the literature is fragmented. For the first time, this handbook brings together urban water governance research, containing interdisciplinary contributions from established and emerging scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. It addresses the key questions of how urban water governance works, how is it shaped, and what the impacts are. The handbook’s structure offers a progressive entry into the complexity of urban water governance. Starting with technical dimensions, the handbook addresses supply and demand, wastewater, and sanitation. It then considers regulation and economic factors, examining water utilities and services. Political processes, and the actors involved, are addressed and the handbook finishes with a part focusing on governance and sustainability, where chapters address critically important topics such as access to water, water safety, and water security.

This handbook is essential reading for students, scholars, and professionals interested in urban water governance, urban studies, and water resource management and sustainability more broadly.

Thomas Bolognesi is a researcher at the Geneva School of Business Administration, HES-SO. His research investigates the processes of social-ecological systems evolution, emphasizing non-linearities and patterns diversity. He combines economics and public policy analysis to study the organization and effects of urban water services regulation, the development of water policy regimes, and water security.

Francisco Silva Pinto is an Assistant Professor at Lusofona University (LU) and researcher at EIGeS, FE-LU, and CERIS, IST-UL. His research interests cover the application of numerical modelling and analytics to support decision making in governance, pricing, and finance of utilities (mainly water supply, wastewater, and waste) under critical socio-economic and environmental situations.

Megan Farrelly is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Her research explores the intersection of urban water governance and sustainability transitions, focusing on processes and pathways for delivering practical and socio-institutional change towards sustainable urban transformations.