Multifaceted intra-city water system arrangements in California: Influences and implications for residents

Some cities directly provide drinking water and other utility services to their residents, whereas others contract out these responsibilities in full or in part, with considerable implications for service and non-service outcomes. There is a robust literature considering reasons for city-private provider binaries, as well as a growing number of studies assessing the rise in special district service provision, mixed service delivery arrangements, and inter-municipal service delivery within metropolitan contexts. On the other hand, there are few studies assessing city-level prevalence of these three main provider types jointly, as well as fully accounting for the diversity of institutional arrangements in drinking water service within individual cities.In this study, we construct an empirical profile of and analyze influences on diverse city-level water service provider arrangements using a dataset compiled for all 482 cities in California. Our analysis shows that 80% of cities are served by either a municipality, a private, investor-owned utility or a special district, with special districts being more common than private providers. Moreover, 20% of cities had more than one service provider, and 68% of these cities were served by more than one system type, including many where municipal and private providers co-existed. Using multivariate regression techniques, we analyze influences on different types of city-level drinking water service arrangements. We find that city incorporation date most profoundly influences the mix of water systems in cities, especially arrangements involving special districts or multiple system types. We also find that cities which run their own water system exclusively are more likely to institute conservation policies, and provide suggestive evidence that residents living in cities served by multiple water systems are exposed to wide variance in water rates. Water system fragmentation within city boundaries thus has implications for resource management policy and equity in intra-city resident essential service outcomes.     

Equity Analysis Of Personal Transportation System Benefits

ABSTRACT: This article examines the distribution of transportation service benefits within the Atlanta, Georgia, urbanized area. The capitalized value of highway and public transit accessibility into owner-occupied residential property value is used as an indicator of transportation system benefits. These benefits are then compared to household income, race, and locational characteristics. The results of this analysis suggest that net personal transportation system benefits are not significantly biased toward particular income or racial groups. As might be expected, the results indicate that there is a positive relationship between urban location and access to transportation facilities. The analysis of the distributional equity of transportation services presented in this article represents a departure from previous research efforts. Such efforts have tended to measure equity as a function of outputs from service provision activities rather than outcomes, which are the social and economic changes resulting from service provision. These findings have important policy implications for transportation impact analysis, especially in the area of social impact analysis.     

Urban development policies for the provision of utility infrastructure: a case study of Dhaka,Bangladesh

This research aims to analyse three urban development policies relevant to the utility infrastructure provision in Dhaka, Bangladesh for improving the environment. Available relevant literature, site survey data, and stakeholder's opinion derived from semi-structured interviews were utilised for qualitative analysis. The results reveal that providing the utility infrastructure in the existing urbanised areas is possible by service upgrading and incremental development. Nevertheless, though implementation is politically and financially challenging, this research suggests that the new urban policy with the utility infrastructure provision prior to development is more effective.     

Prioritizing urban rivers' ecosystem services: An importance-performance analysis

The importance-performance analysis (IPA) has been developed and widely utilized to understand customer satisfaction and prioritize provision strategies based on the assumption that satisfaction is resultant from a preference (perceived importance) for a service and a relevant judgment of its performance. However, little work has been performed to examine to what degree different social groups are satisfied with diverse ecosystem services provided by urban rivers, being a unique yet underinvested public good. This study pioneers the IPA application to systematically analyze local communities' perceived importance of urban rivers' ecosystem services and their perceptions about how well those ecosystem services have been provided by urban rivers in Guangzhou (south China). We found notable importance-performance gaps for 10 out of 12 ecosystem services. The local residents were more dissatisfied with provision performance than the non-locals even though both groups of residents could explicitly recognize the importance of urban rivers' ecosystem services. Enhancement of water purification was ranked first amongst all ecosystem services by all respondents, irrespective of respondents' hukou status (Chinese household registration system) and residing environment. Thus, this ecosystem service should be prioritized in relevant management and restoration initiatives. These data provide an accurate picture of potential approaches for the improvement and prioritization of ecosystem services that would satisfy the respective target groups' needs. The IPA offers a mechanism to help match local residents' needs with ecosystem services provision. The IPA also has promise as a means of helping decision-makers and practitioners to communicate effectively with various social groups holding diverging expectations and levels of satisfaction. Such communication is essential to curate urban spaces enjoyed and appreciated by diverse social groups via inclusive urban ecosystem governance.     

Toward equitable urban water supply and sanitation in Dar es Salaam: The dialectic relationship between policy-driven and everyday practices

Many cities in the Global South continue to struggle with providing services with increasing inequalities in the distribution of and access to safe drinking water. For lower-income inhabitants, access changes over time and is shaped by the interplay between practices driven by policy and the range of diverse everyday practices in low-income areas. Existing practices are entangled with the evolution of the natural and built environment in which human-nature interactions are continuously negotiated in situ and over time through different infrastructure and service configurations that can alter water flows, social relations, and practices. Focusing on the case of Dar es Salaam, this paper examines policy-driven practices by the utility (and other key players in formal service provision) and their interaction with everyday practices to spell out implications for urban (in)equality.The paper draws on research grounded in a normative perspective based on principles of environmental justice, emphasising agency-structure debates and intersectionality scholarship. The approach enables a critical multi-scalar analysis that reveals differential abilities and vulnerabilities among poor women and men toward enabling and restraining structural processes and conditions, whereby time, space and socio-environmental relations intersect with and influence infrastructural and service configurations and vice versa. Findings confirm a dialectic relationship between policy-driven and everyday practices with multiple examples where practices reproduce, reinforce, or distort existing inequalities. However, the findings further show instances of more transformative practices that challenge unjust processes and outcomes toward more equitable service provision.     

The distribution of urban public services: the case of parks and recreational services in Ankara

The provision of urban services is a central issue in urban planning and development. The distribution of these services to guarantee their effective utilization is another focus of concern. As citizens are heterogeneous in character, their access to urban public services is affected by the distribution of those services. Access to some services with fixed facilities is limited by the location of the service within a city. In this study, which focuses on the city of Ankara, Turkey, the parks and recreational facilities are evaluated in terms of both service and user characteristics. Since the service has a merited reputation due to the public and its free provision, a local government aiming for a just distribution claims to distribute the service ‘equally’ on a geographical basis. This study evaluates the current policy and proposes distributional justice to achieve a truly equitable distribution, which is sensitive to the characteristics of different citizen groups, instead of the territorial justice (i.e. park distribution based on geography) that cannot satisfy the conditions of effective utilization.     

Public values as essential criteria for public entrepreneurship: Water management in France

Historically, major private companies were the dominant players in urban water supply in France. However, a new era of water supply restructuring is underway, whereby formally private water corporations are being made public. Given that many such public water corporations adopt practices associated with private entities, it is essential to identify what is expected of “public” entities by virtue of the fact that they are public. In this article, we examine the foundational ideas behind the raison d'être of public entities, which engender priorities that differ from their private sector counterparts. Using a research-action methodology, water utility management, staff and consumers of Greater Nantes were asked to specify the meaning of “public” and how it should be operationalized in the case of publicly owned utilities. The research shows that the attainment of public values is what lends legitimacy to a public utility charged with the provision of essential services. In this case, even in a context of neoliberal governance, where private values of an economic nature conflict with public goals; public values take precedence in the management and the regulation of the service.     

Housing at the neighbourhood level: a review of the initial approaches to neighbourhood development plans under the Localism Act 2011 in England

The Localism Act 2011 created an opportunity for local communities to form neighbourhood forums and to prepare their own neighbourhood development plans in urban and rural areas in England. Initial reactions suggested that, rather than leading to the development of more housing, these initiatives would confirm all the stereotypes of local residents blocking unwanted development in their defined neighbourhoods. However, neighbourhood plans need to be in general conformity with the core strategies of higher-tier plans and often make provision for more new homes than planned before 2011. This article discusses the role and purpose of neighbourhood plans, the evidence base on which they are founded and some of the legal challenges which have helped clarify procedures. It then identifies two types of plan based on the ways housing strategies and evidence of need are reflected in a sample of 10 plans which have been made to date. It concludes that the voluntary nature of localism to date tends to favour more rural and affluent areas and ends with an assessment of the impact of neighbourhood plans on the planning process. It suggests that the implications for spatial planning may be far-reaching.     

Club Goods and Local Government

Problem: Private approaches to urban service provision are becoming more popular. Some argue these approaches are more efficient and more democratic than government provision because they are voluntary. While these club approaches can shift the burden of infrastructure finance to direct groups of users, they can also fragment urban service delivery and justify unevenness in service quality across the city.

Purpose: This article explores examples of club goods, that is, common interest developments (CIDS) for housing, business improvement districts (BIDs) for commercial areas, and economic development zones (EDZs) for commercial and industrial areas, and assesses their implications for local government. Emphasis is given to how clubs internalize benefits to members of the club but shed externalities onto the broader local government system. A critical governance concern is the impact on the long-term ability of local government to coordinate across disparate elements and interests in the community.

Methods: I discuss three types of clubs ranging from totally private common interest developments (home owners associations), to partially private business improvement districts, to totally public economic development zones. These club types are analyzed in terms of economic benefits, externalities, governance structure, and broader concerns with equity and sustainability.

Results and conclusions: Club good approaches to urban infrastructure delivery enhance private investment and reduce costs to cities, but they also shed externalities onto the broader city. Although these clubs are often private associations, this article shows how they are critically supported by government, beyond the property rights requirement assumed by most theorists. A further concern is that club approaches may undermine support for equity and redistribution at the broader city level.

Takeaway for practice: Local governments are under pressure to provide public goods efficiently and engage private voluntary approaches whenever possible. The efficiency and popularity of club approaches derives in part from their ability to capture the benefits of increased investment for internal benefit. However, local government managers also must manage diversity and build public support for investment to ensure equity across the urban territory. Balancing the benefits of club goods with the need for broader urban integration is a key challenge for planners and urban managers.

Research support: None.     

How gender disparities in urban and rural areas influence access to safe drinking water

Urban and rural populations face disparities in gender equality as well as access to safe drinking water, which have deleterious consequences for their well-being. Past studies highlight interdependencies between gender equality and sustainable water management, but they fail to account for effects of shifting urban and rural populations. We find that improved gender equality and access to safe drinking water are likely to persist within urban populations, and empowering women in urban areas could increase access to safe drinking water. Our research aims to enhance the understanding of sustainable provision of water under the circumstances of rapid urbanisation and climate change.     

基于多源数据的成渝城市群绿色空间生态系统服务功能供需评价

随着城市规划逐步转向国土空间规划,准确掌握宏观尺度中的城市群绿色空间的服务特征成为规划决策的重要前提.基于多源数据,利用水量平衡方程、土壤流失方程、INVEST模型识别城市群绿色空间生态系统服务功能,利用Z-Score标准化评价生态系统服务功能供需平衡匹配的时空演变规律.结果显示:1)成渝城市群水源涵养服务供给、需求量...     

粤港澳大湾区中微观创新空间设计——以佛山三龙湾为例

自粤港澳大湾区发展建设上升为国家战略,协同创新成为湾区城市发展的重点,着力打造创新空间是构建区域创新网络的重要措施。面向湾区中微观创新空间,总结其空间类型、特征与发展趋势,提出设计策略,包括完善创新服务基质,提供满足创新主体不同成长阶段的多元服务,构建以知识创新单元、技术创新单元和服务创新单元为核心的创新社区,塑造响应企业和创新人群空间需求的第三空间。文章依托佛山三龙湾创新基础和区域资源,在城市设计中提出空间布局优化建议和建筑组团指引,促进创新活动的聚集和创新发生的可能,为湾区中微观创新空间设计提供借鉴。     

Development of a system dynamics model for financially sustainable management of municipal watermain networks

This paper develops causal loop diagrams and a system dynamics model for financially sustainable management of urban water distribution networks. The developed causal loop diagrams are a novel contribution in that it illustrates the unique characteristics and feedback loops for financially self-sustaining water distribution networks. The system dynamics model is a mathematical realization of the developed interactions among system variables over time and is comprised of three sectors namely watermains network, consumer, and finance. This is the first known development of a water distribution network system dynamics model. The watermains network sector accounts for the unique characteristics of watermain pipes such as service life, deterioration progression, pipe breaks, and water leakage. The finance sector allows for cash reserving by the utility in addition to the pay-as-you-go and borrowing strategies. The consumer sector includes controls to model water fee growth as a function of service performance and a household's financial burden due to water fees. A series of policy levers are provided that allow the impact of various financing strategies to be evaluated in terms of financial sustainability and household affordability. The model also allows for examination of the impact of different management strategies on the water fee in terms of consistency and stability over time.     

Asian megacity characteristics,problems, and policies

"Using ten Asian megacities as examples, this article discusses a range of megacity characteristics and problems, including population growth, economic structure, spatial strategies, land policy, urban service provision, institutional development, and managerial problems. In spite of major progress in urban service delivery, ineffective land policies and inadequate cost-recovery systems remain serious obstacles. Megacities need and are promoting policentric spatial structures, but implementation lags in many cases. Institutional reforms are needed to cope with the metropolitan region character of megacity growth."     

Delivering basic infrastructure services to the urban poor: a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of bottom-up approaches

In the provision of basic infrastructure services to the urban poor, limited rigorous evidence on the most effective service delivery approaches is available. This meta-analysis synthesises the evidence on the effectiveness of bottom-up approaches that is characterized by the strong involvement of alternate service providers such as NGO's and CBO's in improving access to electricity, water supply, and sanitation services for the urban poor. Although bottom-up approaches are espoused, we find that they do not have a statistically significant effect. This trend was consistent for all dimensions of access: connectivity, affordability, adequacy, and effort and time. However, our findings also show that bottom-up approaches may be more effective in the water and sanitation sectors than in the electricity sector. When bottom-up approaches involve active participation from the community, the results are significantly positive. Our study suggests that innovations to bottom-up approaches that facilitate active community participation can be an effective way to increase access to basic services among the urban poor.     

Metabolism-modelling approaches to long-term sustainability assessment of urban water services

There is a discernible need for a holistic, long-term and sustainability approach in decision-making in water and wastewater utilities around the world. Metabolism-based modelling, which can quantify various flows within an urban water system (UWS), has shown its effective usability for a more comprehensive understanding of the impacts of intervention strategies and can be used by any water utility for future planning of UWS. This study presents the main principles of a holistic Sustainability Assessment Framework which can be simulated by using two analytical, conceptual, mass-balance-based models to quantify relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with the metabolic flows of the urban water cycle. These two models are WaterMet² (WM2) and dynamic metabolism model (DMM), developed recently under the aegis of the EU TRUST (Transitions to the Urban Water Services of Tomorrow) project. There are clear differences between the two models which make them useful in different contexts and circumstantial situations. DMM is a mass-balance consistent model which quantifies and presents annually-aggregated performance values for system wide energy consumption, emissions, environmental impacts and costs for the entire UWS though it is also possible to derive corresponding indicators for individual sub-systems (e.g. water distribution and wastewater transport). WM2 is the opposite of this, it is a distributed metabolism model which simulates water related and other resource flows throughout the UWS components with a higher resolution both spatially (e.g. multiple water resources and service reservoirs) and temporally (e.g. daily and monthly), and thereby is useful in contexts where utilities would like to focus on further details of the UWS metabolism with the aim to understand and solve specific problems. Overall, these two complementary metabolism-based approaches enable any water utility to quantitatively explore and understand the influences of different external drivers and intervention strategies on future performance profiles linked to any physical, environmental and economic criteria.     

Alternative strategies for urban redevelopment: A case study in a squatter housing neighborhood of Ankara

Since the 1980s, the redevelopment of squatter housing settlements has been a primary policy focus of the local and central authorities in Turkey. Their strategies have adopted two different models: one approach was not effective at generating redevelopment activity and produced low quality living environments, and the other approach resulted in dislocation and gentrification. The literature stresses three issues. First, redevelopment sites are areas where market forces failed; thus, they are perceived as high risk, low-demand, and low-return investments with high transaction costs. Second, institutions that lower transaction costs boost market forces and increase economic performance in property development. Third, local authorities remain active in urban redevelopment; despite having no direct tools for local economic development, they do have tools for urban development. This study reformulates the basic transaction cost thesis and hypothesizes that local authorities can boost urban redevelopment by making changes to institutions or ‘the rules of the game’ by increasing information flow, positive externalities and perceived returns and by decreasing transaction costs, negative externalities and risks, all of which motivate land owners and house-builders. To test this hypothesis, I have conducted household surveys and semi-structured interviews with house-builders in a squatter housing neighborhood undergoing a gradual transformation. The goal of this study was to search for the impacts of the local authority’s strategies on homeowner inertia, private sector disinvestment and the implications of urban redevelopment. My findings revealed that the local authorities can produce desirable results for less attractive neighborhoods with the help of marketing, institutional strategies and effective land use planning without leading to dislocation and gentrification. Overall, this study suggests that ‘institutional’ strategies are crucial for urban policies and future urban redevelopment activities.     

Service Provision and Prosperity in Urban Communities in the Greater Cairo Region

It is widely argued that the Greater Cairo Region (GCR) in Egypt suffers from failing urban communities resulting partially from unresponsive services. The local discourse on urban services has not paid attention to the investigation of the provision process of services and its impact on community satisfaction and prosperity. In the Global South, there is an ongoing debate on the shortcomings of service provision and ways to improve them. Yet, emerging theoretical/conceptual approaches to the provision of urban services are not sufficiently comprehensive to explain processes of service provision worldwide and, arguably, cannot be because they cannot take account of local diversity. Consequently, this research investigates the impact of the process of service provision on community satisfaction and prosperity in GCR, Egypt. To help collect and analyze data, we constructed a conceptual framework of a potentially responsive process of service provision. We studied two privately developed middle- and upper-middle-income urban communities, using questionnaires with inhabitants and semi-structured interviews with relevant official representatives as well as documentary data sources. The research finds, in line with the Global South debate, that absent public participation, ineffective governmental institutions, pseudo-decentralization, and deficient regulations stand behind the failure of services, their lack of responsiveness, and low levels of community satisfaction. Yet, it also shows that community prosperity could be aided by, for example, private developers playing an active role in the provision process. Hence, community prosperity is not tied only to a specific set of institutional arrangements.     

Financing the future of green infrastructure planning: alternatives and opportunities in the UK

With the formation of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2010, the funding of local government in the UK changed fundamentally. Through an austerity approach to development, local planning authorities (LPAs) have been required to make significant budgetary savings, raising questions over what services are legally and morally dispensable. One service severely impacted has been green space (green infrastructure) management. In many locations, this has generated negative responses, as the proposed cuts are perceived as decreasing the liveability of urban areas. In response, LPAs are engaging in an examination of how they can manage development to more effectively fund green infrastructure provision. Such debates draw on a range of options from public, private and community funding sources, creating further complexity within LPA financing. To explore these options, this paper discusses the appropriateness of different funding mechanisms proposing a multi-option approach for the long-term management of green infrastructure.