Water sensitive cities: Do we have what it takes to create them?

Despite serving the needs of our cities for many years, the traditional, centralised approach to urban water management is beginning to show its limitations. Increasing water shortages, ironically offset by more intense and frequent flooding, and ongoing pollution of receiving waters, all suggest that a new approach to urban water management is needed. The water sensitive city is one where all aspects of the urban water cycle are managed in a very integrated way, and where a diversity of water sources, at a range of centralised and decentralized scales, provide the city with resilience to external impacts such as climate change. A water sensitive city functions with increased participation of the community, and increased cooperation between agencies. However, the goals of a water sensitive city require the development and application of a wide range of new technologies, capable of managing both the diversity of water cycle components and the interactions between them. With a greater emphasis on decentralised approaches, these technologies will need to operate in a context perhaps previously unimagined for the urban water industry, where individuals and small communities become 'water managers', in partnership with traditional water infrastructure providers.