Urban Water Infrastructure: arriving in the 21st century

Abstract: Urban water infrastructure is facing an alarming funding and maintenance gap worldwide. Inadequate maintenance, postponed replacement, political choices, increased extreme climate events occurrence rates, demographic shifts, evolving consumption patterns and faulty construction methods are but some of the factors that have compromised the financial and physical integrity of many industrialized countries’ water utilities. Yet, the stakeholders and externalities, both good and bad, associated with urban water systems would include almost everyone and all major economic activities in industrialised countries. Over the last decades, many attempts at improving water utilities, both in terms of quality and financial stability have been conducted. While forays in private participation have failed to produce solid evidence that public-private-partnerships are better than public administration, or vice-versa, a number of interesting ‘no-regrets’ solutions have nevertheless been developed. Considering a water system utility function dependant on both quality and reliability, water system of the future will have to be closer to the original water cycles they are replacing while pricing and technical activities will need to be customized to local needs if water systems are to be considered sustainable.