Sustainable water cycle design for urban areas

This paper presents the argument that the environmental, social and economic benefits of decentralised systems are such that they should present a serious alternative to centralised systems in existing and future planned urban developments. It will be shown that the combination of technical, social and regulatory factors that influenced the popularity of centralised systems has altered, and that decentralised systems should now be considered as well. The environmental, social and economic advantages and disadvantages of several sustainable watercycle case studies are examined and compared with centralised systems. The studies examined will go from large scale down to designs suitable for typical residential houses on standard urban blocks.