Achieving integrated urban water management: planning top-down or bottom-up?

Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) acknowledges a broad range of environmental and socio-economic outcomes but the link between design intentions and operational performance is not always clear. This may be due in part to a lack of shared principles that remove bias and inconsistency in assessing the operational performance of IUWM. This paper investigates the possibility of developing shared principles through examination of shared objectives and shared indicators within two logical and integrated frameworks for urban residential developments that aspire for IUWM and sustainable development. The framework method was applied using very different approaches-one a top-down urban planning process, the other a bottom-up community consultation process. Both frameworks highlight the extent to which IUWM is part of a broad social and environmental system. Core environmental performance objectives and indicators were very similar, highlighting the potential to develop shared principles in reporting and benchmarking the environmental performance of neighbourhood developments. Socio-economic indicators were highly variable due to process and likely contextual differences, thus it is unclear if the influence of IUWM on these variables can transcend the social context unless the practice of urban water management can expand its core responsibility beyond "hard" physical infrastructure.