Characteristics of a more sustainable urban water management regime: Insights from two Australian cities

Transitioning to more sustainable urban water management is widely accepted as an essential socio­political objective. While there has been significant progress in developing technological solutions to the challenges faced, numerous barriers remain at the regime level, indicating that further investigation into the regime is required. Forecasts of sustainable regime attributes are significantly different to those of the traditional regime and specific attributes for sustainable urban water management are under­developed. This paper reports on a social research project aimed at identifying the attributes of a more sustainable urban water management regime. The regime components used were the administrative and regulatory framework, inter- and intra-organisational and individual regime spheres. Drawing on the tacit knowledge of over 125 urban water sustainability practitioners in Sydney and Melbourne and relevant context documents, attributes of a more sustainable regime are identified. These attributes are then compared to the traditional regime and forecast regime attributes from the literature. The results reveal that while progress has been made towards a sustainable regime, further progress is required. Regime attributes identified across regime spheres indicate potential areas of focus for capacity building programs or