Cities of the Future:
Introduction

The combined effects of unabated population growth, rising incomes, urbanisation and climate change have set the stage for the challenge of the 21st century – providing food, water and energy for rapidly growing planet. Against these increasing requirements for managing water is the reality that new supplies from traditional ground and surface water sources are difficult and in some cases impossible to derive.

Increasing extreme weather events such as storms will stress urban water management systems. Competition for water between agriculture, industry, energy and cities will accordingly increase. Also increasing requirements to reduce pollution together with rising health and environmental standards will necessitate a major shift in strategy.

Towards that end, vanguard programs are required for stimulating advances in the leading edge of urban water efficiency, resource recovery and ecological sustainability.  The emerging Cities of the Future program will have a broad focus that addresses these challenges across the spectrum of lower, middle and high income countries.

How will Cities of the Future need to evolve to meet these emerging challenges?

Creating the capacity to accommodate the growing needs of the world’s cities in the context of fixed or diminished sources of supply will require at least a doubling of the overall efficiency with which we use water and reduce pollution.

These levels of system efficiency will not be able to be achieved in most instances solely through modifications to our current systems. A new fundamental approach to system design and operation will be required if we are to achieve the highly efficient systems.

The IWA Cities of the Future program – What is it and how will it work?

Anticipating and facilitating the evolution of our water systems to meet the very real challenges ahead is central to IWA’s mission. The programme builds upon the strengths of IWA as a convener, advocate, and thought leader in the water sector on providing the tools, knowledge and opportunity for the water sector to address the challenges that effect a city’s long-term viability and capacity to accommodate change. It depends upon a range of existing and new partnerships with other organisations and other sectors to create the basis of knowledge and collaboration required to be successful. Ultimately, the Cities of the Future programme will enable an appropriate evolution within the water sector towards a new paradigm that better provides services to urban population worldwide.

The IWA Cities of the Future programme will involve water system and city planners as well other stakeholders to work together to jointly optimise urban design as well as water and other environmental objectives. It will address the following goals: 

• In the near term, optimise the design and operation of existing systems in the built environment
  
• In the medium term, to begin to implement new, super efficient systems designs that allow for systematic reuse and energy recovery, at the margins of the built environment
  
• In the near and long term, systematically remodel the built environment to achieve significantly higher levels of system efficiency using new technologies and design principles.

To address the current and future challenges of water in cities, the IWA Cities of the Future program will:

• Support and accelerate the learning process associated with new approaches to system design and technology choices
  
• Initiate a dynamic dialog between the water systems planners and the city design and planning community.