City-to-city learning to enhance urban water management: The contribution of the City Blueprint Approach

Abstract

Cities face several water challenges which ask for more pro-active management approaches. One option that cities have is to start networking and build learning alliances with other cities. Forming meaningful alliances however asks for clear and easily accessible city-matching methodologies which are based on a standardised assessment approach and the presence of structured and large databases. The City Blueprint Approach is an example of such a methodology. Aim of this paper is to demonstrate the potential of this approach as a substantive methodology for enhancing learning on urban water management. This is done by illustrating the use of the approach in four cities, which were studied in the H2020 project POWER (Political and sOcial awareness on Water EnviRonmental challenges) and by comparing the results found with good practices present in the City Blueprint database. These good practices however cannot simply be copy-pasted from one city to another. We therefore outline in what way more in-depth city-to-city (C2C) learning results can be achieved and be tailored to best-fit particular urban areas. The paper concludes with some suggestions for enhancing the potential for C2C learning in urban water management networks.