Standing on the shoulders of giants: Understanding changes in urban water practice through the lens of complexity science

Abstract

Scholars assert that traditional approaches to urban water management need reforming. These debates have identified the need to move toward systems and complexity thinking. The literature offers limited insight into the utility of complexity theory in enhancing urban water policy and practice. This paper aims to address this gap by: (i) synthesizing the intellectual history of complexity science, (ii) identifying key principles of complexity theory and (iii) providing insights into how complexity theory can contribute to twenty-first century urban water management. We reveal how Newtonian logic is deeply embedded in contemporary Western urban water policy and practice. We identify three insights from complexity science that could potentially yield better urban water policy and practice outcomes: system boundaries; agents and networks; and far from equilibrium. These theoretical insights offer an important contribution to scholarly debates as embedded normative frameworks need to be recognized, understood and addressed before transformative change can materialize.