Creating Sustainable Urban Water Systems

Managing urban water infrastructure is conventionally the professional domain of engineers. As urban water systems are placed under increasing pressure due to population growth, rapid urbanisation and climate change, the provision of water and sanitation services to cities has become a wicked problem. As such it cannot be adequately addressed by engineers alone, and requires greater attention from urban designers and planners. The move to sustainable urban water systems will involve greater attention to decentralised and distributed technologies such as rainwater harvesting and water reuse. Water sensitive urban design should be encouraged, to promote the integration of drainage, habitat, ecosystems, water supply and sanitation in cities

Concerned scientists, pragmatic politics and Australia's green drought

The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists formed in Australia in 2002 in response to calls to ‘drought-proof’ the continent. Their model of engagement between science and public policy involves: clear simple science communication, which keeps scientific uncertainty and debate out of public view; pragmatic politics, which works within rather than challenges the dominant political agenda; and a focus on providing solutions rather than describing problems. This model has been successful in achieving policy reform at the expense of more participatory and critical approaches to ecological science and politics

Frameworks for urban water sustainability

Integrated water management, sustainable water management, water sensitive cities, and other formulations are often presented as the latest in a series of paradigms of water management. This implies a unified approach, while urban water debates reflect a wide diversity of political, social, and technical viewpoints. Five distinct but overlapping frameworks for urban water sustainability are evident in research, policy and practice, reflecting wider environmental theory, politics, and discourse. Sustainable development is based on meeting the needs for water and sanitation of the urban poor. Ecological modernization focuses on policies to improve water efficiency and treatment through technological innovation and individual behavior change. Socio‐technical framings aim to understand how change in water systems occurs across physical and institutional scales and addresses the co‐evolution of infrastructures, cultures, and everyday practices. Urban political ecology analyses water infrastructure in terms of relationships of power, pointing to the unequal distribution of costs and benefits of urban water management for the environment and citizens. Radical ecology addresses the relationship between human culture and non‐human nature, proposing fundamental reorganization of society to solve ecological and hydrological crises. Characterizing alternate frameworks of urban water sustainability provides clarity on the underlying assumptions, methods, and politics across a diversity of approaches. Frameworks may be deployed strategically to deliver policy impact, or may reflect deeply held political or epistemological standpoints. Understanding different conceptions of urban water sustainability provides the basis for more constructive dialogue and debate about water and its role in sustainable cites. This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Planning Water Human Water > Water Governance Water and Life > Conservation, Management, and Awarenes

Discourses of systems engineering

Systems engineering is unique in being characterised by its methods rather than its artefacts. Consequently, the scope of systems engineering is difficult to define. While some systems engineers contend that systems engineering is capable of addressing socio-technical problems, including climate change and terrorism, others argue that it is strictly a technical field. The paper presents the results of a discourse analysis of systems engineering textbooks, journal articles, and a qualitative questionnaire administered within the International Council on Systems Engineering United Kingdom Chapter and University College London Centre for Systems Engineering. The analysis finds three parallel accounts of systems engineering in the sampled community. These representations are of systems engineering as something new, as good engineering, and as a meta-methodology. The three distinct discourses of systems engineering diverge on its concept, origin, scope, role, training, epistemological positions, and worldview. The paper shows that claims for and against the wider applicability of systems engineering techniques to complex socio-technical problems not only chart alternative courses for the future of the field but are also grounded in particular constructions of its origins, practices and worldview. While this brings circumspection to the recent rise to prominence of systems engineering within broader engineering discussion and debate, it also provides an opportunity for reflexivity within the field as it responds to demands for integrated solutions to complex socio-technical problems

Generation of Entanglement Outside of the Light Cone

The Feynman propagator has nonzero values outside of the forward light cone. That does not allow messages to be transmitted faster than the speed of light, but it is shown here that it does allow entanglement and mutual information to be generated at space-like separated points. These effects can be interpreted as being due to the propagation of virtual photons outside of the light cone or as a transfer of pre-existing entanglement from the quantum vacuum. The differences between these two interpretations are discussed.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures. Additional references and figur

The temporary marketing organization

Increasingly, marketing activity is carried out within temporary organizations, where teams are assembled to complete a specific task within a predetermined timeframe. Such organizations are uniquely suited to promoting various marketing outcomes but are not well understood. From a practical standpoint, their inherent characteristics create organizational challenges which, if not appropriately managed, can compromise performance. Drawing on agency theory and research on embedded ties, we conceptualize these challenges in terms of particular selection and enforcement problems. We identify three different forms of temporary marketing organizations that vary in their selection and enforcement qualities. Next, we develop a conceptual framework which shows the selection and enforcement implications of a temporary organization’s task, timeline and team composition. We also show how selection and enforcement mechanisms have portable qualities and can be “imported” to a given temporary organization, either from a prior temporary organization or from a larger permanent one

Bridging academia and practice

Urban planning and design are both professional and academic disciplines. Relations between academia and the professions are rarely straightforward. Do universities exist primarily to provide basic training to prepare new graduates for the world of work, or to push the boundaries of thinking beyond currently accepted professional wisdom? Are academics leading or following practitioners? Do professional demands constrain or inspire critical and creative teaching and research? These were some of the questions addressed at a round table of academics, practitioners and ‘pracademics’ hosted by Urban Design and Planning at the recent World Planning Schools Congress in Perth, Western Australia (4–8 July 2011)