Community Involvement in the Implementation ofSustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDSs):The Case of Bon Pastor, Barcelona

authored by

Andrea Noblega Carriquiry, Hug March, David Sauri

Abstract

The persistence of urban floods and the inability of aging sewage infrastructure to deal with stormwater make sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDSs) one of the emerging paradigms in urban water management, in which stormwater is no longer a hazard but a resource. Although most of the global research has been done on the technical aspects of SUDSs, their social impacts are not always taken into consideration. The neighborhood scale that characterizes SUDSs creates a different governance system—compared to the old structures of flood risk management—characterized by decentralization practices and where communities gain a better position of negotiation and new responsibilities. The objective of this research is to recognize how the diverse stakeholders involved in SUDSs interact with each other and to look into the different levels of understanding SUDSs as a new alternative of stormwater infrastructure. In order to accomplish this task, the paper introduces the case of the neighborhood of Bon Pastor (Barcelona, Spain), which has gone through urban transformations over the past years, promoting the development of SUDSs in 2012. Empirical evidence was obtained from 10 semi-structured interviews with government, technicians, social organizations, and local community citizens as well as revision of existing policy documents and grey literature on SUDSs and historical documents on the development of the neighborhood. The results show how active the community was during the design process and afterward, as sustainability gradually became one of the main topics in the neighborhood to be incorporated in new developments. However, it also unveiled several issues related to maintenance and the ambiguity of the term SUDS for the different stakeholders involved.

External Organisation(s)

Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)
Universitat Internacional de Catalunya

Type

Article

Journal

Sustainability

Volume

12

Pages

1-19

No. of pages

19

ISSN

2071-1050

Publication date

09.01.2020

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Computer Science (miscellaneous), Environmental Science (miscellaneous), Geography, Planning and Development, Energy Engineering and Power Technology, Hardware and Architecture, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Building and Construction, Computer Networks and Communications, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation, SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.3390/su12020510 (Access: Open)