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.

Keywords:

• Complexity science
• Newtonian logic
• urban water
• Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS)
• systems thinking
• science-policy

Acknowledgement

The support of the Commonwealth of Australia through the Cooperative Research Centre program is acknowledged.

Notes

1. Isaac Newton synthesized the works of Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Galileo and Descartes and is often described as the great genius of the Scientific Revolution. By combining the empirical, inductive methods of Francis Bacon with the rational, deductive methods formulated by the philosopher-scientist René Descartes, Newton set out principles and empirical laws of nature that govern the behaviour of material bodies. Descartes’ analytic method of reasoning consisted of breaking up problems into pieces and arranging them in logical order. Newton acknowledged the accomplishments of others summarising his contribution as ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’.

2. The precise number of key strands is debatable. Stacey (2000) suggests there are only three core theories (chaos, dissipative structures and complex adaptive systems), whilst Mitleton-Kelly (2003) highlights the five listed here. Anderson (1999) also lists catastrophe theory, but this is not mentioned in neither Stacey’s nor Mitleton-Kelly’s discourses.

3. There are a number of other key concepts and theories derived from complexity theory such as ‘systems of systems’, socio-ecological systems (SES), resilience, transitions (including sustainability transitions theory) and transitions management (TM) and adaptive management (AM). However, in this paper we focus on the five core strands of complexity theory most frequently identified in the literature.