The Suburbanization of Water Scarcity in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region: Sociodemographic and Urban Changes Influencing Domestic Water Consumption

Abstract

The metropolitan region of Barcelona is facing change in urban development patterns, sociodemographic structures, and domestic water use and management. In recent years, several drought alerts have been enacted and water restrictions applied, uncovering the fragile equilibrium between the demand and the supply of this resource. We find the literature on determinants of domestic water consumption to be strongly biased toward the effects of economic instruments in the suburban Anglo-American world. Therefore, we widen the scope of determinants by including sociodemographic and territorial variables for the mixed urban model of the metropolitan region of Barcelona. Our results show the relevance of residential land uses for water consumption and can be taken as a guide for developing different urban water policies for different urban forms.

La región metropolitana de Barcelona enfrenta cambios en los patrones de desarrollo urbano, las estructuras sociodemográficas y el manejo del agua usos domésticos. En años recientes, se han promulgado varias alertas de sequía y también se han aplicado restricciones de consumo, lo cual pone de manifiesto el frágil equilibrio entre la demanda y oferta de este recurso. Encontramos que la literatura sobre los determinantes del consumo de agua está fuertemente sesgada hacia los efectos que tienen los instrumentos económicos en el mundo suburbano angloamericano. Consecuentemente, ampliamos el ámbito de determinantes para incluir variables sociodemográficas y territoriales en el modelo urbano mixto de la región metropolitana de Barcelona. Nuestros resultados muestran la relevancia de los usos residenciales para el consumo de agua, los cuales pueden adoptarse como guía para desarrollar diferentes políticas urbanas del agua para diferentes contextos urbanos.

Key Words:

• demography
• domestic water consumption
• metropolitan region of Barcelona
• suburbanization
• urban land uses

关键词:

• 人口统计
• 生活用水量
• 巴塞罗那的大都会地区
• 郊区化
• 城市土地利用

Palabras clave:

• demografía
• consumo doméstico de agua
• región metropolitana de Barcelona
• suburbanización
• usos urbanos del suelo

Acknowledgments

His research interests include urban water governance and the urban political ecology of water flows in Mediterranean environments.

His research interests include natural hazards, water resources, and nature–society theories.

Notes

^aThis net population density corresponds to the case of Badia del Vallès, a municipality that formerly was a high-rise project shared by two important cities: Sabadell and Cerdanyola del Vallès.

^aIn our model, the variable income per capita corresponds to the gross family income per capita (see IDESCAT 2006).

^bThe aging rate explains the process of aging of a given population. It takes into account in the numerator the population over sixty-four years old and in the denominator the total population; it is multiplied by 100 and expressed in percentage terms.

*p < 0.05.

**p < 0.01.

*p < 0.01.

* p < 0.05 (two tailed).

**p < 0.01 (two tailed).

*p < 0.01 (two-tailed).

*The authors wish to thank the Catalan government and the European Social Fund for the FI scholarship extended to Hug March to carry out his PhD studies in environmental sciences. We also appreciate the valuable comments from the three anonymous reviewers.

¹This figure represents a consumption of 147 LPCD if we consider an average household size of 2.7 people (average household size in the last census; IDESCAT 2001). The figure is close to the average consumption (160 LPCD) of the municipalities considered in the subgroup.