Tracing the impact of urban experimentation in water and energy domains

This research project investigates how the processes of experimenting with alternative urban infrastructure systems can lead to sustainable urban transformations.

For more information on the project, contact Megan Farrelly.

About the project

Australia is at the cusp of significant urban infrastructure transformation: with $200 billion set to be invested in revitalising key sectors including water and energy in the coming decade. At the same time there is a global and national push to delivering sustainable cities with flexible, resilient infrastructure. This demands new thinking, technologies, systems and governance practices. This project, focusing on urban water and energy sectors, will examine how the processes of experimenting with alternative urban infrastructure systems can lead to sustainable urban transformations. This research will involve generating multiple qualitative case studies of innovative practices across Australia to inform the first national evidence-base agenda for change to inform the significant urban infrastructure transformations required to deliver sustainable, resilient and liveable cities.

This project expects to generate new cross sector knowledge regarding the transition dynamics associated with sustainable urban futures and anticipates outcomes that will include improved institutional strategies and enhanced policy and program interventions.

Objectives

The objectives of this project are to:

Compile a comprehensive, integrated database of urban energy and water experimentation designs and practices in Australia that details a range of governance and policy-oriented attributes, alongside stakeholder networks, funding structures and urban materiality.
Characterisation of the place-specific conditions that shape urban water and energy experimentation in major Australian cities.
Analyse the experimentation dynamics of up to 12 long-term initiatives within the urban water and energy sectors. This will focus on mapping the institutional structures, processes, linkage and outcomes of experiments to reveal how they have catalysed a change in practice.
Develop an integrative, explanatory model of the place-based design and multi-level governance of urban experimentation revealing how urban experimentation catalyses urban systems transformation.