Research-Informed Documents of Practice

The past decade has seen a tremendous increase in the interest of the relationship between land use and water planning (American Planning Association Water & Planning Network, 2017). This has led to a range of professionally oriented resources not previously available, including directed workshops, research and working papers, and conferences specifically focused on this relationship.

In the arena of urban water use, there is a long and measured history of the intense demands of landscape water use on community-based water systems in arid and semi-arid areas. For many western cities, this consumptive use of water has a larger impact than indoor use, due to its unavailability to downstream users. Concurrent with this has been the growth in programs designed to reduce landscape water usage, so as to better manage urban water resources. Many western cities have seen per capita water use decline over the past decades, despite significant population growth: a testament to the success of these largely voluntary programs.

Planners and water managers are often left with little specific direction on what should replace high-water landscapes. The good news is that there has been more, and better, research in the past decade documenting the environmental conditions of urban areas, and the many elements that impact them, in both positive and negative ways. This work is a survey of such recent activities.

For additional context, see the Annotated Bibliography for this work.