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

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and local community citizens as well as revision of existing policy documents and grey literature on SUDSs and historical documents on the development of the neighborhood.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.

Urban Stormwater Management, a Tool for Adapting to Climate Change: From Risk to Resource

“…Specifically, in the city of Alicante, seven new tanks are proposed which, together with the two existing ones, will increase the storage capacity to 500,000 m 3 . This is similar to the volume available in the city of Barcelona in 2020, although there it is distributed among 12 tanks [12]. One fact that illustrates the interest in these water resources is that the water supplying company (AMAEM) is planning to extend the areas to which it supplies treated reclaimed water for watering gardens in the metropolitan area of Alicante.…”

Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems in Spain: A Diagnosis

“…The experience at Bon Pastor district in Barcelona city also reveals a high level of involvement during the design process [30]. As a result, citizens assumed sustainability as a major driver for future retrofitting actions.…”

An Analysis of Stormwater Management Variants in Urban Catchments

“…Proper water management in urban areas allows for the transformation of rainwater, which is treated as a problem, into an alternative source of water [17,34]. Though these types of floods usually cover a part of the drainage basin, their occurrence causes significant financial and social losses [35,36]. Outflows of stormwater from drainage systems to the surface of area usually occur in close proximity to drainage conduits, which have an insufficient hydraulic capacity.…”

“…The use of low impact development devices enables the solving of the problem of excess rainwater in the local range [68]. In order to ensure sustainable rainwater management in an urban agglomeration, these techniques should be applied throughout the whole catchment area [36]. An LID infrastructure system requires significant space to be reserved for its construction.…”