SUSTAINABILITY TRANSITIONS IN URBAN WATER MANAGEMENT: Assessing the robustness of institutional arrangements

Transitions toward sustainability are triggered by confluences of natural, built infrastructure, and social, economic, and political factors. As many urban water management regimes across the globe increasingly face hydrologic stress, it is critical to systematically understand how these factors interact to hasten or inhibit transitions to more sustainable states. Scholars have used many frameworks to study transitions. This chapter applies one of them, the Robustness of Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS) framework, to demonstrate how interactions among natural, human, and built infrastructure have impacted the performance of urban water systems in three metropolitan areas in the United States: Miami, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. We illustrate how the CIS framework can allow researchers to organize the often non-linear and slow-moving forces underlying transitions and, consequently, to gain greater leverage to explain system sustainability.