City-Level Decoupling-Case Studies

CITY-LEVEL DECOUPLING: URBAN RESOURCE FLOWS AND THE GOVERNANCE OF INFRASTRUCTURE TRANSITIONS

use them. The benefits of mass transit in terms of addressing intra-generational equity are thus rather limited. With attention focused mainly on building mass transits, bus services have been neglected and service quality remains poor. Without improving the quality of other modes of public transportation, the potential contribution of mass rail transits to urban sustainability might not be fully realised.

9. Re-using water with on-site wastewater treatment in Beijing i

By Christian Binz, Bernhard Truffer and Lars Coenen

China’s capital city, Beijing, has faced water shortages for many years due to a combination of diminishing supply and increasing demand. Successive years of below-average rainfall, high population growth and pollution of surface and ground water have resulted in per capita fresh water availability dropping from 1,000 m 3 to less than 230 m 3 between 1949 and 2007. As the city has expanded, demand has shifted from agricultural and industrial use toward residential use, with domestic water consumption more than doubling in the ten years leading up to 2005. Making matters worse, policies have diminished supply options by allowing for Beijing’s watersheds to be degraded, and have supported wasteful water consumption by favouring large-scale engineering projects to increase water supply at little or no additional cost to consumers. 54 In one of Beijing’s earlier efforts to address water shortages, the local government introduced regulations in 1987 that required all hotels with a construction area exceeding 20,000 m 2 and all public buildings exceeding 30,000 m 2 (such as schools, universities, train stations and airports) to introduce on-site water treatment facilities to allow for water to be re-used. When well implemented and operated, decentralised water treatment systems can allow for the more efficient management of water resources, can reduce pollution of surface and groundwater systems, and can overcome many of the limitations of centralised waste water treatment plants. These smaller plants are quicker to plan and install, and are better able to cater for rapidly changing capacity requirements in fast-growing cities like Beijing. By re-using grey water and partially-treated wastewater on site for non-potable uses such as toilet flushing, irrigation or street cleaning, demand for potable water and centralised water treatment facilities can be reduced, which saves resources and costs. At the time of the new regulations, Beijing had very little modern infrastructure in place to deal with its waste water, and lacked local expertise in centralised or on-site water treatment (OST). In order to comply with the regulations, hotel owners had little choice but to seek advice on planning and implementation from international companies - mainly from Japan, Germany and France. Until the mid-1990s, Beijing’s demand for OST expertise and technologies was primarily met by these foreign companies. Their professionalism and economic profitability helped to build the legitimacy of OST in Beijing, and the positive experience of these technologies in the hotel industry inspired local entrepreneurs to capitalise on this new market segment.

i Unless otherwise cited, this case study draws on Binz, C., Truffer, B. & Coenen, L. 2012. Systemic anchoring of global innovation dynamics and new industry formation – The emergence of on-site water recycling in China. Paper presented at the 2012 GLOBELICS conference in Hangzhou, China.

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