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Working from home (WFH) is now widespread around the world. Sustainability benefits can arise from WFH, but there remains limited evidence on resource use and its full sustainability implications. To provide some answers on this issue, we analyse water use data from Sydney, Australia, mapped against mobility changes during the natural experiment that COVID-19-related lockdowns represented. We use an auto-regressive distributed lag model to evaluate how variations in WFH influence the demand for water, after accounting for factors like temperature, rainfall, water restrictions, and so on. We find that in response to a 10% increase in WFH, single residential demand does not significantly change, whilst multi-dwelling demand increases 1%, industrial demand decreases 2%, commercial demand increases 3%, and miscellaneous demand increases 3%. Overall, sectoral changes balance each other out, leaving no significant change in aggregate demand. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we operationalise WFH by looking at the intensity of workplace mobility during the pandemic. Second, we establish disaggregated sectoral water consumption elasticities to WFH and show that aggregate water consumption patterns disguise sectoral changes that relate to where and when water is consumed. These results need to inform infrastructure and water supply–demand planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We believe that cities are important for humans as essential forms of social organisation in contemporary human life. Currently, the integrity of cities as enduring systems faces many challenges--'exogenous' factors such as unsustainable consumption of energy and other resources and 'endogenous' factors such as 'liveability' and the 'human scale' of cities. Therefore we must work to ensure their future, hence the emerging importance of the concept of resilience. But how do we ensure the future of cities? Current slow, de-centralised and business-as-usual urban development is problematic. Instead, a planned approach to urban development is necessary, but how do we plan for cities to be resilient? Planning must inevitably rest on an understanding of how a city functions, and this leads us to thinking of developing mental or computational models of cities. In this paper we explore a number of mental models of cities, which could form the basis for directed urban planning. We identify three types of urban models, urban-state models, urban-learning models, and urban-systems models. Furthermore, we argue that all the current urban models are piecemeal and/or impractical and either do not adequately consider the complexity of the city or are not suitable for the interface with governance, We suggest that the best way forward is to embed multiple urban models within an adaptive governance framework, thereby providing a way for urban decision makers and planning organisations to better handle the complexity of their cities. To enable this, further work is required to identify suitable urban systems archetypes., March 31, 2018IntroductionManaging a complex adaptive system is a challenge encountered in many domains. We need to manage firms, factories, infrastructure, natural resources, economies and nations. For some systems, like [...]

Melbourne is renowned for its urban waterways management. With the introduction of the Healthy Waterways strategy 2018–2028, decision-makers aimed to involve the community more collaboratively. However, the reality of doing so is complex, and outcomes have not always been as intended. We identify three dilemmas that limit the effectiveness of community collaboration, drawing on a study of how communities were involved in the governance of the Melbourne waterways of Merri Creek and Moonee Ponds Creek. The dilemmas are that: resources are stretched; a lack of focus and unclear responsibilities can undermine efforts; and the effectiveness of engagement practices is uncertain and depends on context. We argue that these dilemmas make community collaboration challenging and limit its potential for co-benefits. However, there is an opportunity to develop shared visions and goals that motivates ongoing action, drawing on the strengths of the community and choosing methods more purposefully with consideration of constraints, ensuring that the aims are both achieved and legitimate. This allows for the integration of fragmented resources, capacities, roles, and benefits into a central vision, fostering collaborative principles of transparency, responsibility, ownership, and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]