The Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA) has released the paper “Blue + Green = Liveability: the value of water to liveable communities”.
This paper advocates for the consideration of water-related infrastructure in creating liveable cities. Last year, in a project for WSAA which looked at Health Benefits from Water-Centric Liveable Communities, Frontier Economics created a ready reckoner modelling tool which identifies and quantifies (where possible) the relationships between the water industry investment and improved health-related economic outcomes. This has the significant benefit of enabling a consistent and rigorous means of assessing infrastructure projects, which in turn leads to the right projects being approved. This work is featured as a case study in the paper.
Blue + Green = Liveability also features a case study of our work with Infrastructure NSW on the Western Parkland City (Sydney’s Third City), much of which lies within the South Creek Catchment. We undertook a strategic business case which found that adopting integrated land use and water cycle management strategies in the WPC would deliver significant economic, social and environmental benefits to the community in the form of reduced water infrastructure, more open space, greater urban cooling and more healthy waterways and riparian environments.
Blue + Green = Liveability sets out a series of recommendations for government, the urban water industry and other collaborating partners, with a key recommendation being the establishment of a new National Water Initiative focused on liveability of cities and regions across the urban water cycle.
Frontier Economics assisted WSAA with research and consultation in the development of this paper. The Urban Economics team at Frontier Economics has been advising clients on a range of projects at policy and implementation level addressing challenges particular to our urban environment.
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