A Conceptual Framework for Water Sensitive Urban Planning and Design: Towards Developing a Fundamental Tool to Guide and Assess Policy Making

The world is becoming increasingly urbanized with more of the population living in cities. Urban developments drastically change the water cycle. Large amounts of hard infrastructure and changes imposed to the natural landscape leads to formation of impervious surfaces and loss of urban vegetation which will in turn have a noticeable impact on water balance and increases in the volume and rate of stormwater runoff. Iran is a land-abundant and water-short country. The food needs of a rapidly growing population and strategic policy goals to move the country towards food self-sufficiency will only put further pressure on water resources in the coming decades. Adding to these pressures will be even faster growth in demand for industrial and domestic water for an urbanizing population. Recently there has been efforts in the form of different urban design and planning approaches being all over the world, such as water sensitive urban planning and design, Low Impact Development, sustainable urban drainage systems and green infrastructures. Water sensitive urban design and planning is the integration of urban planning and design with sustainable water-cycle management, bringing ‘sensitivity to water’ into urban planning and design, as it aims to ensure that water is given due prominence within the urban planning process. However, Iranian cities still use the conventional approach for urban water management. Capacity building is needed to change the water resources management approach in Iran. One of the necessary measures to facilitate capacity building is providing guiding tools for planners and designers and to ensure that urban plans and practices are supported by an appropriate set of water sensitive principles. Lack of a policy guiding tool will lead to inefficient planning and failure of the implementation process. A supportive conceptual framework is one of the important tools for implementing WSUD. This article aims to:-  Present an operational water sensitive urban planning and design definition
-  Define dimensions, components and criteria of the water sensitive urban design conceptual framework
The research methodology is guided by a pragmatist paradigm. It seeks to understand the factors that shape water sensitive urban planning and design concept. In order to do this, a systematic review of over 170 chosen resources, regarding Integrated Urban Water Management, Water Sensitive Urban Planning and Design and similar approaches in different countries was conducted and based on the findings from the literature review, a conceptual model was developed and presented. First, water sensitive urban planning and design descriptive propositions were extracted through qualitative context analysis of the selected literature and an operational definition of water sensitive urban planning and design was presented. According to this definition, components of the conceptual framework were specified. In the next step, principles of water sensitive urban planning and design were extracted and organized by the components. These principles act as criteria of the conceptual framework. The water sensitive urban planning and design conceptual framework consists of procedural and substantial dimensions, hydrological, functional, aesthetical, ecological, social and managerial components and it provides planners and designers with the underpinning principles necessary for water sensitive policy making.