Water Sensitive Urban Planning: Mapping Its Evolution

Rapid urbanization, urban growth, and improvement in quality of life have led to an increase in freshwater demand globally, which, coupled with limited water resources, gives rise to challenges in the supply of water.These challenges are further exacerbated by substandard infrastructure and the spiraling costs of inter-basin transfers from sources beyond catchments and administrative limits of urban areas required by large urban centres.Development of urban areas has often resulted in reduction of percolation sinks and blocking of urban drainage systems, causing waterlogging, flooding, and water pollution.Rapid socioeconomic development and unchecked urban sprawl, despite the existing water scarcity, have frequently led to the mismanagement of urban water resources.Physical planning is poorly integrated with water resources' planning, promoting unsustainable growth.Unsustainable and unregulated urban growth is being fostered in most cities because of a lack of integration between land use plans and water resource planning.Leading research organizations and scholars in the field have addressed these issues from various angles in multiple directions with different priorities, concepts, and visions at different levels and scales.In this study a systematic literature review is carried out to explore the integration of urban planning and urban water management.Bibliometric analyses are conducted to identify key research areas, important keywords, and emerging research trends.The findings indicated a rise in studies related to urban planning and urban water management since 2003.The paper highlighted the need for a more integrated, water-sensitive approach and interdisciplinary research to address the challenges of water scarcity and urbanization 1.