Current approaches to safeguarding urban water quality can be largely ineffective as they focus on standard ‘end-of-pipe’ solutions. Problems of urban water pollution need do be dealt with at source rather than end of pipe and as such will only be remedied through innovative planning.

Since at least the 1960’s there has been a growing awareness that the whole of the human environment (its society and supporting ecosystems as well as its economy) needs to be better included in decision making. This awareness has not been restricted to a single discipline but has emerged in the fields of Land use...