The urban water management regime in Copenhagen is experiencing contradictive pressures. On one hand, the municipal administration has worked hard to make of Copenhagen the green capital of Europe pushing their water utility to focus on urban quality and facilitate the opportunities for green and blue spaces. On the other hand, in 2009, the national government has passed a water sector reform meant to create incentives for economic efficiency and thus increase the capacity for the sector to innovate. The main elements of such reform are corporatization of water utilities and the introduction of a national authority to regulate price ceilings and performance benchmarking.
This paper analyses the effects of these pressures using the historical transformation of the inner harbor of Copenhagen as a case able unfold the nature of the existing contradictions and suggest how sustainability transition of water management practices in an urban context should be supported.
Specifically, the analysis suggests that there is a strong contradiction between the political agendas at national and urban scales. The national agenda prioritize a narrow definition of economic efficiency in service provision through a benchmarking system focusing only on technical performances without acknowledging the complexity of the water infrastructure and their intertwining relation with environmental and urban quality. In contrast, in Copenhagen the political agenda during the last 20 years have cultivated new links between water and urban livability. A clear example is the establishment of a bathing facility in the inner harbor of Copenhagen. This development is currently impeded by the existing national efficiency agenda. We argue that a green transformation in cities requires that national policies free the local authorities to develop their own contextual approach to value creation.
