Lessons from SWITCH City Futures Summit

Beijing city is scaling up the number of demonstration sites with SWITCH innovations to 20 from the one demonstration site they had initially.

Lodz (Poland) has been very effective in publishing their innovations and learning developments in local newspapers, through public displays and events.

These and many other lessons were captured in video interviews during the SWITCH City Futures Summit in Delft, October 2009. The Summit brought together over 50 experts from around the world with 100 practitioners from cities in Africa, Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia as well as donor groups and international organisations to join forces in accelerating change towards a more sustainable water City of the Future.

Engaging with non scientists

During this event, there was much more effort than in past meetings to engage with city reality. This was done through inviting non-scientists from cities, such as decision makers and planners, as well as journalists who wrote short articles on the Summit's blog. Video interviews were done by IRC’s Joep Verhagen on the Water Channel TV.

The interviews focus on lessons that people will take home, what this Summit might mean for people living in the cities, progress in the SWITCH project and what people would do differently if they could re-design the project.

Team work on suitable innovations enjoyable

The respondents appreciate the opportunity to interact with people facing similar challenges in other cities and to learn from their experiences. They particularly enjoyed the team work on suitable innovations for specific cities (IRC’s Joep Verhagen co-facilitated this session).

The Summit could make a difference for people in cities, because participants were inspired and have shared tested innovations that could be applied elsewhere. However, it is crucial to engage city stakeholders like decision makers, media and city dwellers if we want to move beyond pilots. Jan Teun Visscher pointed out that scientists can use words like water demand management and urine separation among themselves, but must engage citizens by talking about local actions that relate to people's daily life and interests. A citizen is interested in reducing the smell in her neighbourhood rather than the details of technological innovation that will help achieve that.

What would you do differently?

Some things that people would do differently, if they could re-design SWITCH.
Rae Makay, Birmingham researcher and city research coordinator, would focus more on engaging the media effectively. Comparing Lodz with Birmingham, he sees the positive results achieved in Lodz because they have been more outward looking and actively distributed information which has helped increase public excitement for SWITCH innovations.

Bertha Darteh, Accra LA facilitator, would put effort into stakeholder engagement and stakeholder analysis from the start of the project and use that process to prioritize research needs and inform who to engage.

SWITCH has had a visible impact in cities, by getting water (demand) management on the agenda of decision makers and planners. It is now part of strategic planning processes in several cities. Some of the respondents talked about the importance of planning for the whole water system: water, wastewater and its re-use.This shows that four years into the project, SWITCH focus on Integrated Urban Water Management is becoming a focus for city stakeholders too.

See for more the SWITCH web site.