Raindrops keep falling on my roof: imaginaries, infrastructures and institutions shaping rainwater harvesting in Berlin

Abstract

Studies of rainwater harvesting regularly highlight the rich diversity of technologies used for rainwater harvesting in cities, but rarely devote attention to the equally diverse logics driving rainwater harvesting projects (RWHPs). To rectify this omission this paper presents research from a city -Berlin -which has a long pedigree of rainwater harvesting that has given rise, over the past 30 years, to an astonishingly varied range of schemes. We analyse and compare three cases encapsulating three distinct project types prevalent in the city: public, grassroots and commercial. The paper demonstrates the nature of diversity between the three and illustrates how diverse logics of rainwater harvesting co-exist within one city.More fundamentally, it unpacks these logics using concepts of sociotechnical imaginaries, urban infrastructures in transition and institutional obduracy and change. It is demonstrated, thereby, how each project reflects a particular imaginary of why urban rainwater should be harvested, how and for whom, and how these imaginaries have emerged out of particular institutional and infrastructural contexts in

Institutional Barriers to On-Site Alternative Water Systems: A Conceptual Framework and Systematic Analysis of the Literature

“…A broad body of literature exists addressing this topic; however, it is scattered across the social science and engineering literature. The existing literature largely focuses on broad conceptual discussions of an imminent transition in UWM, , individual case studies of on-site reuse systems, , or feasibility and acceptance studies. , This paper capitalizes on the broad knowledge distributed throughout this literature, systematizing the state of the art of conceptual and empirical knowledge into a conceptual framework of the key institutional barriers for the diffusion of on-site UWM systems in urban areas.…”