Current urban development and future urban water deficit: How centrality and maturity affect predicted droughts?

Cities face the risk of water deficits. This risk involves substantial costs and damages that impair water access, biodiversity, public health, education and business. Consequently, comparative research is growing to understand urban water deficit risks and to derive policy lessons that can limit the vulnerability of large population centres. So far, this body of the literature has mostly focused on short term analysis (<10 years) and emphasized particular policy instruments to cope with shocks while neglecting the role of socio-economic contexts. We intend to fill this gap by questioning how current urban structural characteristics affect future urban water deficits. We combine indicators of cities’ centrality and maturity in 2010 with the likelihood and magnitude of cities’ water deficits between 2050 and 2070. The dataset covers 235 of the 595 cities over 750 000 inhabitants in 2010. We show that urban centrality and maturity are negatively associated with future urban deficit, as these two characteristics enable cities to attract political, technical, and economic resources to fuel their development. Further, we depict the non-linearity of these relationships. Whereas management responses and strategies may impact short-term water deficits in cities, we argue for the role of urban structural factors in shaping future water deficits.