The Urban Water-Energy Nexus: Building Resilience for Global Change in the Urban Century

The text identifies water and energy as the core resources for urban planning within a nexus framework, noting that urbanization creates unique pressures through infrastructure reliance, demographic concentration, and social vulnerabilities. It proposes resilience as a guiding principle for urban management to enhance adaptive capacity amidst global change uncertainties and highlights the need for further research into waste and resource recovery efficiency.

• Water and energy are identified as the primary resources for urban planning when using a nexus framework because of their resource attributes and the large infrastructure systems required for their sourcing, transport, distribution, and waste recovery.
• Urbanization influences the water-energy nexus through four specific drivers: the concentration of demographic and political/economic power, dependence on infrastructure, global change forces, and specific urban social vulnerabilities.
• Cities face increasing pressure from economic globalization and climate change, necessitating the use of resilience as a guiding principle for urban planning and management to improve adaptive capacity.
• Current research and practice gaps in the urban water-energy nexus focus on the need for more robust analysis regarding resource recovery and waste, specifically concerning the limits and opportunities for efficiency gains.

APA

Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (2025). The Urban Water-Energy Nexus: Building Resilience for Global Change in the Urban Century. https://iai.int/es/pub_acad/the-urban-water-energy-nexus-building-resilience-for-global-change-in-the-urban-century-book-chapter/

Chicago

Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research. The Urban Water-Energy Nexus: Building Resilience for Global Change in the Urban Century. 2025. https://iai.int/es/pub_acad/the-urban-water-energy-nexus-building-resilience-for-global-change-in-the-urban-century-book-chapter/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research |title=The Urban Water-Energy Nexus: Building Resilience for Global Change in the Urban Century |date=13 January 2025 |url=https://iai.int/es/pub_acad/the-urban-water-energy-nexus-building-resilience-for-global-change-in-the-urban-century-book-chapter/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{interamericaninstituteforglobalchangeresearch2025urban, author = {{Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research}}, title = {{The Urban Water-Energy Nexus: Building Resilience for Global Change in the Urban Century}}, institution = {Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research}, year = {2025}, month = jan, url = {https://iai.int/es/pub_acad/the-urban-water-energy-nexus-building-resilience-for-global-change-in-the-urban-century-book-chapter/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }