Landscape and Urban Planning 99 (2011) 83–92

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Landscape and Urban Planning

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan

Understanding the nature of publics and local policy commitment to

Water Sensitive Urban Design
Peter J. Morison ∗ , Rebekah R. Brown
Centre for Water Sensitive Cities, School of Geography & Environmental Science, Building 11 Clayton Campus, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) is a recent planning and design philosophy in Australia primarily
Received 11 August 2009 used to minimise the hydrological impacts of urban development on the surrounding environment. As
Received in revised form 27 August 2010 local governments plan and regulate the bulk of public and private infrastructure and development,
Accepted 29 August 2010
they are key participants in the implementation of WSUD. However, according to research conducted
involving 38 municipalities in Melbourne, Australia, the implementation of WSUD is inconsistent across
the metropolitan area. The mixed methods research comprised a survey of municipal officers, interviews
Keywords:
with the officers and mayors, and a review of municipal accountability documents. The results revealed
Publics
Municipal context
a strong municipal commitment to WSUD in areas bounded by the coast or where the natural vegetation
Water Sensitive Urban Design exceeds 50% of the municipal area. Furthermore, these committed municipalities tended to coincide with
Commitment communities of higher wealth and population. Overall, the analysis revealed three types of municipalities
Environmental policy – high, partial, and limited commitment – that are indicated by a variation in environmental values,
Intergovernmental programs demographic and socio-economic status, local organised environmentalism, municipal environmental
messages, and intergovernmental disposition. This paper argues for policy reform for WSUD, as it is largely
sympathetic to the highly committed municipalities, and highlights the need to enable the participation
of publics in the municipalities of limited and partial commitment by linking WSUD to greater public
concerns and building commitment through diverse policy interventions.
© 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Across the world, the growing trend of urbanisation (UNDESA,
2008) is associated with increasing deterioration in the health of
urban waterways. A major factor of urbanisation that contributes
to the decline of waterways is stormwater runoff, shed from imper-
vious surfaces and engineered drainage systems. Its impact on the
waterways is significant and diverse (see, e.g., Ellis, 1986; Shuster
et al., 2005; Walsh et al., 2005b). Yet stormwater runoff is to be
successfully addressed anywhere despite more than 20–30 years
of dedicated policy rhetoric to “best management practices” in
countries such as Australia, UK, and the USA (Marsalek and Chocat,
2002). Limited political will and implementation capacity by gov-
ernment agencies to address this issue have been exacerbated in
Australia over the last decade by extreme drought conditions and
urban population growth, shifting attention from aquatic ecosys-
tem protection to securing long-term water supplies in the cities.
Faced with a narrow view of managing urban water systems,
Australian commentators have promoted an alternative approach
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 3 9905 4618; fax: +61 3 9905 2948.
E-mail addresses: peter.morison@gmail.com, peter.morison@monash.edu
(P.J. Morison), rebekah.brown@monash.edu (R.R. Brown).
that attends to all aspects of the total water cycle, known as Water
Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) (Wong, 2006b). WSUD, serving
the tenets of conservation, resilience, ecology, and equity, reflects
the international scholarship on Integrated Urban Water Manage-
ment (IUWM) (e.g. Maksimović and Tejada-Guibert, 2001), but also
emphasises urban design principles that refine and extend the prac-
tical application of IUWM (Wong, 2006a).
However, to date, most government policy and guideline doc-
uments narrowly associate WSUD with addressing stormwater
quality and quantity problems in order to improve the health of
receiving waters in Australia (Mitchell, 2006; Wong, 2006a). The
analysis of Brown and Clarke (2007) has largely attributed the
reduction of this definition to the effective advocacy of a coalition
of scientists, practitioners, and policymakers proposing alterna-
tive systems of stormwater drainage that were visually appealing
to the market and more consistent with natural landscapes about
the waterways. Their WSUD-based arguments resonated with con-
stituents who had been lobbying for improvements to waterways
since the 1970s in reaction to frequent occurrences of visible pollu-
tion (floating litter and oil slicks), algal blooms, and beach closures
(Brown and Clarke, 2007).
The resulting applications of WSUD are analogous to stormwa-
ter Best Management Practices (BMPs) associated with Low Impact
Development (LID) in the United States (Dietz, 2007), Low Impact

0169-2046/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2010.08.019
84 P.J. Morison, R.R. Brown / Landscape and Urban Planning 99 (2011) 83–92
Urban Development and Design (LIUDD) in New Zealand (van Roon,
2005), and Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) in the
United Kingdom (Charlesworth et al., 2003). Each treat stormwater
ranging from the allotment to the catchment scale and consist of
such devices as storage tanks, filtration and infiltration measures,
constructed wetlands, and retention ponds (Marsalek and Chocat,
2002). Such technologies of WSUD are considered the state of the
art for the improvement of catchment and waterway health (Roy
et al., 2008; Walsh et al., 2005a).
However, the governments vested with the responsibilities to
guide and regulate the implementation of WSUD remain inade-
quate. WSUD is not mainstream practice at the local level despite
reports by state governments to the contrary (Brown and Farrelly,
2009; Rauch et al., 2005). Here we turn our attention to an organ-
isation critical to the implementation of WSUD in Australia—the
municipal council.
In the municipalities where stormwater management using
WSUD in Australia has been successful, strong co-management
proved necessary between the state and municipal governments
(Rauch et al., 2005). This co-management may be considered as
an array of vertical (state–local) and horizontal (local–local) part-
nerships between governments and their respective communities
that encompass regional water catchments (Roy et al., 2008).
According to the model, shared and individual responsibilities in
the catchments are assigned to the intergovernmental agents. For
example, while state governments set the policy direction, munic-
ipal councils are central to on-ground delivery. Councils are also
largely responsible for environment-related activities, including
planning, natural resource management, and environmental pro-
tection (Wild River, 2006), which overlap conventional stormwater
management responsibilities for the improvement of catchment
and waterway health.
While municipal councils are recognised as vital collaborators
for the improvement of urban stormwater, the observed variabil-
ity and often lack of municipal commitment to intergovernmental
stormwater policy creates a distinct problem for achieving better
ecological outcomes (Berke et al., 2006; Morison and Brown, 2010).
Municipal policy commitment comprises a number of factors that
affect what might be otherwise known as the “implementation
behaviour” of the organisation (Winter, 1999). According to Winter,
such factors include the disposition of the organisation in imple-
menting a particular policy, the contextual factors and the role of
professionals and policy protagonists in facilitating or constraining
implementation performance.
In this paper, we consider the variables of publics and con-
text (defined below) to potentially explain the observed variability
of municipal commitment in relation to environmental policy
implementation. According to the natural resource management
literature (e.g. Conley and Moote, 2003; Koontz and Thomas, 2006),
these variables can give insight into the degree of organisational
commitment to environmental improvement, but are difficult to
measure using conventional techniques. We therefore apply a
mixed quantitative and qualitative approach to better understand
the relationships between the variables.
1.1. Policies without publics
There are many overlapping and conflicting interpretations
of the term “policy”. Indeed, Hill (2009), in his comprehensive
review of the various definitions of policy, uses that of the Oxford
English Dictionary (2nd ed., 1989) as a base for discussion. We
follow his lead in applying the same definition: “A course of
action adopted and pursued by a government, party, ruler, states-
man, etc.” WSUD by this definition is considered a form of policy
because it is a course of action that has been adopted and pur-
sued by governments and professional institutions in Australia (e.g.
Joint Steering Committee for Water Sensitive Cities, 2009; Wong,
2006b).
The term “publics” is defined as “the identifiable groupings who
have more than a passing interest in a given issue debate or are
actively involved in an issue debate”, such as “professional asso-
ciations, producer groups, consumer groups, trade groups, public
interest groups, neighborhood groups, or other groups surrounding
common issue interests” (May, 1991, p. 190). We distinguish this
definition from that of the stakeholder, which traditionally relates
to individuals or groups that have interest in the affairs of corporate
organisations as distinct to governments (Carroll and Buchholtz,
2009). Thus, publics are groups interested in the matters of public
policy in contrast to specific corporate or other sectoral policy. We
have chosen to focus on publics rather than the general commu-
nity because these interest groups have the potential to be highly
influential in the decisions of local government (Byrnes and Dollery,
2002).
The phenomenon of “policies without publics” is often not asso-
ciated with high profile or mainstream issues of contemporary
governments such as crime, health care, and unemployment. It is
observed when coalitions of interest groups often do not exist, leav-
ing by default the technical and scientific communities to regulate
the policy agenda. According to May (1991), when policies are with-
out publics, it is because they do not create “private” risks among
the populace relating to the immediacy, affectivity, and recurrence
of the issue. Examples of these are issues which typically only
become publicly salient when subjected to some type of catas-
trophe, crisis, or “focusing event” that motivates publics (albeit
perhaps temporarily) to demand an immediate policy response
(Birkland, 1998).
In Australia, many environmental issues can be considered lack-
ing publics. Pakulski and Tranter (2004, p. 228) observed the recent
emergence of “specialised ‘urban’ environmental issues, such as
water pollution” that concern the national constituency. However,
they noted that these issues are mixed with “rural” issues such as
water supply shortages, “left” environmental issues such as logging,
and moral issues such as genetically modified organisms, among
others. As the diversity and the proliferation of these “niche issues”
appear to be increasing, the authors contended that the boundaries
of what may be deemed an environmental concern are challenged.
Therefore, new and existing environmental issues compete for pub-
lic attention depending on their relative, apparent urgency and
risk. Many of these environmental issues have also gone through a
process of “routinisation” since the early 1990s, where they have
become normalised and governments are increasingly expected
and assumed to take responsibility for them (Ivanova and Tranter,
2008; Pakulski et al., 1998).
Arguably, the narrow form of WSUD as a stormwater improve-
ment measure is a policy without publics because it is a collective
action problem with limited incentives for public action: the catch-
ment and waterways health problem is considered remote; policy
responses and actions are perceived to be relatively costly; and the
benefits from responding are “sufficiently diffuse to preclude indi-
vidualised action” (May, 1991, p. 194). There is no private, personal
relationship between the policy issue and the common individual.
Unless an episode of harm or potential harm emerges, such as a
pollution event that endangers swimmers in the receiving waters,
there is little incentive for publics to lobby for a policy response.
1.2. Publics, context and municipal commitment to
environmental policy
Despite the lack of publics associated with many environmental
policies, there is increasing recognition among scholars that sense
of local context – the way in which an individual relates to and
perceives the natural environment – is important to the level of
 P.J. Morison, R.R. Brown / Landscape and Urban Planning 99 (2011) 83–92
environmental concern and action. While research findings may
differ, there is nonetheless a trend in the grouping of individual
beliefs by geography or physical space. Brody et al. (2004) found
in a paired catchment study in San Antonio, Texas that residential
proximity to water bodies based on driving distance is a significant
factor in explaining perceptions of water quality, particularly com-
pared to socio-economic variables. Further research conducted in
the same catchments (Brody et al., 2005) revealed relationships
between the perceptions of water quality, residential proximity
to creeks, beliefs in levels of pollution, and population density.
Within these places of similar perceptions, there were correspond-
ing groups of residents who actively engaged in environmental
concerns and formed issue-based networks.
Other research has shown that local context influences resi-
dential behaviour. Forsyth et al. (2004) noted that awareness of
the local catchment and waterway system was a predictor of pro-
environmental behaviour. Furthermore, Blake (2001) identified
that not only environmental concern may be context-dependent
(i.e. residents’ environmental concerns can be affected by their
experience of environmental conditions) but different environ-
mental actions and behaviours can be influenced by local context.
Importantly for our study, the context-shaped, pro-
environmental behaviours of publics can contribute to an
endorsement of collective action at the local level. In researching
the water quality perspectives of residents in Australian cities,
Nancarrow et al. (1995) observed the context-dependent com-
munity expectations of municipalities. Out of a choice of five
municipal services, those residents proximate to water bodies
considered stormwater disposal to be the most important matter
for the municipal council to manage. However, according to
residents further afield, other municipal services such as road
maintenance were more important than stormwater.
Even where publics associated with the environmental policies
of a municipality are lacking, the perception of publics can exist.
Elected officials and policymakers may perceive a context that is
conducive to certain policies and subsequently favour these poli-
cies even if their perceptions do not reflect reality (Schneider and
Ingram, 1997, p. 192). In effect, contextual factors can create a
strong impression of publics that steers the council’s environmen-
tal policy. Wild River (2006, p. 726), in reviewing the environmental
management responsibilities of Australian municipal councils (or
local governments–LGs), noted this phenomenon:
LGs take on environmental work beyond their statutory require-
ments because they perceive themselves as creatures and
servants of the local area, and not of the state. They respond
strongly to issues that are important in the local area whether
or not they lie within the statutory categories for LG work. When
environmental issues are locally defined, LGs use statutory tools
where appropriate in solving a local problem, but see those tools
in the context of the local problem, rather than as the main
driver of action.
This relationship between perceived publics, local context and
municipal responsiveness is evident in the research of White
and Boswell (2006). They reviewed the performance of local
government organisations preparing plans of stormwater best
management practices (BMPs) in California and Kansas under
the federal-mandated National Pollutant Discharge Elimination
Scheme (NPDES). They found those municipalities closest to the
coast produced higher quality BMP plans than their non-coastal
counterparts. The authors advised: “Stormwater quality problems
may thus be more salient to a coastal community that has eco-
nomic and quality of life interests in coastal recreation” (p. 150).
Significant correlations were also determined between munici-
pal stormwater performance and the relative economic conditions
and level of education of the municipal community. Those wealth-
85
ier, more educated municipalities demonstrated higher levels of
program performance. This suggests that the level of resources
available to the high-performing local governments is greater and
facilitates the implementation of such a program. The finding may
also imply a greater community expectation for stormwater qual-
ity improvement. Further research by the same authors (White
and Boswell, 2007) on local government innovation in stormwater
management adds weight to this implication. Here, again, munic-
ipal early-adopters of the BMP plans were identified with higher
levels of wealth and education, as well as higher populations, of
their respective communities.
2. Research agenda
The purpose of this research is to examine the potential relation-
ship between municipal context, comprising environmental values
and socio-economic factors, and municipal commitment to WSUD.
We have drawn upon the reported potential for municipal organi-
sations to implement environmental policies that are shaped by the
positive perception of publics and political salience of this context.
Hence, we proposed the following three research objectives, to:
1. investigate whether particular contextual (demographic, socio-
economic and environmental) characteristics of a municipality
are associated with the commitment of municipal councils to
WSUD.
2. identify any distinguishing features of WSUD commitment
across a population of municipalities within a catchment region.
3. develop evidence-based recommendations for improving future
intergovernmental policy and program design.
We applied these objectives to an intergovernmental setting
where stormwater-related WSUD is being pursued in metropoli-
tan Melbourne, Australia. The case, which is subsequently outlined,
represents a geographical diversity of 38 municipal government
organisations, including the inner-city, suburban, peri-urban, and
rural municipalities. This research involving such a diversity of
municipalities importantly contributes to environmental research
because the majority of investigations in Australia are focused only
on a narrow set of urban municipalities (Pini et al., 2007; Wild River,
2006).
3. Water sensitive urban design in Melbourne
In 2006, the state government of Victoria released a plan to
improve the quality of the Yarra River, which runs through the
heart of the city of Melbourne. The government’s Yarra River Action
Plan (DSE, 2006) was designed not only to address the degrada-
tion of the River’s ecology but to improve the quality of sewerage
and stormwater discharges to the river and the surrounding catch-
ments of Port Phillip Bay and Western Port (Fig. 1). To tackle the
urban stormwater that provides the greatest degree of contamina-
tion to the Bay (Fletcher and Deletic, 2006, p. 69), twenty million
dollars was allocated under the plan for four years to invest in
stormwater-related WSUD and associated capacity-building of a
total of 38 municipal councils across the region of 12,800 km2 . Mel-
bourne Water Corporation, as the authorised regional waterways
manager of the state government, was charged with leading the
intergovernmental WSUD program established under the plan. The
WSUD program is the subject of this paper.
4. Methods
Our research as a type of embedded case study (Yin, 2009)
entailed a mixed qualitative and quantitative methods approach
86 P.J. Morison, R.R. Brown / Landscape and Urban Planning 99 (2011) 83–92

Fig. 2. Summary of the research methodology.

Table 2
Fig. 1. Study area of Port Phillip Bay and Western Port catchments, Melbourne, List of relevant NVivo tree nodes used for coding interview data.
Australia.
Tree node category Node name

Community Influence on council

(Creswell and Plano Clark, 2007). Accordingly, we combined a
structured survey instrument with semi-structured interviews,
census and local government data, map and document analyses in
order to illuminate the phenomena of publics, context, and munic-
ipal commitment. For organisational research such as this, the use
of mixed methods importantly combines the benefits of depth of
qualitative approaches with the depth of quantitative designs (Shah
and Corley, 2006).
The collection, analysis and interpretation of the data involved
the triangulation of the multiple data sources including surveys,
interviews and secondary literature to build the individual organ-
isational case studies. This was followed by comparative case
analysis applying a replication logic model recommended by Yin
(2009).
As outlined in Fig. 2, the first phase involved a survey of 116
municipal professionals (82% of 141 approached). Each had some
responsibility for stormwater management. On average there were
three respondents per municipal council and each of the 38 councils
was represented by at least one respondent. WSUD (in its nar-
row form as a new approach to stormwater management) was
predefined in the survey. Seven statements spanning from nil to
long-term municipal commitment to this narrow form of WSUD
were used to construct a four-point ordinal variable: WSUD com-
mitment. Table 1 identifies, classifies these statements according
to level of commitment, and lists the number of responses per
statement. Prior to its execution, the survey was piloted by twelve
persons who were independent of the research. Statistical analyses
of the survey responses were carried out using SPSS 17.0 for Win-
dows. Kendall’s tau-c test of association was applied to the ordinal
and non-normal scale data analysed in this study. The test provides
information about strength, significance, and direction of the asso-
ciation between the variables. It is an appropriate test for ordinal
Perceived priority
Environmental issues Climate change
Drought
Flooding
Visual amenity
Wastewater
Water quality
Municipal commitment Culture
Elected officials
Executives
Officers
scales of four or less points and is widely used as a highly conserva-
tive estimator of the proportional reduction in error (Berman, 2007,
pp. 166–167).
The second phase of our research involved 133 semi-structured
interviews with similar municipal professionals. They represented
94% of the 141 approached. Additional interviews were sought
with all of the 38 mayors as proxies for their respective munic-
ipal publics, given their role as the political head of the council
and as a community leader. 21 mayors agreed to be interviewed.
During the interviews, municipal officers and mayors were asked
about their knowledge and opinions of the constituent, elected,
and organisational priorities for water quality, waterway health,
and flood protection. We were careful to probe experienced offi-
cers with additional questions about these matters, particularly
where the mayor declined to be interviewed. Interview transcrip-
tions and field memoranda were coded using NVivo 8 as tree
nodes. These consisted of municipal commitment to WSUD across
the organisational hierarchy, local environmental issues, and per-
ceived community priorities and influence on the council (Table 2).
Individual nodes for coding the data were devised in two ways.

Table 1
Classification of statements against rating of municipal WSUD commitment and percent breakdown of survey responses (n = 110).

Survey statement WSUD commitment rating % Responses

Council is committed to WSUD for the long term and has embedded the concept into its organisational practices 3 (high) 17.3
WSUD is a new concept for council but there is a growing interest and support for its implementation 2 (medium) 61.8
Council is only interested in WSUD when external funding and support is available 1 (low) 13.6
Council tends to resist WSUD because it is risky 1 (low) 1.8
WSUD costs more than conventional drainage and Council finds it difficult to commit to this additional burden 1 (low) 0
There are higher priorities for stormwater management than WSUD 1 (low) 5.5
WSUD is not a responsibility of Council 0 (nil) 0
 P.J. Morison, R.R. Brown / Landscape and Urban Planning 99 (2011) 83–92
First, the majority were preliminary constructs from the literature.
Community and municipal commitment codes were specifically
modelled on those determined by Brown (2008) for stormwater
management. Second, additional codes of environmental issues
were inductively devised from the interviews. After completion
of the coding, all interview data were reanalysed using NVivo
in order to prepare a detailed case report for each municipality.
From each report we determined an interim ranking of municipal
WSUD performance. This ranking was based on an organisational
benchmarking typology developed by Brown (2008) for assessing
municipal performance in relation to sustainable urban stormwa-
ter management. A rank of performance on a scale of one to five
(1 = low; 5 = high) was assigned to each municipal council according
to the typology descriptors.
Following Yin (2009), the performance data was triangulated
with ranked municipal accountability documents (annual reports,
council plans, and municipal strategic statements) and the survey-
derived WSUD commitment scales. The accountability documents,
representing each of the 38 municipalities, were coded against
key words relating to WSUD and then ranked using a three-point
scale. This process was based on a similar method employed to rate
the quality of municipal hazard management plans in the United
States (see Burby and May, 1997). Once every document relevant
to the council was reviewed, a simple ranking of commitment was
applied: 0 = no acknowledgement of improving stormwater or the
health of waterways; 1 = (fair) acknowledgement but no identi-
fied budget; 2 = (good) acknowledgement and budget. The analysis
was undertaken by two reviewers and cross-checked for agree-
ment. While we accept that municipal accountability documents
are indicative of the responsiveness of individual councils to par-
ticular local community needs and expectations and, hence, are
variable in their information (Kloot, 2001), we found the rankings
of these documents positively associated with the levels of per-
formance of the 38 municipal councils ( c = 0.35; p < 0.01; n = 116).
In addition, the levels of municipal performance were checked
for association with the WSUD commitment scales obtained from
the survey. These were found to be positive and significant at the
0.01 level ( c = 0.39; n = 110). Overall, the significant associations
infer that the three data points of interviews, documents and sur-
vey results satisfactorily converge to present a valid summary of
municipal WSUD commitment across the study area.
The third phase in the methodology involved the investigation
of municipal context. Our selection of variables describing local
context was initially guided by the research of White and Boswell
(2006, 2007) because of its similarity in topic and design as an
investigation of municipal stormwater management performance.
We extended our consideration of context to other studies of local
government commitment to environmental policies. Factors such
as municipal population size and area, constituent income and edu-
cation, municipal income, and national indexes of socio-economic
status have been shown to influence the quality of municipal envi-
ronmental plans and policies (e.g. Burby and May, 1998; Lubell et
Table 3
Associations ( c ) between contextual variables and municipal WSUD commitment.
Contextual variables Correlation with municipal WSUD commitment (n = 110)
Total population (2006) 0.19
Municipal area (km2 ) −0.08
Municipal recurrent income 2005–2006 0.23
Median household income ($/weekly) 0.17
Median individual income ($/weekly) 0.14
Persons completed year 12 0.17
% Persons completed year 12 0.10
Index of economic resources (2001) 0.19
*
Significant at the 0.05 level,
**
Significant at the 0.01 level.
87
al., 2009; Zahran et al., 2008). As is the case with all studies of
local context, we were limited in our selection by the availability
of source data. The resulting variables (Table 3) were sourced from
the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Community Profile (2006
census) and official performance reports for each municipality
(DPCD, 2007a,b). The ABS Index of Economic Resources is a quan-
titative profile of the economic resources of families within each
municipality. After selecting the contextual variables, we looked
for associations between each of these and the scale of WSUD com-
mitment derived from the survey of municipal professionals.
The performance rankings for each municipality were then plot-
ted on a map of environmental assets. Map data was sourced
from the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environ-
ment’s on-line biodiversity interactive map (www.dse.vic.gov.au)
and comprised the layers of catchment management boundaries,
municipal areas, rivers, watercourses and coastal features, and the
modelled native vegetation extent (2005). The native vegetation
extent was measured at a maximum scale of 1:200 to determine
the percent cover for each municipality.
In the fourth and final phase, the research involved testing the
alignment of these variables within each of the lowest-performing
and highest-performing groups of municipalities to warrant inter-
nal validity, followed by contrasting the variables across the case
study types (Caracelli and Greene, 1993). The approach of compar-
ing extreme cases is widely recognised as highly suited to policy,
management and organisational research activities (Shah and
Corley, 2006) and is analogous to that used in multiple experiments
in which the same results are obtained by using replication logic for
each of the cases. The quantitative commitment variables derived
from the previous phases were loaded into NVivo as attributes.
Extreme cases were further analysed with the reconsideration
of qualitative material, data classification, and cross-tabulations
(using matrix queries) to determine any distinguishing analytic cat-
egories or trends. Combining the variables with equivalent codes
creates a more “complete picture” of the cases under study and fur-
ther triangulates the data to improve the reliability of the analysis
(Bazeley, 2006, p. 65). The approach also provides further opportu-
nity to explore any deviant cases or within cases where apparent
contradictions in the data may exist in the different data sources
(Caracelli and Greene, 1993; Miles and Huberman, 1994).
Trends emerged in the data that constituted the overall WSUD
commitment (or implementation behaviour) of the councils,
including their predisposition to WSUD policy, the contextual fac-
tors facilitating or constraining implementation performance, and
the facilitation or inhibition of performance by professionals and
elected officials (Winter, 1999). The extreme cases epitomised
the contrasting implementation behaviours which were found to
extend into the second and fourth levels of municipal performance
according to Brown’s (2008) typology. High and limited commit-
ment groups were hence defined for the extremes. Once these two
groups of municipal commitment were recognised, a third was
defined for the intermediary municipalities which corresponded
Significance
*
**
*
*
*
88 P.J. Morison, R.R. Brown / Landscape and Urban Planning 99 (2011) 83–92

generally with the third attributed level of performance in Brown’s
typology. Where we have recognised divergent cases within each
of these groups, we have taken care to identify them and offer
plausible explanations for their differences.
5. Results
Here we set out the results according to our objectives, first
exploring the relationships between the commitment of councils
to WSUD and the selected contextual variables. We then extend
the relationships to include other sources of our mixed-method
analysis and identify three distinct groups of commitment type
among the 38 municipal councils that form the basis of subsequent
discussion.
5.1. WSUD commitment with demographic and socio-economic
context
Table 3 reveals that key socioeconomic variables – house-
hold income, post-secondary education, and economic resources
– associated with the self-reported WSUD commitment of local
government officers. In addition, the population of municipali-
ties and the income of their councils were associated with WSUD
commitment. However, WSUD commitment did not significantly
associate with median individual income, municipal area and post-
secondary education when normalised to municipal populations. In
summary, we see a general trend from these relationships that as
municipalities grow in population and wealth, their level of organ-
isational commitment to WSUD increases. This trend confirms the
findings of previous research outlined in our introductory review
(White and Boswell, 2006, 2007): that municipalities in positions
of greater economic advantage are most able to commit to treat-
ing urban stormwater using best practices associated with WSUD.
While the finding is important for the design of intergovernmental
programs, we are also interested whether there are distinct pat-
terns of commitment among the municipalities which could inform
the actions of policymakers. We now turn our attention to this
objective.
5.2. Groups of WSUD commitment type
The extreme case analysis of the triangulated quantitative and
qualitative data yielded three groups of WSUD commitment rep-
resenting the thirty-eight municipalities in Melbourne: the highly
committed, the partially committed, and those with limited com-
mitment. Included in Table 4 are the distinguishing characteristics
of each WSUD commitment group, which can be summarised into
the following categories. The environmental values for each munici-
pality are characterised by the relative occurrence of environmental
assets including rivers, watercourses and coastal features, and
the proportion of native vegetation present within the municipal
area. The demographic and socio-economic state relates to the con-
textual relationships previously noted, including population size,
constituent wealth and municipal revenue. The category of local
organised environmentalism is defined by the presence of local envi-
ronmental groups within each municipality (according to interview
data regarding perceived community influences on the council
and civic environmental priorities). From the accountability doc-
uments and discussions with interviewees about WSUD concepts
and municipal environmental issues, a category of municipal envi-
ronmental messages emerged from the data. The final category,
intergovernmental disposition, accounts for the collective attitudes
of municipal professionals and mayors towards the state govern-
ment and the service orientation of the municipality, whether it is
primarily focused on property (e.g. roads and drainage) or people
(e.g. community health services) (see Dollery et al., 2006). These
data were captured in the interviews and document analyses. Fol-
lowing an approach recommended by Miles and Huberman (1994),
short quotations from the interviews are included to exemplify the
characteristics of each group. We explain the characteristics of each
group below.
In Melbourne, the municipal organisations highly committed
to WSUD are associated with relatively high municipal and envi-
ronmental wealth. We describe these eleven councils as the high
commitment group. Our review of regional landscape characteris-
tics revealed eight of the eleven municipalities either adjoined an
embayment or the coast, or contained a minimum of 50% native
vegetation. In two of the remaining three municipalities, one has

Table 4
Summary of characteristics for the municipal types of limited commitment, partial commitment and high commitment.

Characteristics Limited commitment Partial commitment High commitment

Environmental values
Demographic and
socio-economic state
Local organised
environmentalism
Municipal
environmental
messages
Intergovernmental
disposition
Exemplary quotes
n 14
Environmental assets are concealed or
disassociated
Relatively small municipal
populations; generally lower levels of
constituent wealth and municipal
revenue
Unknown or negligibly valued; where
present, are not lobbying for WSUD
WSUD not used or related to messages;
environmental messages are token
Minimalist, services to property focus;
inert or obstinate with state mandates
“if it can’t be seen, we don’t care”;
“drainage as waste water”; “they
expect lower standards”; “we do not
engage with the community”; “not into
huge image about WSUD”; “it’s not our
asset”; “we don’t want horrible little
weeds”; “but we want to park our cars
there”
A blend of apparent and unapparent
environmental assets, depending on the
municipality
Intermediate municipal populations;
mediocre levels of constituent wealth and
municipal revenue, sometimes varying
across the municipality
Some long-term environmental groups
with varying degrees of political success
Some informal linking of WSUD with other
messages; reactive to current policy issues
Variable services foci; dependence on
intergovernmental grants and regulation
“the dirty creek doesn’t really vote”; “it
depends .. on the swings and what the
community want”; “We still get
resistance”; “not .. a cashed up council”;
“someone else will pay”; “if we get
complaints .. we’re going to go backwards
very, very quickly”; “big subdivisions”
13
Obvious environmental assets
Relatively high municipal populations,
higher levels of constituent wealth and
municipal revenue
Influential municipal environmental
coalitions, catchment committees,
and/or “Friends” groups
WSUD is formally integrated with
broader environmental messages
Maximalist, services to people focus;
civic pride, obstreperous with state
mandates
“they love the environment”; “vocal
groups protecting the foreshore”;
“stormwater as a resource”; “a local
thing”; “they have an expectation that
the environment is protected”; “it’s
reflected in the work that we do, in our
policies”; “integrated view”
11
 P.J. Morison, R.R. Brown / Landscape and Urban Planning 99 (2011) 83–92
a long history of civic environmentalism; another contains 20%
native vegetation, adjoins a river, and is led by a distribution of envi-
ronmentally active officers. Only the ultimate highly committed
municipality is exceptional in not comprising any of the aforemen-
tioned characteristics but exhibits strong levels of organisational
leadership within an urban growth area and is influenced by a
number of high profile urban development companies to promote
WSUD.
Highly committed municipalities support successful coalitions
for environmental policy, some of which comprise the municipal
organisations at regional or catchment scales, and others that are
more locally oriented, such as volunteer groups associated with
neighbourhood parks and waterways. Often known as “Friends
of” a named stream or park, these coalitions provide peer sup-
port and effectively solicit the municipal organisations for better
environmental outcomes. While our analysis found the strength of
these coalitions does not match that of the typical local interest
groups, such as chambers of commerce and progress associations,
their lobby is heard. In responding to the competing but valued
environmental issues, the high-commitment municipal organi-
sations link WSUD policy with issues such as climate change,
amenity, water conservation and reuse, flood control, wastew-
ater improvement, and cleaner production. One of the officers
described these broader environmental messages as an “inte-
grated view”. Corporate reports and plans of the highly committed
municipalities are peppered with these messages. Therefore, it
is not surprising that the disposition of this group is maximal-
ist, with a services-to-people focus (Dollery et al., 2006), whereby
non-statutory services are pursued by the municipal organisa-
tion even if they overlap with state and non-government services.
WSUD is one of these non-statutory services observed by Wild
River (2006) in progressive Australian municipalities. With such
a strong local agenda that is backed by numerous coalitions, the
high-commitment municipalities often outspokenly resist state
government mandates and policies that are perceived to be locally
unjust. The majority of municipal organisations assign delegates
to high-level intergovernmental committees, who agitate for local
equity and benefits in the design and implementation of state pol-
icy. These appointments pay dividends to the high-commitment
municipalities as, according to one interviewee, “cherry-picking”
grant schemes evolve to appease their resistant parties while
expediently applying state funding to high profile environmental
projects.
As expected, the organisations that fall somewhere between
the WSUD leaders (high commitment group) and laggards (lim-
ited commitment group) associate with a fusion of the contextual
characteristics found at each extreme of the commitment con-
tinuum. These 13 municipalities of partial commitment are not
enriched by the environmental or economic assets found in the
areas of high commitment. In the cases where there are appar-
ent environmental features, these are not sufficient to stimulate
a strong local environmental agenda. The municipal organisations
generally expect intergovernmental money and mandates to drive
the environmental agenda and raise the profile of WSUD. Should
the funding dry up or the mandates be weak, there is little hope
for the development and sustenance of WSUD in these munici-
palities. Service orientations are generally dependent on reactive
local issues and intergovernmental monetary transfers, creating
a tension between serving property and serving people. For the
partially committed municipalities comprising urban growth cen-
tres, this tension is exemplified as potential environmental projects
wane with the high demand for efficient, traditional infrastructure
services. Among many of these organisations, a state planning reg-
ulation (Clause 56.07 of the Victoria Planning Provisions) provides
a stimulus for municipal commitment in requiring WSUD on new
residential subdivisions. However, the commitment does not nor-
89
mally manifest in municipal capital projects, nor does it invoke
public participation:
I suppose there’s [sic] a lot of new and second home owners
that are moving into these new greenfields [broad-acre resi-
dential] suburbs. Their main interaction with the water quality
is [by] those who move into WSUD-designed estates and ring
the [municipal council] and ask when they’re going to finish
these strange nature strips that are spoon-shaped and u-shaped.
[Municipal officer]
Some partially committed municipalities feature discrepant
community priorities that are tied to distinct geographical varia-
tions in either the natural environment or residential income and
education. In these cases, local ward politics may prevail for the
environmentally or economically wealthy parts of the municipality.
Local environmental groups (e.g. “Friends of. . .Creek”) are gener-
ally evident but are not overtly influential on the organisation’s
commitment to WSUD policy. Many of the organisations in this
group are focused on other matters such as climate change strate-
gies, flood mitigation, water conservation works, and irrigating
sporting fields. The issues and the messages are not well connected.
There may be latent support for WSUD among the community, but
the lack of robust municipal messages promoting the policy leaves
it untouched unless a focusing event, such as a serious water qual-
ity incident, emerges. In these places of limited public awareness,
working with WSUD demonstration projects can pose a reputa-
tional risk to both the organisation and the technology. One mayor
related the residents’ views of a recent street WSUD upgrade as
“ugly” and unsafe.
The last group of municipalities demonstrates the least potential
for WSUD implementation. This is the limited commitment group,
which poses the greatest challenge for policymakers. Within the 14
city and suburban municipalities conforming to this group, there
are problems with disassociation between the waterways and the
residents. Environmental issues are fragmented, ignored, or some-
times concealed by other issues of higher priority. Corporate plans
and reports are largely devoid of environmental messages, and
those that are evident pertain to current affairs, such as water
conservation. Local environmental groups are unknown or given
little concern by their municipal organisations unless they are
connected with customary local issues, such as heritage societies,
rural land conservation cooperatives, fishing clubs, and gardening
groups. In the cases where there is poor commitment to WSUD
on the periphery of Melbourne, tension is exposed between the
urban expectations of new-coming residents with “city expecta-
tions” (according to an interviewee) and the customs of permanent
inhabitants. Introducing a concept that includes the word “urban”
into the rural municipalities can be objectionable to their residents
and officers. The increasing populations in these parts are perceived
to be putting pressure on the reticulated water supply and invoking
a sense of local pragmatism to saving potable water. While expe-
riencing an extended drought, the municipal organisations have
poured their limited resources into water-conserving devices and
capture-and-reuse schemes to save what is left of their sports fields,
which, according to one of the officers, are “the last surviving bits of
social infrastructure”. With similar municipal rates to those of their
inner city counterparts, the rural organisations are constrained to
provide more than the core, statutory services to properties—the
“roads, rates, and rubbish” (Dollery et al., 2006, p. 554). Hence, they
will not commit to additional programs (like WSUD) when the con-
stituents are resisting further increases and special charge schemes
for even these basic services. Some of the limited commitment
organisations are dealing with extensive wastewater contamina-
tion problems and battling with state government over time frames
for backlog sewerage schemes. Others are concerned about the
environmental consequences of unsealed roads and artificial drains
90 P.J. Morison, R.R. Brown / Landscape and Urban Planning 99 (2011) 83–92
set aside for agricultural irrigation. The following comment sum-
marises one municipality’s disposition:
. . .we’re still largely a rural town . . . and we’re not into huge
image about WSUD and whatever, rain gardens, they’re quite
insignificant to us out here. We’ve got bigger issues to fry like
. . . kilometres of trapezoidal drain being excavated right now,
I mean really! So a bit of dirty water in St Kilda or somewhere
[inner-city Melbourne] is not relevant to us.
6. Discussion
In considering our research of municipal WSUD commitment,
some may suggest the above results imply the presence of publics to
promote and support the policy. However, our investigation reveals
that this is not the case in Melbourne. A number of municipalities
were devoid of locally-oriented environmental publics. Of those
municipalities that were represented by environmental groups, the
interest in WSUD was related to broader environmental issues such
as climate change and water scarcity.
Others may suggest that the results point to a form of envi-
ronmental determinism (Semple, 1911), in which the physical
environment determines the socio-economic development and
culture of a community and consequently the organisational com-
mitment of the municipality to environmental policies such as
WSUD. Yet this is an inadequate explanation which does not take
account of the various other managerial, social, political, and eco-
nomic variables that affect municipal performance (Andrews et al.,
2005). In Table 3 we reveal correlations between some of these
variables and WSUD commitment, but the relationships do not
necessarily translate to causation. Where WSUD commitment is
evident, the engagement of publics is only indirect. The com-
mitment relates to more pressing, extant issues, such as public
amenity in the inner city, the degradation of biodiversity in some
municipalities along the urban frontier, or extreme water short-
ages across the region. Only in the places of high commitment the
various environmental messages have been integrated and munic-
ipal organisations have the freedom, facilitated by revenue and
intergovernmental support, to create sophisticated messages. One
officer in a committed municipal organisation reflected on these
messages:
[M]odern local government needs to have a sustainability
agenda and that needs to cover energy, water, waste and be
able to answer the questions that the community is starting to
ask.
However, for the partially committed, generating the right mes-
sages is problematical and the paucity of publics limits their scope:
The future . . . worries me . . . it’s the fear that the drought ends
and Water Sensitive Urban Design stops. . . . So, my fear is that
it’s not mainstream.
In summary, these results leave policymakers and program
administrators with a veritable challenge to interest publics in
order to mainstream WSUD, while finding mechanisms that will
instigate the participation of the limited-commitment group,
improve the performance of the partially committed, and encour-
age the highly committed. We suggest ways to overcome this
challenge in our concluding remarks.
7. Implications for policy
In our research of intergovernmental stormwater-related WSUD
implementation, we established that particular demographic,
socio-economic and environmental characteristics of a municipal-
ity are associated with the commitment of municipal councils to
WSUD. This was demonstrated in an embedded case study analysis
of 38 municipalities in Melbourne, Australia. Furthermore, through
the triangulation of the data obtained from a survey, interviews and
municipal accountability documents, we identified distinguishing
features of WSUD commitment associated with three particular
groups of councils: the limited-commitment group (n = 14), the par-
tially committed group (n = 13) and the highly committed group
(n = 11). The implications of these findings for future intergovern-
mental policy and program design are considered below.
According to our results, in the limited commitment munici-
palities of lower socio-economic status with relatively few natural
environmental assets, WSUD tends to be ignored or misconstrued.
It is restricted to being a policy without publics which does not
invoke political debate about its definition or solutions. Capacity-
building measures, ordained under the Yarra River Action Plan, and
like elsewhere in Australia, are promoting instrumental, techni-
cal forms of learning that are limited to municipal and industry
practitioners (Brown et al., 2009). The necessary social learning
to build publics is unapparent and, consequently, thwarts munic-
ipal commitment to WSUD. We learned from this research that
there is a fundamental intergovernmental assumption underpin-
ning WSUD policy, which is given to either belief that there is a
normative acceptance of the need for WSUD in local communi-
ties and/or the public involvement in the realisation of WSUD is
unnecessary. In our view, this assumption is critically limiting the
widespread adoption of WSUD because publics are a necessity to
growing political commitment at various geographic scales.
Part of the publics problem, it seems, is the jargon of Water
Sensitive Urban Design and the weak linking of the concept to
more current and salient environmental messages. Furthermore,
the commonly adopted definition of WSUD has narrowed from its
root as an alternative to conventional water supply, sewage dis-
posal, and drainage practices to a preponderance of stormwater
drainage practices alone. Hence, capacity-building programs need
to redefine their targets to include publics and find suitable levers
for interaction and action that are constructed as common pol-
icy images. The choice of language that more clearly embraces the
variety of interests represented is imperative to the reform.
Nevertheless, we see a dilemma associated with the image of
WSUD. Its current, narrow definition as a stormwater solution
is lacking in relevance to the laity; it is indeed a policy without
publics. Yet, while construing WSUD as part of a broader envi-
ronmental agenda might appeal to public interests, its importance
for improving urban stormwater could be overlooked by senior
decision-makers. We recognise this dilemma in Australia, where
water is a highly political topic. Urban residents are restricted in
their lifestyles by prolonged droughts and, in some places, the
coincidence of severe floods. Consequently, the public expecta-
tions of secure water supplies and flood protection keep WSUD
for stormwater improvement well off the policy agenda. Hence, it
would seem most appropriate to extend the scope of WSUD and
cohere these current affairs in order to find appeal among publics
and focus municipal attention. However, within the state govern-
ment departments responsible for urban water policy, the senior
WSUD protagonists will be wary of losing it in the clatter of the
current water supply and flood protection discourse.
How do we reconcile this dilemma? It is our recommendation
that two concurrent messages should be created: one that main-
tains WSUD as a stormwater runoff solution on the macro, state
policy agenda, and another that melds WSUD with local matters
for the micro, municipal policy agenda.
In adopting our recommendation for the municipalities of Mel-
bourne, messages will need to be tailored to fulfil the desires of the
highly committed, meet the needs of the partially committed, and
reverse the attitudes of commitment-limited. Drawing from the
policy science literature (Ingram and Schneider, 1990; May, 1991;
 P.J. Morison, R.R. Brown / Landscape and Urban Planning 99 (2011) 83–92
Schneider and Ingram, 1990), these messages should be accompa-
nied by instruments that are connected to the three dispositional
groups and are constructed in such a manner as to appeal to the
municipal councils and their associated communities. The findings
of our research assist the tailoring of messages to municipal coun-
cils and, through their mayors and elected officials as proxies for
community opinion, provide some additional information for their
constituencies.
Hence, for the limited commitment groups, we recommend
building publics by executing informational and hortatory instru-
ments (including persuasion and exhortation) directly to the
communities that are linked to salient, extant but local political
issues. Exhorting via the local media for the construction of vege-
tated stormwater filters (with suitable incentives) to improve the
quality of urban landscapes is one example. Some other options
are encouraging the use of these devices in combination with other
WSUD elements to enable sports field irrigation with stormwa-
ter runoff, or to offset the expense of on-site detention schemes
in flood-prone areas. In addition to informational and hortatory
instruments, regulation for the attainment of minimum WSUD
standards and targets may compel publics and the municipality
in these circumstances. An alternative is for leading organisations
to directly provide the WSUD services in areas of low commitment,
especially where regulatory policy instruments for municipalities
are deficient. This should be an interim measure that has the advan-
tage of ameliorating receiving water conditions while potentially
developing a local policy image that will increase the public interest
in WSUD.
Within the partially committed communities, WSUD demon-
strations, combined with practitioner capacity-building and
underwritten by program leaders, may be performed to service
and attract publics. In these instances, the program leader needs to
tailor WSUD to local needs and desires while initially shouldering
the responsibilities for its implementation. In communities where
urban density is a constraint, WSUD may be best integrated within
the street, irrigating existing street trees. For suburban communi-
ties, particularly without apparent waterways and environmental
features, WSUD may be a series of landscape features within com-
mon domains such as shopping centres and parks. In contrast,
WSUD may be used for greywater treatment schemes, irrigation
channel rehabilitation, and town square improvements in rural
communities. Whatever the options may be, they must be nego-
tiated with the municipality and its community.
Turning our attention to the highly committed municipalities,
we suggest they are encouraged by state program leaders to test
certain approaches to WSUD that broaden beyond stormwater
management. In its execution, the municipal councils are provided
with resources to help them experiment with the implementation
of WSUD policy. Supported by a positive constituency, they are able
to learn in an environment of reduced risk. However, this learning
must be shared with the local constituency in order to justify and
perpetuate the experiments.
8. Conclusions
To conclude, we suggest WSUD is recast in a new image that
embodies messages that are pertinent to publics and sympathetic
to local context, while continuing to sustain a waterways protection
agenda at the macro political and policy levels. This is the essence of
intergovernmental co-management. How it manifests will depend
on socio-political and intergovernmental circumstances but, in all
cases, the roles of policymakers in shrewdly distilling these mes-
sages to the polity while program administrators and implementers
flexibly amend the messages to suit local conditions. Hence, we see
the next step for WSUD policy as creating the necessary building
91
blocks for these messages that incorporate the roles of publics, pol-
icymakers, politicians, and practitioners at their influential scales.
Acknowledgements
The authors especially acknowledge the participation of the
municipal officers and mayors in this research. Funding support
from Melbourne Water Corporation made this research possible.
Our reported research findings and opinions are entirely our own
and are not necessarily endorsed by the funder or the research
participants and their organisations. The research was conducted
in accordance with the approval of Monash University’s Standing
Committee on Ethics in Research Involving Humans (SCERH) (ref-
erence CF07/1232 - 2007/0311LIR).
References
Andrews, R., Boyne, G.A., Law, J., Walker, R.M., 2005. External constraints on local ser-
vice standards: the case of comprehensive performance assessment in English
local government. Publ. Admin. 83 (3), 639–656.
Bazeley, P., 2006. The contribution of computer software to integrating qualitative
and quantitative data and analyses. Res. Schools 13 (1), 64–74.
Berke, P., Backhurst, M., Day, M., Ericksen, N., Laurian, L., Crawford, J., et al., 2006.
What makes plan implementation successful? An evaluation of local plans and
implementation practices in New Zealand. Environ. Plann. B 33, 581–600.
Berman, E.M., 2007. Essential Statistics for Public Managers and Policy Analysts, 2nd
ed. CQ Press, Washington, DC.
Birkland, T.A., 1998. Focusing events, mobilization, and agenda setting. J. Publ. Pol.
18 (1), 53–74.
Blake, D.E., 2001. Contextual effects on environmental attitudes and behavior. Env-
iron. Behav. 33 (5), 708–725.
Brody, S.D., Highfield, W., Alston, L., 2004. Does location matter? Measuring environ-
mental perceptions of creeks in two San Antonio watersheds. Environ. Behav.
36 (2), 229–250.
Brody, S.D., Highfield, W., Peck, B.M., 2005. Exploring the mosaic of perceptions for
water quality across watersheds in San Antonio, Texas. Landscape Urban Plann.
73 (2–3), 200–214.
Brown, R., Farrelly, M., Keath, N., 2009. Practitioner perceptions of social and insti-
tutional barriers to advancing a diverse water source approach in Australia. Int.
J. Water Resour. D 25 (1), 15–28.
Brown, R.R., 2008. Local institutional development and organisational change for
advancing sustainable urban water futures. Environ. Manage. 41 (2), 221–233.
Brown, R.R., Clarke, J.M., 2007. Transition to Water Sensitive Urban Design: The
Story of Melbourne, Australia. Facility for Advancing Water Biofiltration, Monash
University, Melbourne.
Brown, R.R., Farrelly, M.A., 2009. Challenges ahead: social and institutional factors
influencing sustainable urban stormwater management in Australia. Water Sci.
Technol. 59 (4), 653–660.
Burby, R.J., May, P.J., 1997. Making governments plan: State experiments in manag-
ing land use. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.
Burby, R.J., May, P.J., 1998. Intergovernmental environmental planning: addressing
the commitment conundrum. J. Environ. Planning Manage. 41 (1), 95–110.
Byrnes, J., Dollery, B., 2002. Local government failure in Australia? An empirical
analysis of New South Wales. Aust. J. Publ. Admin. 61 (3), 54–64.
Caracelli, V.J., Greene, J.C., 1993. Data analysis strategies for mixed-method evalua-
tion designs. Educ. Eval. Policy An. 15 (2), 195–207.
Carroll, A.B., Buchholtz, A.K., 2009. Business and Society: Ethics and Stakeholder
Management, 7th ed. South-Western Cengage Learning, Mason, OH.
Charlesworth, S.M., Harker, E., Rickard, S., 2003. A review of sustainable drainage
systems (SuDS): a soft option for hard drainage questions? Geography 88 (2),
99–107.
Conley, A., Moote, M.A., 2003. Evaluating collaborative natural resource manage-
ment. Soc. Nat. Resour. 16 (5), 371–386.
Creswell, J.W., Plano Clark, V.L., 2007. Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods
Research. Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications.
Dietz, M., 2007. Low impact development practices: a review of current research
and recommendations for future directions. Water Air Soil Pollut. 186 (1–4),
351–363.
Dollery, B., Wallis, J., Allan, P., 2006. The debate that had to happen but never did: the
changing role of Australian local government. Aust. J. Polit. Sci. 41 (4), 553–567.
DPCD, 2007a. Local Government in Victoria 2006. Department of Planning and Com-
munity Development, State of Victoria, Melbourne.
DPCD, 2007b. Victoria Grants Commission Annual Report 2006–07. Department of
Planning and Community Development, State of Victoria, Melbourne.
DSE, 2006. Yarra River Action Plan: Securing Water Quality for a Healthy Future.
Department of Sustainability and Environment, State of Victoria, Melbourne.
Ellis, J.B., 1986. Pollutional aspects of urban runoff. In: Torno, H.C., Marsalek, J.,
Desbordes, M. (Eds.), Urban Runoff Pollution. Springer Verlag, Berlin, pp. 1–38.
Fletcher, T.D., Deletic, A., 2006. A Review of Existing Water Quality Knowledge to
Inform the Development of Melbourne Water’s Waterways Water Quality Strat-
egy. Melbourne Water Corporation, Melbourne.
92 P.J. Morison, R.R. Brown / Landscape and Urban Planning 99 (2011) 83–92
Forsyth, D.R., Garcia, M., Zyzniewski, L.E., Story, P.A., Kerr, N.A., 2004. Watershed
pollution and preservation: the awareness-appraisal model of environmentally
positive intentions and behaviors. Anal. Soc. Issues Public Pol. 4 (1), 115–128.
Hill, M.J., 2009. The Public Policy Process, 5th ed. Longman, Harlow, England.
Ingram, H., Schneider, A., 1990. Improving implementation through framing smarter
statutes. J. Publ. Pol. 10 (1), 67–88.
Ivanova, G., Tranter, B., 2008. Paying for environmental protection in a cross-national
perspective. Aust. J. Polit. Sci. 43 (2), 169–188.
Joint Steering Committee for Water Sensitive Cities, 2009. Evaluating Options
for Water Sensitive Urban Design—A National Guide. Australian Government
(National Water Commission), Canberra.
Kloot, L., 2001. Using local government corporate plans in Victoria. Aust. J. Publ.
Admin. 60 (4), 17–29.
Koontz, T.M., Thomas, C.W., 2006. What do we know and need to know about the
environmental outcomes of collaborative management? Publ. Admin. Rev. 66
(s1), 111–121.
Lubell, M., Feiock, R., Handy, S., 2009. City adoption of environmentally sustainable
policies in California’s Central Valley. J. Am. Plann. Assoc. 75 (3), 293.
Maksimović, Č., Tejada-Guibert, J.A., 2001. Frontiers in Urban Water Management:
Deadlock or Hope. IWA Publishing, London.
Marsalek, J., Chocat, B., 2002. International report: stormwater management. Water
Sci. Technol. 46 (6–7), 1–17.
May, P.J., 1991. Reconsidering policy design: policies and publics. J. Publ. Pol. 11 (2),
187–206.
Miles, M.B., Huberman, A.M., 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Source-
book, 2nd ed. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Mitchell, V.G., 2006. Applying integrated urban water management concepts: a
review of Australian experience. Environ. Manage. 37 (5), 589–605.
Morison, P.J., Brown, R.R., 2010. Avoiding the presumptive policy errors of
intergovernmental environmental planning programmes: a case analysis of
urban stormwater management planning. J. Environ. Planning Manage. 53 (2),
197–217.
Nancarrow, B.E., Jorgensen, B.S., Syme, G.J., 1995. Stormwater Management in
Australia: Community Perceptions, Attitudes and Knowledge. Urban Water
Research Association of Australia, Melbourne.
Pakulski, J., Tranter, B., 2004. Environmentalism and social differentiation: a paper
in memory of Steve Crook. J. Sociol. 40 (3), 221–235.
Pakulski, J., Tranter, B., Crook, S., 1998. The dynamics of environmental issues in
Australia: concerns, clusters and carriers. Aust. J. Polit. Sci. 33 (2), 235–252.
Pini, B., Wild River, S., Haslam McKenzie, F.M., 2007. Factors inhibiting local gov-
ernment engagement in environmental sustainability: case studies from rural
Australia. Aust. Geogr. 38 (2), 161–175.
Rauch, W., Seggelke, K., Brown, R., Krebs, P., 2005. Integrated approaches in urban
storm drainage: where do we stand? Environ. Manage. 35 (4), 396–409.
Roy, A.H., Wenger, S.J., Fletcher, T.D., Walsh, C.J., Ladson, A.R., Shuster, W.D., et
al., 2008. Impediments and solutions to sustainable, watershed-scale urban
stormwater management: lessons from Australia and the United States. Environ.
Manage. 42 (2), 344–359.
Schneider, A., Ingram, H., 1990. Behavioral assumptions of policy tools. J. Polit. 52
(2), 510–529.
Schneider, A.L., Ingram, H., 1997. Policy Design for Democracy. University Press of
Kansas, Lawrence, KS.
Semple, E.C., 1911. Influences of Geographic Environment, on the basis of Ratzel’s
System of Anthropo-geography. Henry Holt, New York.
Shah, S.K., Corley, K.G., 2006. Building better theory by bridging the quantitative-
qualitative divide. J. Manage. Stud. 43 (8), 1821–1835.
Shuster, W.D., Bonta, J., Thurston, H., Warnemuende, E., Smith, D.R., 2005. Impacts
of impervious surface on watershed hydrology: a review. Urban Water J. 2 (4),
263–275.
UNDESA, 2008. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision. Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, New York.
van Roon, M., 2005. Emerging approaches to urban ecosystem management: The
potential of low impact urban design and development principles. J. Environ.
Assess. Policy Manage. 7 (1), 125–148.
Walsh, C.J., Fletcher, T.D., Ladson, A.R., 2005a. Stream restoration in urban catch-
ments through redesigning stormwater systems: looking to the catchment to
save the stream. J. N. Am. Benthol. Soc. 24 (3), 690–705.
Walsh, C.J., Roy, A.H., Feminella, J.W., Cottingham, P.D., Groffman, P.M., Morgan,
R.P., 2005b. The urban stream syndrome: current knowledge and the search for
a cure. J. N. Am. Benthol. Soc. 24 (3), 706–723.
White, S.S., Boswell, M.R., 2006. Planning for water quality: implementation of the
NPDES Phase II Stormwater Program in California and Kansas. J. Environ. Plan-
ning Manage. 49 (1), 141–160.
White, S.S., Boswell, M.R., 2007. Stormwater quality and local government innova-
tion. J. Am. Plann. Assoc. 73 (2), 185–193.
Wild River, S., 2006. Australian local government attempts to deliver beneficial
environmental outcomes. Local Environ. 11 (6), 719–732.
Winter, S., 1999. New directions for implementation research. Policy Currents 8 (4),
1–5.
Wong, T.H.F., 2006a. An overview of Water Sensitive Urban Design practices in
Australia. Water Prac. Technol. 1 (1), Retrieved from: http://www.iwaponline.
com/wpt/001/wpt0010018.htm. doi:10.2166/WPT.2006018.
Wong, T.H.F. (Ed.), 2006b. Australian Runoff Quality. EA Books, Crows Nest, NSW.
Yin, R.K., 2009. Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 4th ed. Sage Publications,
Thousand Oaks, CA.
Zahran, S., Brody, S.D., Vedlitz, A., Grover, H., Miller, C., 2008. Vulnerability and capac-
ity: explaining local commitment to climate-change policy. Environ. Plann. C 26
(3), 544–562.