Geoforum 38 (2007) 534–544

www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Making space for unruly water: Sustainable drainage systems and

the disciplining of surface runoV
Phil Jones a,¤, Neil Macdonald b
a
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston B15 2TT, United Kingdom
b
Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth SY23 3DB, United Kingdom

Received 4 May 2006

Abstract

This paper explores the disciplining of non-human actors through the example of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) managing sur-
face water runoV. The lens of performativity is used to examine the move from pre-modern repressive forms of discipline, to
mechanisms which attempt a more productive disciplinary engagement by Wnding space to reform water’s more unruly behaviours.
After examining the problems with traditional disciplinary approaches to water of rapid transit and exile, the paper explores the
implications of a move towards SuDS technology. This change is examined using a case study of Glasgow, Scotland, where there is an
attempt to utilise less repressive disciplinary mechanisms and to Wnd spaces in the city for surface water outside the hard drainage
infrastructure. New approaches to the disciplining of urban water are conceptualised as being a performance of tension between water
and those who would modify its behaviour.
 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Performativity; Discipline; Sustainable drainage systems; Surface water management; Urban regeneration; Glasgow

1. Introduction
ƒ I mean call me a fool, but I’ve noticed that if it
doesn’t rain then everything works Wne, so therefore
it follows that it’s the rain that’s the problem. (Iain
McNab, Glasgow City Council, 4 August 2005)
Water is a troublesome substance. All life is totally
dependent upon it, but at the same time it has a habit of
causing death and destruction. Its very life-giving qualities
foster the growth of bacteria that can poison humans and
animals. Its qualities as a solvent can dissolve and carry
away pollutants, but render most of the water on this planet
undrinkably saline. Creatures without gills can drown in it.
Flowing in watercourses it can etch gaping holes in the
landscape and, at times of high Xows, can decimate human
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: p.i.jones@bham.ac.uk (P. Jones), n.macdonald@
aber.ac.uk (N. Macdonald).
settlements that happen to get in the way. Water has, in
short, a great many unruly qualities which humans attempt
to discipline in a variety of ways.
Given the solvent properties of H2O, most ‘water’ is a
solution containing a greater or lesser degree of other mate-
rials. Water as it exists in cities therefore comes in a variety
of diVerent forms, tap water, sewage, ground water, bottled
water, etc. and, of course, rain. As the senior City Council
oYcer quoted above highlights, rain – more precisely, pre-
cipitation – is a major headache for those charged with
managing urban water. Where outputs of foul sewage
from homes and businesses are fairly easy to predict and
accommodate, the amount of water entering the drainage
network – both sewers and watercourses – Xuctuates con-
stantly based on precipitation.
This paper examines how new approaches to
disciplining surface water runoV are reconWguring the
relationship between water and cities. Until recently the
prevailing disci- plinary mechanism for waste water was an
attempt to con- strain and regulate it as much as possible.
This approach

0016-7185/$ - see front matter  2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2006.10.005
 P. Jones, N. Macdonald / Geoforum 38 (2007) 534–544
has a very long history but was dramatically reinforced by
the expansion of urban drainage networks in the 19th cen-
tury. Despite the modern scale, the disciplinary approach
adopted was essentially pre-modern – repressive rather
than productive. Those involved in water management
today are, however, increasingly coming to believe that
rewriting the ‘script’ society lays down for surface water
runoV could help to more successfully discipline the drain-
age system as a whole.
The city of Glasgow in Scotland is currently undertaking
a major new plan for its drainage infrastructure, examining
both piped systems and watercourses. This plan has given
new impetus to the increasing adoption of sustainable
drainage systems (SuDS). These systems subvert the notion
of containment and rapid transit for urban runoV, making
it more acceptable for water to be in the city. In doing so,
SuDS seek to engage in a productive relationship with
some of water’s more unruly qualities and reXect an
attempt to devise a more modern form of discipline which
does not rely on an overly repressive response.
This paper Wrst explores how the literature on perform-
ativity helps us to understand the ways in which water is
disciplined. We move on to review the history of urban
drainage and the development of SuDS technology before
presenting material from a case study of Glasgow. The
subsequent discussion examines how attempts to discipline
surface water to perform in a particular way require the
constant performance of that discipline by humans. We go
on to consider whether a shift in disciplinary approaches
suggests the need for a wider societal engagement with the
performance of disciplining water.
2. Performance and discipline
Since Catherine Nash’s (2000) early review of work on
performativity in geography, there has been a slew of stud-
ies deploying performance and non-representative theory
to examine a whole range of geographic issues (for a recent
summary see Lorimer, 2005). At Wrst glance it may seem a
little unusual to deploy performance metaphors to describe
the behaviour of water. As Szerszynski et al. (2003, p. 10)
have argued, however, the kinds of nature-culture under-
standings that dominate environmental policy and regula-
tion ‘might usefully be disrupted by the applications of
notions of performance, with their emphasis on activity, on
ongoing ‘doing’ or ‘making”. Urban water can be concep-
tualised in terms of Xows and movement through the city,
with the management of water being concerned with
attempting to script that continual performance. Discussing
the use of performance metaphors in urban planning,
Makeham (2005, p. 152) neatly summarises a central issue
in performativity, warning that ‘performers and spectators
exist always in a complex power relation, not only to one
another but to the place of performance, and indeed to the
entire production apparatus’. In the case of water and
water management, therefore, there is a constant tension
between the properties of water that make it behave in par-
53
ticular ways, the ways in which water managers would like
it to behave and the sites where the attempts at manage-
ment take place.
Conceptualising the behaviour of water through perfor-
mance theory highlights these power relations, which in
turn raises questions of discipline. Foucault (1977/1991,
p. 187) discusses ‘examination’ as a critical element in the
development of a new form of post-enlightenment disci-
pline which shifted its focus from being overtly repressive
to actively producing new forms of bodies in society. Sur-
veillance, rendering the invisible visible, formed a critical
part of this examination. Foucault details the rise of these
new, modern forms of discipline acting on bodies particu-
larly within schools, hospitals and prisons, categorising,
systematising and reforming those bodies. In the case of
altering the behaviour of water, a non-human body, there
is, however, an apparent tendency to rely on pre-modern,
repressive forms of discipline. The primary mechanism for
disciplining urban water is the enclosed pipe, which impris-
ons water, hides it beneath the earth and forces it to follow
a predetermined path based on the assumption that the
repressive disciplinary mechanism will cause that water to
behave in the way water managers intend it to.
Thinking about water in terms of performance and disci-
pline, inevitably raises issues of unruliness and deviance.
Literature on the performance of deviance in the city has
tended to focus on the behaviour of humans (for instance
Borden, 2001; Jones, 2005). In de Certeau’s (1984) classic
discussion of tactics deployed against the strategies of
those who seek control urban life, the unconscious acts of
pedes- trians tracing pathways against the city’s material
land- scape are celebrated as an act of resistance. Water’s
unruliness comes from behaving in ways that human soci-
ety does not want it to, generating the need for a disciplin-
ary system. Where modern discipline relies on surveillance
and examination – for instance, the controlling panoptic
gaze of the CCTV camera (Koskela, 2003) – the
disciplining of water has in the past rendered it invisible,
exiling it to pipes buried below ground. Such monitoring as
does occur is an imperfect (Hannah, 1997) form of control,
because there simply are not enough gauging stations and
Xow meters to cover all parts of the system. The
controlling gaze is, then, only of use against particular
types of resistance by water against the mechanisms that
direct it around the city – a Xood in the street is easy to
spot, but it is much more diYcult to see water which
escapes from a leaking pipe and drains away through the
earth.
Unlike humans, where the performance is scripted by
both the physical constraints of the body and societal
values, at Wrst glance water seems quintessentially
malleable
– a perfect subject for being reformed to society’s expecta-
tions of it. Water does not reduce in volume when com-
pressed, however, which can be quite a useful property.
When the disciplinary system works as humans intend it to,
water must do as it is told; drinking water squeezed down
high pressure pipes has no choice but to emerge from the
tap at the behest of the consumer. Foul water, condemned
down into the sewer system, is dispatched from toilet to
3. Historic background
treatment works theoretically never coming back into con-
tact with the city, except for the pipe that imprisons it. One
There was a major expansion of the water supply and
problem, arising from water not being compressible, is that
drainage networks in Europe and North America from
if the amount of water trying to enter the sewer exceeds the
the mid-19th century, in part associated with lobbying
carrying capacity of the pipe, there will come a point where
by pub- lic health reformers such as Edwin Chadwick
no more material can enter the system. The simple answer
(Lewis, 1952). On the supply side, John Snow’s (1965)
to any capacity problems in the past has been the installa-
work in the 1850s demonstrating that cholera was a
tion of larger-than-required pipes. Under normal circum-
water-borne disease pro- vided evidence that an
stances these systems work exceedingly well. As a result,
uncontaminated water supply was of real public beneWt
both water and the repressive disciplinary infrastructure
(particularly as cholera aVected wealthy and poor alike).
systems that contain it are now completely taken for
In terms of urban drainage, one of the most famous
granted by the general population, at least in the developed
examples of an expanding sewer network in this period
world. The ‘urban dowry’ of the water network is today
was with the reconstruction of Second Empire Paris
largely ignored unless it breaks down (Kaika and Swynge-
under Haussmann and Napoleon III using a system
douw, 2000).
designed to quickly remove water from the city. The
Clearly, sustaining urban life is dependent on
notion of rapid transit for urban waste water was not,
disciplining water and forcing it to behave in a way which
however, invented by nineteenth century engineers. As
is more ame- nable to humans; pipes have major
in so many other things the Second Empire looked back
advantages in this regard. Foul sewage hidden in pipes
to Imperial Rome for its inspiration on sewers, with
underground makes for a considerably more pleasant urban
Haussmann himself nicknaming the massive collector of
environment than, for example, leaving human wastes in
Asnières the Cloaca Maxima (Pinkney, 1958, p. 131).
open gutters waiting for rain to wash it away. Similarly,
Even the techno- logy of drainage was still basically the
delivering fresh water via pressured pipes has signiWcant
same as that of the Roman Empire, heavily reliant on
beneWts to consumers over the tanker deliveries suVered
underground pipes using gravity to convey wastes to the
by the urban poor in large parts of the developing world
nearest watercourse which would carry it to the sea. The
(Swyngedouw, 2004).
systems built during this period operated on the highly
The problem arises where those disciplinary systems fail
cost eVective ‘combined’ principle, mixing together
to operate as intended, as water comes out of its piped
surface water runoV from precip- itation with industrial
prison in a variety of undesirable ways. The Xooded street
wastes and domestic foul sewage from the newly
of a burst water main, the Wnancial cost of a leaking pipe,
invented water closet.
the pollution of a watercourse with untreated sewage can
As 19th century cities grew ever larger the traditional
all be seen as water behaving in an unruly fashion. As with
approach of dumping raw sewage direct into watercourses
the troubled, performative relationship between sex and
became increasingly problematic, as rivers downstream of
gender (Butler, 1993), water that has broken free of its con-
major settlements were choked with the discharges. Conse-
straining pipe goes beyond the script that we lay down for
quently there were attempts to Wnd means of purifying
it within the city. Unruly behaviour by urban water,
waste water before it was discharged back into the water-
unfortu- nately, can have potentially disastrous
course system. One such system was the sewage farm,
consequences for humans and the traditional response to
which can be seen as a step away from a straightforwardly
this has been to produce an ever harsher disciplinary
repres- sive disciplinary approach into something more
regime – more and bigger pipes attempting to move water
obviously modern. The output from the city’s drains was
around ever faster. The principle of rapid transit was for
allowed to spread out on Welds and was Wltered as it
many years sacrosanct among water managers. As a result,
sank through a depth of soil. This Wltration made the
waste water has been treated rather like the ‘leper [who]
water potable and it was collected in porous pipes and
was caught up in a prac- tice of rejection, of exile-
could be discharged into the nearest watercourse in a much
enclosure’ (Foucault, 1977/1991,
less problematic form. The organic residue which remained
p. 198). To reiterate, this resembles a pre-modern discipline
in the Welds produced bumper crops. Vegetables grown at
of repression and separation rather than one of being sur-
Paris’ Gennevilliers sewage farm from the late 1860s, for
veyed and categorised with the intent of rescripting that
instance, were much in demand at the city’s markets, prized
behaviour.
for their size and Xavour (Reid, 1991, pp. 60–62). This can
More recently there has been a realisation that repressive
be seen as some- thing closer to a disciplinary system
disciplinary mechanisms tend to exacerbate the impact of
which categorised, sorted and ‘reformed’ the body of waste
water’s unruliness when those mechanisms are Wnally
water that entered it.
breached. As such, new forms of water management are
The sewage farm took something problematic and
beginning to arise which attempt a more regulated, produc-
treated it as a useful resource; waste water was tamed and
tive form of discipline attempting to work with water’s
harnessed. This way of conceiving waste water has interest-
more unruly characteristics rather than trying to suppress
ing parallels with sustainable drainage systems discussed
them outright. These changes must be understood through
below. The sewage farm was, however, something beyond
a review of historic approaches to urban drainage.
the city, very much dependent on waste being quickly
removed from urban areas, especially as ‘fresh’ sewage age for all precipitation magnitudes is unfeasible on eco-
was more agriculturally productive. As with the leper nomic grounds. As a result there is always the risk of
colony, segregation was still a critical part of this system failure due to incapacity, which can be expressed as
disciplinary sys- tem. This segregation was in fact a critical a statistical measure, often deWned as a probability ratio
weakness in the system because as cities expanded the based on a return frequency such as a 1 in 200 year storm
sewage farm became increasingly expensive to operate, event.
with the wastes needing to be moved over greater Varying precipitation means that combined sewers have
distances. Alternative technolo- gies, still based on the to convey varying quantities of waste water at varying con-
principle of Wltration, became more cost eYcient, and centrations. When these systems are overloaded during
sewage farms began to disappear by the early twentieth heavy precipitation events, untreated waste is discharged
century. This said, the practice of discharg- ing raw sewage into the nearest watercourse via a combined sewer
directly into the sea continued in Europe into the 1980s. overXow (CSO), with a clear negative impact on the
For foul sewage, then, the principle of imprisonment and environment. On rare occasions when these CSOs do not
separation remain paramount, even if in most developed function prop- erly, waste water can circumvent the
countries, some form of productive treat- ment now lies at constraints of the sys- tem, potentially Wnding its way into
the end of the process. streets and even into homes and businesses. Clearly this
Whether discharged to watercourse, sewage farm, Wltra- sort of misbehaviour by water is extremely undesirable in
tion plant or into the sea the principle of rapid removal human settlements.
remained unchallenged. Not many argue with this principle
in terms of foul sewage given the health hazard it poses,
4. Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS)
although there are those who favour alternatives such as
composting toilets on environmental grounds. The problem
Over the last century an increasing load on the ageing
in terms of drainage is that not all water in the sewer
sewer infrastructure has come from two sources. First, as
system comes from domestic and industrial waste. Since
cities have expanded and lifestyles have changed, there has
the early twentieth century the developed world has shifted
been an increasing quantity of foul water to dispose of.
over to separated drainage, whereby surface water runoV is
Sec- ond, and more importantly for this paper, the amount
directed into a dedicated piped system generally for
of surface water runoV has increased as a result of urban
discharge into the nearest watercourse with minimal if any
expansion reducing the area of porous surfaces. Many large
treatment. Older parts of UK cities still rely, however, on
urban surfaces, such as roads, are impermeable and are
Victorian infrastructure which means a high degree of
designed for the water to be removed as quickly as possible
‘combined’ Xows. Dealing with the legacy of combined
to prevent potentially dangerous pooling – a fairly conven-
systems is now a major issue in contemporary urban water
tional, repressive disciplinary approach to water manage-
management. When surface water goes down a piped
ment. In traditional systems large quantities of surface
system it is treated with the same rapid removal principle
runoV are directed straight into a piped system potentially
as foul water and this has created certain problems.
giving rise to the incapacity problems discussed above.
Foul water Xows are relatively predictable. New housing
Even in a fully separate system large quantities of water
and business developments can be factored into the models
swept rapidly oV non-porous surfaces can lead to sudden
of those operating sewers to calculate how much additional
peak levels in the urban watercourses to which the system
capacity is required, based on the number of people/types
discharges, increasing the Xood risk.
of uses, etc. While infrastructure may at times fail and need
Precipitation is a fairly uncontrolled means of water
to be replaced, there is some justiWcation for ordinarily
coming into the city, but it can be very useful, as well as
treating foul water disposal in a Cartesian, geometrical
inconvenient. Foul sewer systems require a certain amount
fashion – the inputs are known so the required capacity can
of surface water to pass through them to scour and keep the
be calculated. Given this predictability it is fairly straight-
pipes unblocked. Rain also acts to wash dust oV roads as
forward to design a system which, for sound public health
well as watering gardens. Rapid conveyance acts as a fairly
reasons, segregates foul water from the city and banishes it
blunt disciplinary instrument when it comes to dealing with
to a place where it can be treated.
surface water. Simply treating precipitation and surface
Surface water Xows are far less predictable and exceed-
runoV as a problem needing to be repressed and Xushing it
ingly diYcult to control because the source – precipitation –
into piped drains as quickly as possible plays up to water’s
is inherently stochastic. The amount of water discharged
unruly tendencies.
into drains varies depending on the duration and intensity
Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS), known in the
of the precipitation, where it falls and the extent to which it
North America as Best Management Practices (BMPs),
can inWltrate into ‘soft’ surfaces. Foul sewers fail when the
completely overturn the principle of rapid transit. The idea
infrastructure fails, as a result of a blockage for example.
is not particularly new, and certainly since amendments to
Surface water systems and combined sewers can fail not
the Federal Water Pollution Control Act in 1972 there have
only for this reason but also when the sheer volume of pre-
been a moves in the USA to make wider use BMPs to miti-
cipitation entering them exceeds their design capacity. The
gate pollution generated by surface water runoV (Walesh,
design of a piped infrastructure capable of providing drain-
1989, p. 16). While the UK has been relatively slow to
adopt
SuDS, Continental Europe, particularly Scandinavia, has
responded with enthusiasm (Åstebøl et al., 2004; Nordidet
et al., 2004). SuDS is a catch-all term for a number of
diVer- ent systems, which slow and sometimes retain
runoV to attenuate surface drainage (Charlesworth et al.,
2003). With porous paving, for example, spaces are created
where, rather than precipitation landing on impermeable
surfaces and needing to be directed to a drain, it is instead
able to pass through the paving surface and can inWltrate
into the ground. This water can then make its way far more
slowly through the soil to the nearest watercourse –
eVectively mimicking in a controlled way some of the
physical pro- cesses that urban surfaces would normally
prevent (CIRIA, 2000; Environment Agency, 2003).
More sophisticated SuDS can combine a series of dry
basins, balancing ponds and wetlands to accept large runoV
discharges – say from a housing estate or commercial
devel- opment – and detain it during peak drainage Xows.
This water can then be allowed to move through a
combination of inWltration, evaporation and discharge into
conventional drains once the peak Xows have passed. The
use of organic elements such as grassed swales and, in
particular, reed beds proves extremely eYcient at removing
diVuse source pollution washed oV urban surfaces (Revitt
et al., 2004). SuDS thus have three major beneWts from a
drainage point of view – reducing overall load on the
conventional drains, holding back peak Xows to prevent
overloading, and removing diVuse source pollution to clean
up discharges. SuDS can also bring with them secondary
beneWts of an aesthetic and ecological nature, particularly
where ponds and wetlands are used.
Closely related to SuDS is the practice of de-culverting
watercourses (‘daylighting’) and removing large concrete
defences (Nolan and Guthrie, 1998). Again, rather than try-
ing to channel water out of the city as quickly as possible,
daylighting not only provides more attractive riparian envi-
ronments but allows watercourses to travel more slowly
and, when levels are suYciently high, actually Xood. By
providing spaces where rivers can Xood without that
behav- iour causing undue damage to the human
environment, the overall pressure on the system is reduced
which in turn reduces the risk of a more serious Xood event
further down- stream (Braden and Johnston, 2004). This
also reduces the possibility of drainage system failure
where river levels are too high to take discharges from the
piped network – a par- ticular problem with culverted
watercourses which, like pipes, have a Wxed carrying
capacity.
A repressive disciplinary regime which leaves lepers to
die on the edge of the town opens the possibility that they
can occasionally Wnd their way back in and aVect the gen-
eral population in an uncontrolled way. In the same way
there is now a growing acceptance that repressive forms of
disciplining water can lead to catastrophic outcomes when
those disciplinary mechanisms are overwhelmed. The over-
all desire to regulate the behaviour of water remains intact,
but SuDS and daylighting do this by accepting that in cer-
tain circumstances water will behave in an unruly manner.
SuDS engage with that unruliness and fashion a disciplin-
ary system that engages more productively with water. Like
Cresswell’s (1996) homeless in Grand Central Station, there
are places where society deems water is out of place. SuDS
Wnd new places for water to be in place by legitimising
transgressions into urban spaces, but only for the less dan-
gerous form of waste water – not foul sewage – and only
under very speciWc circumstances and in speciWc places.
5. The Glasgow strategic drainage plan
Glasgow in Scotland is currently in the process of pro-
ducing and implementing a plan to reform its drainage
infrastructure, examining not only foul sewage, but also
surface water (especially as Glasgow’s system is heavily
combined) and the city’s watercourse network (much of
which is culverted). The Glasgow Strategic Drainage Plan
(GSDP), therefore, makes for an interesting example of
current best practice in terms of urban drainage and
Wnding solutions to the problem of an ageing
infrastructure which is struggling to meet the demands now
being placed on it (Page and Fleming, 2005).
We undertook 15 semi-structured interviews addressing
the issue of drainage and redevelopment in Glasgow,
including key players representing organisations on the
working group producing the GSDP. The intention was to
produce a ‘thick’ qualitative description of the interactions
between these organisations and the process of producing
the integrated plan. Such thick description provides a basis
for general comment by identifying the connections and
general patterns that are characteristic of a certain context
(Adger et al., 2002). We considered the interviewing stage
of the research complete when representatives from all the
key organisations involved in the process had been spoken
to and the interviews began yielding similar stories.
In 1989, amid much controversy, the water industry in
England and Wales was privatised, creating large mono-
poly supply and disposal companies operating at the
watershed scale. A somewhat diVerent route was taken in
Scotland. Here, control over water supply and disposal was
taken away from the regional councils, which were
scrapped as part of local government reforms in 1994, but
ownership was retained within the public sector in the
form of three quangos covering the north, west and east of
Scotland respectively. These reforms were not popular in
Scotland with a referendum organised by Strathclyde
regional council in 1994 revealing 97% of Scots opposed
the change (Hansard, House of Commons, 30 January
1996, col. 829). The three public sector water companies
subsequently merged to form a single body, Scottish
Water, in 2002. With devolved government coming to
Scotland in 1998, this company is now owned by the Scot-
tish Executive. There is general agreement that Scotland
leads the UK in the implementation of SuDS, in part
because the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency
(SEPA) has been able to have more inXuence over the pub-
licly owned Scottish Water than the Environment Agency
 Fig. 1. SimpliWed map of Glasgow. Source: redrawn by authors based on data from Digimap/Ordnance Survey.

has over the private water companies in England and

‘burn-sewer’2, acknowledging that for much of the time it
Wales (Kirby, 2005).
functions as a sewer even though it was never designed to
The way that Scottish Water is regulated by the Water
do so.
Industry Commission1 (WIC) does, however, require that it
The shortcomings of the DAP model were dramatically
be run on the same business model as the private water
highlighted in July 2002 when an intense convective storm
companies in England and Wales. As a result, Scottish
hit the Shettleston area in Glasgow’s east end (Fig. 1). The
Water followed the water companies south of the border in
sewer and watercourse networks in the area simply could
undertaking surveys of its assets, mapping and modelling
not cope with the sudden inXux of rainwater. The problem
their drainage infrastructure in a series of drainage area
was exacerbated by the fact that the storm had hit the
plans (DAPs). The DAPs did not include the watercourse
nearby M8 motorway which, for obvious safety reasons, is
system in their models even where, as in Glasgow,
designed to remove water from the road surface as quickly
culverted watercourses and the sewer system interact with
as possible. Once removed from the motorway, however,
each other in a variety of ways – in one case a particularly
this water was forced into the nearby combined sewage
polluted underground river has been redesignated the
system, which was already under stress as a result of the
Gartloch

1
Originally the Water Industry Commissioner for Scotland, but re-
2
branded in 2005, perhaps to make it less personal. ‘Burn’ is a Scottish term for a small river.
general high precipitation occurring throughout the area.
With both burns and sewers overloaded the result was
severe localised Xooding as excess waste water found its
way backwards out from sewers into local streets and
houses (Iain McNab, Development and Regeneration Ser-
vices Glasgow City Council, 4 August 2005).
Here then the very mechanisms designed to discipline
surface water in fact caused some signiWcant problems.
The DAP model, based as it was on the notion of an asset
sur- vey, eVectively discounted water once it entered a
water- course. Culverted watercourses, like a piped drains,
have a Wxed capacity and when that volume is exceeded
water from the ‘asset’ drainage network simply cannot
enter it. This results in water attempting to Wnd new ways
of mov- ing, beyond the paths laid down for it by water
managers. As a retired senior manager from Scottish Water
described it:
ƒthe term drainage area plan is really a misnomerƒ
when you get an extreme weather event when the
capacity of the sewerage system is exceeded and
you’re getting water travelling overland Xooding
property, Xooding roads etc., you’ve really got a
more complex situation than is being modelled by
the sewer modelling process. (David Wilson, 16
August 2005)
An asset-based approach is more vulnerable to water mis-
behaving itself because it only looks at part of a complex
system. The Shettleston Xoods stimulated those diVerent
agencies with responsibility for managing water in
Glasgow to come together to produce the GSDP,
undertaking a pro- cess of surveying, modelling and
ultimately implementing changes to both the drainage and
watercourse systems. While all parties are aware that it
would be impossible to design a system that could always
keep water’s unruly behaviour in check, the aim was to
greatly reduce the likeli- hood of such behaviour and,
where it does occur, to reduce its potential for causing
damage to the (human) urban envi- ronment.
Some of the changes to Glasgow drainage being imple-
mented by the GSDP are conventional, heavy engineering
solutions based on a repressive disciplinary approach. This
is not to say that some of these solutions are not innova-
tive – one measure being discussed is the possibility of
pumping large quantities of waste water between the diVer-
ent catchments within the city, taking the pressure oV those
parts of the system known to be particularly under stress
(David Wilson, formerly of Scottish Water, 16 August
2005). We were more interested, however, in attempts to
work with the more unruly properties of water, rather than
constantly trying to capture and banish it from the city as
quickly as possible. Urban water derived from precipitation
is the most unpredictable part of the system but it also
poses the least environmental hazard. There are
considerable potential advantages therefore in Wnding
spaces for water to be in the city, to slow down its transit
and in doing so at times of intense precipitation,
providing a buVer to pre- vent the sewer and watercourse
systems being overloaded.
An advantage of the GSDP is its scale, appreciating the
complex interactions of drainage over a large and varied
geographic area. As such it was possible to look at provid-
ing strategic level SuDS, with large areas set aside to
reduce Xows into a watercourse upstream, to leave more
capacity to absorb higher inputs from the drainage network
down- stream associated with increased precipitation (Marc
Becker, SEPA, 4 August 2005). Given that large SuDS can
take up considerable land areas, a major new road link
planned from the Shettleston area north to the M80 is also
being considered as a strategic drainage corridor within the
city (George Morrison, Development and Regeneration
Services Glasgow City Council, 2 August 2005).
The failure of the disciplinary mechanism that resulted
in the 2002 Xoods led Scottish Water to severely restrict
new connections to the existing sewers, in particular where
surface runoV was to be discharged into that system. This
meant that a number of major developments in the city
were put on hold, to the considerable consternation of the
regional development agency (John Nevett, Scottish Enter-
prise, 3 August 2005). On a practical level the unruly
behav- iour of water in Shettleston has led developers to
more widely implement SuDS within new projects in order
to secure the necessary consents from Scottish Water to
con- nect into the drainage system.
One area of the city currently undergoing a major rede-
velopment project is PaciWc Quay on the south bank of the
River Clyde just north of Govan (Fig. 2). This develop-
ment is potentially problematic given concerns over the
capacity of the main Kinning Park sewer which runs along
the site (Iain McNab, 4 August 2005). Clearly this is a
location where SuDS installation could play a vital role in
taking pressure oV a piece of conventional infrastructure.
There are, however, real problems in retroWtting SuDS
into a pre-existing urban environment. The new BBC
centre being built at PaciWc Quay, for example, makes
extensive use of porous paving. Water passing through the
pores is, however, prevented from inWltrating the
subsoil through an impermeable membrane which has been
laid across the whole site, around 600 mm below the
surface. Were that water to pass down into the layer of
demolition rubble which was used to inWll the old docks in
the 1970 s, it would allow contaminants from that layer to
leach into the River Clyde (Emily Cruickshanks, Faber
Maunsell, 30 June 2005). In this case the behaviour of the
water is still highly regulated but the disciplinary
mechanism has a lower risk of capacity failure compared to
a conventional pipe.
Simon Pattula, the SEPA oYcer with responsibility for
examining development proposals in the PaciWc Quay
area, has, however, expressed reservations about the
usefulness of porous paving over the long term:
SP: A few years ago it was being used and now if I
get it [in a development plan] I try and persuade
people away from theseƒ
PJ: What’s wrong with it?
 Fig. 2. PaciWc Quay redevelopment. Source: drawn by Kevin Burkhill and Anne Ankcorn.
SP: It’s a pore – if you get any kind of silt then it
blocks up and then over time you get an impermeable
surface because all the pores get blocked up. One of
the major problems we’ve got is that people design
them, brilliant, put them in place – great no problem.
And then walk away and forget about it altogether.
(Simon Pattula, SEPA, 29 June 2006)
This highlights that, just as with conventional drainage,
these systems are not self-maintaining. In order to maintain
discipline and regulate the performance of the water as it
interacts with the system, signiWcant human intervention is
still required.
There is clearly a certain pragmatic element which
comes into play with SuDS as, particularly when it comes
to retro- Wtting an existing built-up area, some of the more
advanced solutions are simply not practical, generally due
to space constraints. The development partnership working
on PaciWc Quay ‘are considering balancing ponds and
things like that’ (David Topham, CTP, August 2005) for
the southern part of the site adjoining Festival Park but on
the northern side, where development has already taken
place (PaciWc Quay 1 and 2), space constraints and
concerns over contaminated Wll meant these advanced
systems were not used. A similar pragmatism aVects the
new Finnieston road bridge built 2005–2006 to provide a
more direct link across the Clyde between PaciWc Quay
and the south western fringe of the CBD. On the PaciWc
Quay side of the river room has been found for some Wlter
strips but on the north- ern side, aside from conventional oil
interceptors, there is no attenuation due to a lack of space
(Simon Pattula, SEPA, 29 June 2006).
Given the incremental impact of individual develop-
ments on the amount of water trying to enter the conven-
tional drainage system, it can be diYcult to justify hugely
expensive works that would have only a minimal impact on
the overall system. As such, there is some justiWcation for a
more strategic approach to retroWtting which takes oppor-
tunities where they arise. One of the consultants brought in
by Scottish Water Solutions (the procurement arm of Scot-
tish Water) to provide data for the GSDP commented that:
We’ve taken a fairly pessimistic view of [foul and
sur- face water] separation of residential areas in that
we think that would be extremely diYcult to do. So
what we’re looking more at is to produce stormwater
management plans which will incorporate all these
various techniques – including SuDS. Separation, etc.
Even green roofs. Anything at all that can be done to
try to cut down the Xows into the sewerage system.
(Norman Fleming, Hyder, 5 August 2005)
Indeed, the city council oYcer working on Glasgow’s sus-
tainable construction strategy was keen to promote the
wider use of green roofs. Although from her perspective
the main beneWts were in the ecological and energy
eYciency spheres, she was actively working with the team
responsible for the city’s watercourses to investigate the
SuDS potential of such installations (Amanda Waugh,
Development and Regeneration Services, Glasgow City
Council, 2 August 2005). The extent to which SuDS
beyond simple porous paving and Wlter strips will
actually be implemented in practice is moot. Developers
working on the early stages of a scheme at the Govan
Graving Docks adjoining PaciWc Quay are investigating
the idea of managing the water level in one of the old docks
so it can be used as a buVer for sur- face runoV (Harry
O’Donnell, Bishop Loch, 2 August 2005). It will be
interesting to see whether this innovative idea Wnds its
way into the Wnal designs or whether the
Wnancial implications will act as a barrier. As developers,
inevitable. Daylighting of culverted watercourses and
water managers and planners negotiate how future projects
SuDS installations put some slack into the system at
are undertaken, the question that will increasingly be asked
points where it is not critical to the functioning of the city
is whether the suggested drainage solutions do enough
that water be hidden away – legitimised transgression in
to mitigate water’s unruly tendencies. If not, more spaces
eVect. This transgression, however, takes place after water
will need to be found for disciplinary mechanisms which
has been categorised and systematised into more harmful
do not rely on problematic conventional drainage techno-
(foul sewage) and less harmful (runoV). One system
logy.
represses the dangerous but predictable foul sewage, while
a second more productively disciplines the less dangerous
6. Discussion: maintaining discipline
but more unpredictable runoV, tolerating occasional trans-
gression in the latter in order to better maintain discipline
Kaika (2005 cited in Braun, 2005, p. 643) has argued that
overall.
the break down of urban technological networks creates an This transgression still has to be managed, however.
‘urban uncanny’ – the disavowal of nature in the city has
Porous paving needs to be dug up on a regular basis to
produced the constant threat that it will return to disrupt clean out silt that blocks the pores. Grass swales have to be
the domestic scene. The eVectiveness of the disciplinary mown, reed beds periodically need to be replaced as
mechanism for water is thus crucial in maintaining the pollutants build up within them. In conventional water
urban environment in the way that 21st century westerners management there is a relatively easy division of
are used to experiencing it. Attempting to counteract the responsibilities – the water company deals with water in
preponderance to unruly performances by urban water has the piped system, the local authority with water in the
required an army of professionals and technicians dedi- watercourse system. The responsibility for managing SuDS
cated to maintaining the structures of discipline. At a basic is a little less clear and appeared to be a somewhat
level this can be the city council workers employed to contentious issue among interviewees working in water
main- tain the watercourses; a repeating script of clearing management. Several inter- viewees expressed a hope that
trash screens and removing silt build up from culverted the Scottish Executive would provide a policy lead on the
burns, for which Glasgow has a budget of around £300,000 issue.
per year (Iain McNab, Development and Regeneration
There is also a feeling that the public could do much
Services Glasgow City Council, 4 August 2005). At a more
more to contribute to the situation. Paving over front gar-
strategic level this might be with Scottish Water responding
dens for car parking seemed to be a particular concern (and
to changing European legislation concerning permitted
an under researched one) where it increases the amount of
discharges into the watercourse system, monitored and reg-
non-porous urban surfaces. Fitting water butts and soak-
ulated by oYcers from the Scottish Environmental Protec-
aways to divert roof runoV can be conceptualised as mem-
tion Agency (SEPA). Discipline, in short, does not just
bers of the general public performing sustainable drainage.
‘happen’; the scripted performances of urban water are
This relies, however, on making people more aware of the
themselves actively performed by water managers on a
issues at stake in urban water management. A number of
daily basis.
interviewees commented – oV the record – that the Shettle-
Traditional, repressive disciplinary mechanisms have
ston Xood had been useful in raising awareness of the need
worked relatively well up to the present. Increasingly, how- to take action on drainage in Glasgow to counteract
ever, strict European regulations – particularly the higher
water’s potential for unruliness given the vulnerability pro-
water quality standards being demanded by the Water fessionals perceived in the system. To return to Szerszynski
Framework Directive (White and Howe, 2003) – have com-
et al.’s (2003) point, a more dynamic appreciation of water
bined with a realisation that it is no longer economically
as performer, as ‘do-er’, is thus having a signiWcant eVect on
feasible to simply continue expanding piped networks to
how water is being treated within environmental policy
deal with increased load. A new approach is increasingly
making.
perceived as inevitable (Ellis et al., 2002). Precipitation
runoV, as a fairly non-polluting form of urban drainage as
7. Conclusion
well as the most unpredictable input into the system, has
thus been targeted as a key element in these reforms
The management of water in urban areas is an ongoing
through the increased use of sustainable drainage mecha-
performance of a tension between water itself, the urban
nisms.
infrastructure with which it interacts and those who would
SuDS are still based on the disciplinary principle of
tell it what to do. Performativity provides a useful means
attempting to prevent water’s unruly characteristics from
for conceptualising the dynamic processes involved in the
damaging the human urban environment. These mecha-
disciplining of water. Traditional piped drainage is a
nisms replace a pre-modern, repressive form of discipline,
repres- sive disciplinary mechanism, which can in fact
with a more modern attempt to reform the behaviour of
exacerbate the problematic behaviour of water when those
water. In asking cities to Wnd new spaces to accommodate
mecha- nisms fail. Alternative approaches to managing
water SuDS accept that a degree of unruly behaviour is
urban water are being sought in the light of these
disciplinary fail- ures.
 Even where piped systems separate foul and surface
water Xows, runoV is often still treated as something which
needs to be exiled from the city as quickly as possible. Sus-
tainable drainage systems provide space within the city
where runoV is made visible and can be disciplined in a
more modern, less negative, fashion. In certain circum-
stances this has legitimised some forms of behaviour by
water that would previously have been considered trans-
gressive, but does so in a way which is ultimately a more
productive form of discipline. What SuDS are slowly
begin- ning to achieve, perhaps, is to take drainage as a
disciplin- ary mechanism, which has hitherto remained
mired in a repressive pre-modern mode and Wnally bring it
into line with a modern, post-enlightenment approach to
discipline as a productive force. Ironically perhaps,
problems faced by cities with a legacy of combined sewers
built in an age of industrial modernity are precisely a result
of those nine- teenth century engineers failing to apply
modern philoso- phies of how to discipline human bodies
to the disciplining of a non-human one.
SuDS are important, then, in helping to reWgure the
approach to disciplining urban water. They have signiWcant
advantages in Xood prevention and also in their potential
aesthetic and ecological beneWts, but they are not without
their problems. The amount of land they can take up is a
major issue in the redevelopment of existing built-up areas,
meaning that a pragmatic mix of SuDS and conventional
drainage generally has to be adopted. There are also issues
over the legal responsibility for maintaining these systems
and in encouraging individual householders to be more
aware what they can do to reduce runoV from their curti-
lages.
This leads to a Wnal point, that the performance of more
sustainable drainage is therefore a concern not only for
water managers, but for society as a whole. The legacy of
an underground, highly repressive system, has been to let
us forget about the amount of eVort which is needed to
regu- late water’s more unruly tendencies – we have tended
only think about discipline when those negative controls
break down. New forms of discipline require that we not
only modify the behaviour of water, but the behaviour of
soci- ety, understanding that this discipline is actively
performed. We not only have to Wnd space in the city for
water, but also Wnd space in the script of our day-to-day
lives where we can contribute to performing sustainable
drainage.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the interviewees who
kindly gave us their time and the Carnegie Trust for the
Universities of Scotland for their support through the pro-
vision of a research grant.
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