Two aspects of the water system need to be borne in mind:
The demand for water has some seasonal variation, with summer demand being higher than winter, but the pattern of consumption is fairly constant year on year for conventional housing and especially throughout the year for higher-density forms of housing (Troy et al. 2005).
The supply of water through the water catchments is highly variable, depending as it does on rainfall. This was less of a concern when the storage was large enough to allow for several years of consumption, but is now because the increase in population, together with the increase in per-capita consumption, produces a high and relatively constant demand while rainfall over the catchments in the larger cities appears to have declined.
Attitudes to personal hygiene and cleanliness practices had been changing since the Middle Ages (Vigarello 1988). Moreover, cultural and behavioural norms in domestic water use changed considerably in the developed world during the nineteenth century, all adding considerably to increased per-capita water use. This meant that people used flush toilets and flushed them with each use more often compared with earlier toilet practices. They also washed themselves more frequently. At first, this was by bathing, but this was replaced by the increasing popularity of showering, which led to greatly increased domestic water consumption (Shove 2002; Shove 2003 — this is a discussion of UK experience but accords well with Australian experience; see Davison, Chapter 3 of this volume) and wastewater generation. To some degree the popularity of showering is related to the pleasure of the act — especially once heated water was more readily available — as much as it was to notions of personal hygiene (Gilg and Barr 2006; Hand et al. 2003; Allon and Safoulis 2006; Safoulis 2006). As Davison, Chapter 3, shows, cultural and behavioural norms in domestic water use in Australia changed considerably over the last 150 years, all adding considerably to increased per-capita water use, especially in the cities.
A recent survey of Sydney households’ attitudes (Troy and Randolph 2006) revealed their strong determination to maintain their level and nature of shower use. It also revealed considerable reluctance to reduce toilet flushing. These responses suggest that programs designed to reduce consumption from both activities may encounter strong passive resistance.
So we now have a paradox that water-supply systems, once determined by considerations of health and primary hygiene, are more driven by calculations of lifestyle that may well be counterproductive. For example, increased showering is claimed to have been accompanied by an increase in skin diseases (Shumack 2006).
Contemporary water consumption also both helps create the demand for, and is a consequence of, the form of development of the city. The traditional separate house in its own garden was (and remains) a strong expression of the felt needs of households for a degree of independence (Gaynor 2006). It may also create the possibility of a high level of food self-sufficiency.
Traditional housing not only provided the opportunity for a high level of domestic production (Mullins 1981a, 1981b and 1992) but it also ‘explains’ why it was such an effective cornerstone of the conservative philosophy expressed by Menzies in the 1940s and 1950s (Brett 1992) who successfully built on the desire of households for a home of their own with a small garden to gain and retain office nationally and to shape the policies which guided the massive growth of Australian cities in the 1950s and 1960s. Freestone (2000) documents how the garden-city movement shaped the nature of Australian cities, although Hall (2007) also documents the disappearance of gardens in the contemporary city.
This form of accommodation not only provided the opportunity for a high level of domestic production, it also ‘explains’ why the separate house and garden shaped the policies which guided the massive growth of Australian cities in the 1950s and 1960s. Paradoxically, this suburbanisation is seen by some as entrenching the resistance to reform of water-consumption practices.
The widespread take-up by households since the 1940s of washing machines (Davison, Chapter 3) led to increased water consumption. In earlier periods, washing clothes was a tedious affair. The advent of new machines offered to take some of the labour out of the washing task. The higher level of workforce participation by women and the increasing degree of consumerism since the 1940s was accompanied by a significant fall in the cost of clothing and manchester items in household budgets, which in turn meant that people were able to change their clothing and manchester items more often and meant that there were more clothes to wash. The ability of machines to wash clothing whenever it was convenient significantly increased water consumption. This take-up of water-using services and appliances that have been an integral part of Australian cities may now be seen also as entrenching resistance to reform of water-consumption practices.
Water consumption in the kitchen has also increased, although it remains a small proportion of internal household consumption. External consumption of water also increased with the increasing popularity of swimming pools and more recently of spas. Garden usage is also important, but in some cities it is less significant than might be assumed. In Sydney, for example, most households rely heavily on rainfall to maintain their gardens (Troy and Randolph 2006).
The point is not to lament these changes, but simply to appreciate their cumulative effects on values and expectations as well as on levels of consumption. And then to ask how such interdependencies might be untangled in the least obstructive, most efficient ways.