The Great Divide: exploring the divergence between urban metabolism in theory and practice in water supply system in Bengaluru

Urban metabolism as a framework has enabled understanding the interactions between humans, natural, and built environment. The concept is multidisciplinary and urban metabolism models have been used in identifying certain issues of urban planning. Apart from sociopolitical and economic aspects, metabolism also has spatial dimension. The spatial dimension is reflected in the metabolic processes which is inherent in the problems of uneven socioecological metabolisms that persist in the production of urban spaces. Urban planning developed as a discipline for balanced spatial development of urban metabolic processes. For sustainable development of the city, it is necessary for urban planning to follow metabolic processes but in reality this need not always be the case. It is possible for planning and urban metabolism to be spatially inconsistent. The results presented in this paper show the costs of such a divergence in the water supply system of Bengaluru city.