These kinds of water for urban activities form part of the infrastructure of the city, and are the investment needed when urbanization proceeds. So it must be emphasized that these are some aspects of the increase in demand in daily-life water consumption associated with the recent urbanization in developing countries.
Attention should be drawn to the following facts. Establishment of urban infrastructure stimulates the synergy effects between industrialization and urbanization. The increased demand for water, then, promotes research developments for secure urban water supply including daily-life water and industrial water, affecting suburban agricultural areas, and, in extreme cases, reducing agricultural land-area as has been seen in South East Asia.
In considering the relationship between urbanization and demand for water, an important factor to note is the scale of the city. In the development of a city, various factors, including regional attributes such as manufacturing sites, distribution networks, transportation, etc. re involved. While each city seeks its optimal scale, differences in scale between cities occur. Despite the differences, the obvious trend is that scales of cities are becoming huge due to the synergetic effect of industrialization and urbanization in recent years. In such huge expansions, the way cities secure water supply is changing the way they depend on water resources; viz, from dependence on natural water flows to the exploitation of water resource. Thus, large cities' measures to secure water resources, including the construction of dams, are more effectively planned, and are considered to have advantages, from the point of view of the amount of water secured, over the efforts of dispersed small and medium cities. Given such conditions, it is unlikely that urbanization is hampered by any reason related to water resource.
However, this does not mean that the progress in urbanization or greater city-scales will necessarily bring to the urban population advantageous water-resource conditions. As shown in the attached table, citizens' satisfaction as regards daily-life water tends to be lower as the size of the city grows.
