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Governance reforms are required to establish adaptive and resilient urban water resource management that takes into account complexity, uncertainty and immediate and long term change. This paper details the outcomes of a qualitative, social science research project, drawing on insights from Australian urban water practitioners (n=90) across three Australian cities to explore the effectiveness of governance reforms in the contemporary urban water context. The perceived effectiveness of current urban water governance strategies were assessed through the first application of a fit-for-purpose governance framework, which helps to assess whether the (anticipated) outcomes match the intended purposes of proposed and applied governance strategies. The research provides important insights regarding the need for a mix of centralised and decentralised, and formal and informal, governance approaches to support …