Urban waste management are being increasingly transformed from a disposal-based linear system to a recovery-based closed-loop system that promotes the conservation of water and nutrient resources thereby contributing to sustainable development. The current manuscript compares the decentralized and centralized approaches to wastewater systems by citing several studies that have listed various well-defined criteria to choose decentralized systems over centralized systems.

Basic water supply is crucial to effectively address the challenges of both urban and rural development. Municipal authorities/state governments in developing nations are especially hard pressed to design, develop and finance the basic urban services such as safe and reliable water supply.