Urban Waterways. Evolving Paradigms for Hydro-based Urbanisms

Book excerpt: Urban Waterways: Evolving Paradigms for Hydro-based Urbanisms investigates the environmental, cultural, and economic future of cities on the water in the 21st century. Collected here are urban projects across the globe from 15 cities on 5 continents representing not only the complexities of urban life in the face of environmental concerns, global economic shifts, waste and energy management, and post-industrial legacies but also new thinking and practices that are emerging from a reconsideration of the value of hydro-based urbanism through a recalibration of our settlement patterns. Contexts range from coastal cities to cities associated with river, lake and wetlands ecologies and offer strategies from retrofitting and recovery to imagining new cities on the water. Although each of these urban projects proposes site specific responses that are locally relevant and respond to the city’s distinctive landscapes, they are also linked through their reconceptualization of a land and water dialogue and in the manner in which they tap into the broader spectrum of what portunism that suggests alternative directions and visions for our urban futures. The congress was held in Durban South Africa.