Water vs. Urban Scape: Exploring Integrated Water-Urban Arrangements

Sudden inundations, water shortages, dirty water, water pollution, drowning. All these things are nothing new for our urban environments. But is there any other paradigm to follow but the assumption that we are fighting a battle, water vs. urban development? How can we leave more room for water while enhancing the spatial quality of our urban landscapes? As early as the nineties, the concept of Integrated Water Management gained momentum in urban design research and practice. Water vs. Urban Scape presents promising new approaches to integrate water into the urban landscape. It contains a number of concepts drawn up to suit a range of specific socio-spatial urban landscapes across the world, including the diffuse urbanisations in the north-east of Italy and Flanders, the booming cities of Shanghai and Istanbul or the expanding Oslo, the informal urbanisation of Kigali and the suburbanisation of Perth. In the second part, four visual essays display possible scenarios of integrated water-urban arrangement in the Brussels Capital Region. With this, Water vs. Urban Scape provides plenty of inspiration for tackling one of the major issues of the urban age. 125 b/w images