https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0705-5763
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Abstract
Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) identifies water sensitivity as a goal for cities to strive for and develop towards. Certain cities may face rapidly changing socioeconomic and urban dynamics, or lack of data and documentation, greater than those in which WSUD has been conceptualized. Landscape-informed, design-based fieldwork methods of walking, observing, describing and drawing can help to understand how hydrological systems are linked to local water cultures and practices. This shifts the definition of water sensitivity away from a universal ideal future scenario to one that is mutable and determined by local qualities. The case of Kozhikode, India, illustrates how fieldwork and its forms of representation, with an emphasis on the design processes that WSUD calls for to be operationalized, can shed light on urban hydro-cultural dimensions. These dimensions extend hydrological indicators by incorporating cultural insights to be integrated into WSUD, thereby enhancing the context specificity and appropriateness of the concept. As such, design methodologies and the hydro-cultural dimension offer valuable contributions to WSUD and can facilitate its adoption worldwide.
Acknowledgements
This article was established in the framework of the Water4Change (W4C) research program under the Cooperation India—The Netherlands program. The authors wish to express their gratitude to the team members and member institutions of the W4C program.
Notes
1 Geert J.M. van der Meulen, Machiel J. van Dorst and Taneha Kuzniecow Bacchin, ‘Water Sensitivity and Context Specificity: Concept and Context in Water-Sensitive Urban Design for Secondary Cities’, Urban Water Journal 20/1 (2023), 15–25.
2 Tim D. Fletcher et al., ‘SUDS, LID, BMPs, WSUD and More: The Evolution and Application of Terminology Surrounding Urban Drainage’, Urban Water Journal 12/7 (2015), 525–542; Françoise Bichai and Andres Cabrera Flamini, ‘The Water-Sensitive City: Implications of an Urban Water Management Paradigm and its Globalization’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water 5 (2018).
3 Tony H.F. Wong, ‘Water Sensitive Urban Design; the Journey Thus Far’, Australian Journal of Water Resources 10/3 (2006), 213–222.
4 Ibid.
5 Fletcher et al., ‘SUDS’, op. cit. (note 2).
6 Justin Abbott et al., Creating Water Sensitive Places (London: CIRIA, 2013).
7 Samira Rashetnia et al., ‘A Scoping Review on WSUD Aims and Achievements’, Urban Water Journal 19/5 (2022), 453–567.
8 Van der Meulen, Dorst and Kuzniecow Bacchin, ‘Water Sensitivity’, op. cit. (note 1).
9 Rebekah R. Brown, Nina Keath and Tony H.F. Wong, ‘Urban Water Management in Cities: Historical, Current and Future Regimes’, Water Science & Technology 59/5 (2009), 847–855.
10 Tony H.F. Wong and Rebekah R. Brown, ‘The Water Sensitive City: Principles for Practice’, Water Science & Technology 60/3 (2009), 673–682.
11 Brian H. Roberts, Managing Systems of Secondary Cities (Brussels: City Alliance, 2014).
12 Ibid.
13 Chyi-Yun Huang et al., Translating Plans to Development: Impact and Effectiveness of Urban Planning in Tanzania Secondary Cities (Washington: World Bank, 2018); Mulugeta Maru, Hailu Worku and Joern Birkmann, ‘Factors Affecting the Spatial Resilience of Ethiopia's Secondary Cities to Urban Uncertainties’, Heliyon 7/12 (2021).
14 Roberts, Managing Systems, op. cit. (note 11).
15 Sarah J. Lindley et al., ‘Rethinking Urban Green Infrastructure and Ecosystem Services from the Perspective of SubSaharan African Cities’, Landscape and Urban Planning 180 (2018), 328–338.
16 UN DESA, World Urbanization Prospects (New York: United Nations, 2019).
17 Abbott et al., Creating Water Sensitive Places, op. cit. (note 6).
18 James Corner, ‘The Agency of Mapping’, in: Denis Cosgrove (ed.), Mappings (London: Reaktion, 1999), 213–252.
19 Elise J.G.C. van Dooren, Remon M. Rooij and Luc A.M. Willekens, ‘Urban and Regional Design Education: Making the Design Process Explicit’, in: AESOP Annual Congress Conference Proceedings (Reading: AESOP, 2014).
20 Wolfgang Jonas, ‘Research through Design through Research’ Kybernetes 36/9–10 (2007), 1362–1380; Rob Roggema, ‘Research by Design: Proposition for a Methodological Approa ch’, Urban Science 1/2 (2016).
21 Taeke de Jong and Hugo Priemus, ‘Forecasting and Problem Spotting’, in: Taeke de Jong and Theo van der Voordt (eds.), Ways to Study and Research Urban, Architectural and Technical Design (Delft: DUP Science, 2002), 253–260.
22 Andrea Rolando, ‘Drawing Unplugged’, in: Luca Lazzarini and Serena Marchionni (eds.), Spazi e corpi in movimento: Fare urbanistica in cammino (Florence: SdT edizioni, 2020), 77–94.
23 Gini Lee and Lisa Diedrich, ‘Transareal Excursions into Landscapes of Fragility and Endurance’, in: Ellen Braae and Henriette Steiner (eds.), Research Companion to Landscape Architecture (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), 90–102.
24 Henrik Schultz, ‘Designing Large-Scale Landscapes through Walking’, Journal of Landscape Architecture 9/2 (2014), 6–15.
25 Bin Li, ‘Routes and transects: Reading Extended Urbanization in Alpine Zones’, Journal of Landscape Architecture 16/1 (2021), 20–33.
26 Ibid.; Luca Lazzarini, ‘Alcune considerazioni sull’utilità del camminare nell’insegnamento dell’urbanistica’, in: Lazzarini and Marchionni, Spazi e corpi, op. cit. (note 22), 29–40; Schultz, ‘Designing Large-Scale Landscapes’, op. cit. (note 24); Henrik Schultz and Rudi van Etteger, ‘Walking’, in: Adri van den Brink et al. (eds.), Research in Landscape Architecture (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 179–193.
27 Paul Moorhouse, ‘The Intricacy of the Skein, the Complexity of the Web’, in: Richard Long, Paul Moorhouse and Denise Hooker (eds.), Walking the Line (London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2002), 29–43; Dieter Roelstraete, A Line Made by Walking (London: Afterall, 2010).
28 Moorhouse, ‘The Intricacy of the Skein’, op. cit. (note 27).
29 Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Climatological Normals 1981–2010 (New Delhi: IMD, 2015); IMD, Extremes of Temperature and Rainfall (New Delhi: IMD, 2016).
30 Andrew Turner, ‘The Indian Monsoon in a Changing Climate’, in: Lindsay Bremner and Georgia Trower (eds.), Monsoon [+ other] Airs (London: University of Westminster, 2017), 17–19.
31 Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEF), National Wetland Conservation Programme (New Delhi: MoEF, 2019).
32 P.A. Azeez et al., Conservation of Kottuli Wetlands, Calicut, Kerala (Coimbatore: Sálim Ali Centre, 2008).
33 Anjana Bhagyanathan and Deepak Dhayanithy, ‘A Canal, Urban Sprawl and Wetland Loss: the Case of Kozhikode, India, from Colonialism to Climate Change Era’, Area 55/3 (2023), 435–446.
34 Azeez et al., Conservation of Kottuli Wetlands, op. cit. (note 32); A. Mithosh Joseph, ‘The Vanishing Act of Paddy Fields, Wetlands in Kozhikode’, The Hindu, 21 July 2019.
35 Bhagyanathan and Dhayanithy, ‘A Canal’, op. cit. (note 33).
36 Ibid.
37 Anjana Bhagyanathan et al., ‘Terrain Attributes of Sacred Grove Locations Point Towards Conscious Spatial Delineation’, Current Science 114/5 (2018), 957–959; Anjana Bhagyanathan et al., ‘Sacred Groves in Peri-Urban Areas: An Opportunity for Resilient Urban Ecosystems’, International Journal of Earth Sciences and Engineering 10/1 (2017), 75–82.
38 Ibid.
39 Fikret Berkes, Carl Folke and Madhav Gadgil, ‘Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Biodiversity, Resilience and Sustainability’ in: Charles A. Perrings et al. (eds.), Biodiversity Conservation (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), 281–299.
40 Bhagyanathan et al., ‘Terrain Attributes of Sacred Grove’, op cit. (note 37).
41 Ibid.
42 Marina Alberti, Advances in Urban Ecology (Boston: Springer, 2008), 147.
43 Anthony Powis, ‘The Relational Materiality of Groundwater’, GeoHumanities 7/1 (2021), 89–112.
44 Town and Country Planning Department, Government of Kerala (T&CDP), Master Plan for Kozhikode Urban Area 2035 (Thiruvananthapuram: T&CDP, 2017).
45 Jabir Mushthari, ‘Of Ponds That No Longer Exist’, The Hindu, 29 March 2016.
46 Ülo Mander et al., ‘Coherence and Fragmentation of Landscape Patterns as Characterized by Correlograms’, Landscape and Urban Planning 94 (2010), 31–37.
47 Mari S. Tveit, Åsa Ode Sang and Gary Fry, ‘Key Concepts in a Framework for Analysing Visual Landscape Character’, Landscape Research 31/3 (2006), 229–255.
48 Everyday City Lab, The Sacred and the Public (Bengelaru: Everyday City Lab, 2019).
49 Taylor Coyne et al., ‘Culturally Inclusive Water Urban Design’, Blue-Green Systems 2/1 (2020), 364–382.
50 Bhagyanathan et al., ‘Terrain Attributes of Sacred Grove’, op. cit. (note 37).
51 Kiran Keswani, ‘The Practice of Tree Worship and the Territorial Production of Urban Space in the Indian Neighbourhood’, Journal of Urban Design 22/3 (2017), 370–387.
52 Richard T.T. Forman, Landscape Mosaics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
53 Azeez et al., Conservation of Kottuli Wetlands, op. cit. (note 32).
54 Rashetnia et al., ‘A Scoping Review’, op. cit. (note 7).
55 Coyne et al., ‘Culturally Inclusive’, op. cit. (note 49).
56 Van Dooren et al. ‘Urban and Regional Design Education’, op. cit. (note 19).
57 Wong and Brown, ‘The Water Sensitive City’, op. cit. (note 10).
58 Everyday City Lab, The Sacred and the Public, op. cit. (note 48).
59 Jessica McLean et al., ‘Shadow Waters, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 43/4 (2018), 615–629.
60 Everyday City Lab, The Sacred and the Public, op. cit. (note 48).
61 Tristan Schultz et al., ‘Editors’ Introduction’, Design and Culture 10 (2018), 1–6.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Geert J.M. van der Meulen
Geert van der Meulen is a researcher in the Urban Design section of the Department of Urbanism in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at Delft University of Technology. With his background in architecture and museology and an MSc in water management, his interest lies with climate-crisis adaptation through interdisciplinary designcentred approaches with ecology and culture at their core. Previous interdisciplinary research and projects have focused on transitional flood risk management, extreme sea level rise and nature-based metropolitan solutions in collaboration with designers, planners, policymakers, engineers and artists. In his current work, he addresses decolonizing Water-Sensitive Urban Design in the context of secondary Indian cities.
Taneha Kuzniecow Bacchin
Taneha Kuzniecow Bacchin is an architect, urban designer and assistant professor of Urban Design and a research leader of the Urban Design section and the Delta Urbanism Interdisciplinary Research Program at the Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology. She holds a PhD (double degree) in landscape architecture and water science and engineering from Delft University of Technology, jointly with IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, where she studied urban landscape infrastructure design for water-sensitive cities. Her research and projects focus on the intersection between landscape architecture, infrastructure and urban form. She has expertise in design and planning of critical and fragile territories, specialized in Water-Sensitive Urban Design in the context of aggravating climatic conditions. Her current work addresses the changing nature of territorial projects, addressing spatial, ecological, political and economic aspects of extreme weather and resource scarcity, with projects in the North Sea, the Arctic, Brazil, South Africa and India.
Machiel J. van Dorst
Machiel van Dorst is a professor of Environment, Behaviour and Design in the Urban Studies section, Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at Delft University of Technology. He has a background in urbanism and environmental psychology, and holds a PhD from Delft University of Technology in which he focused on the relation between liveability and sustainability, and the implications of territorial behaviour in the living environment. His interest lies with people-environment studies, sustainable urbanism and the relations between education, research and design. He is chair of the scientific board of the International Forum on Urbanism, the worldwide network of top universities in the field of urbanism.