River Cities in Asia: Waterways in Urban Development and History

Abstract

Cities and water have a love-hate relationship (Feldman 2017). This is especially true of rivers in many cities in Asia, which, like cities in the rest of the world, owe their locations to rivers and the trading opportunities and water sources these rivers provided. In recent years, cities across China have been beautifying and extending their waterfronts, and cities as diverse as Singapore and Seoul are turning their rivers into assets as part of urban redevelopment schemes or restoring them in an effort to bring nature back to the city. Nevertheless, many other cities in Asia have their backs turned to their rivers. Where rivers were once trading and transport arteries and hubs of social and cultural life, many rivers today have suffered neglect as roads and evolving trading patterns have supplanted the rivers’ economic and social functions. Their decline has been accompanied by environmental destruction, as their waters have become polluted and serve as dumping grounds for solid waste. Moreover, riverbank settlements have evolved into legally ambiguous spaces, as old settlements were detached from land formalization regimes and were subjected to environmental deteriora- tion from the rivers. Far from being an asset, these rivers have become an eyesore—and occasionally also a threat, owing to flooding exacerbated by poor planning and a poor understanding of the place of these water bodies in the wider regional ecosystem.