Water bodies are physically and spiritually an integral part of several historic cities of India. The presence of water bodies within the cities, not only added
a symbolic value but also addressed the water needs of the city. The water as
an urban system in context of supply and waste water are beyond the engineering
domain and are important from sociological-ecological system point of view, because they form a very
intricate relationship with the community and the city. However these cities are
constantly transforming themselves through newer means of planning mechanisms with
newer land use and newer relationships with the ecological system that are often
conflicting with each other in nature. Within this framework, the physical and
spiritual essence of water continually degrades over a time period. The once privileged position of water bodies in such historic cities are subjected to
land formation by land fill or are ignored as residual components, amounting to
systematic encroachment of edges and deteriorating of primordial relationship
of water, community and the city.
The city of Jodhpur, Bhopal and Jabalpur are few examples out of many
second and third tier cities across India, where historic relationships are
compromised and subjected to dismantling of an important urban component, which
have capabilities to adopt newer challenges
through urban water resilience strategies. The effectiveness
of a water based resilient infrastructure or its responsive urban fabric and
its architecture depends upon its ability to anticipate, absorb, adapt to,
and/or rapidly recover from a potentially disruptive state and even ultimately
shows the ability to return to its original state only by understanding the historic water system of such cities.
The key objectives while studying and documenting such cities must firstly address the issues that are related to the understanding of the water stresses/conditions
or water based stresses that may impact the city water-basin or its urban
fabric and its architecture, secondly the assessment of the resilience of the city
water basin and its geographical & intervened edge conditions and finally the capability to generate and
appraise interventions that yield greater resilience for the city water basin/
conditions and its geographical and intervened edge conditions.
These challenges are certainly not simple to the
water related historic cities, and there are no obvious strategies towards
urban solutions. But the most important question is that the
issues related to water and historic cities must be considered
and debated as an academic reflection with respect to the current mode of urban transformation
and see to it that resilience must become a paradigmatic concept, beyond a passing trajectory.
Photo Credit: Manoj Parmar | Faculty: KRVIA | Jabalpur
Photo Credit: Sanaeya Vandrewala | Faculty: KRVIA | Bhopal
Photo Credit: George Jacob | Faculty: KRVIA | Jodhpur
Three cities are part of KRVIA + Breucom project & Masters Studio II for Urban Design & Urban Conservation
