Cities have had a very strong relationship with bodies of water. Many were built on the banks of rivers, some were at the seaside, others were adjacent to lakes and of course in many cases cities created their own lakes and reservoirs. No city could afford to disregard the collection, storage, use-pattern and disposal of water. Water-bodies served as modes of transportation or defence; they supported livelihoods and crafts; they created open spaces that served as a release from the confines of urban congestion. In many ways water was intimately connected with the very idea of being alive. Though cities were man-made artefacts, humans felt a sense of being grateful beneficiaries, and sometimes unwitting victims, of this capricious natural element. Water, in its presence as well as absence, was both a blessing and a threat! Thus water was not just a physical fact, it was a deep psychological presence.

While water is essential to life, its proximity to human habitation needs systems of maintenance and upkeep. Away from human settlements, bodies of water can find ways of self-regeneration, involving a multiplicity of organisms that constantly balance the state of the fluid medium. Human populations however, use water, create wastes, and are vulnerable to the organisms that water may support. Thus human societies need to create rules, laws, customs and regulatory mechanisms to maintain this vital resource. Symbolism, religion and ethics are connected to every society’s conception of water, as are law, economics and politics.

The articulation of the edge of water in human settlements was the clearest expression of all these concepts. It afforded particular and peculiar modes of use and control, different in each society and even in each case. Sometimes hardened and built, sometimes covered with vegetation, sometimes showing the exposed soil or sand, each edge was made to answer to particular conditions, concepts and needs.

With the huge and rapid growth of population, as well as with increased and more dense urbanisation, the traditional modes of dealing with water are seriously challenged. We will have to find new ways of dealing with water in cities, and the edge where water and human settlements meet is critical. Thinking of the “edge” means of course reimagining the relationship of humans and water, reimagining the mechanisms of participation and control, reimagining the environmental and technological issues and suggesting new arrangements. In short thinking about the edge of the water means no less than reimagining city and community.