Waterfront Development: In Support of An Integrated Approach

In the spring of 2013, I paid a visit to Fatepur Sikri, India, which is a UNESCO heritage site a couple hours away from Agra, of the Taj Mahal fame. I had read about it as a child on one of those newspaper travel sections and told myself I would someday experience the dramatic city of intricately carved, red, sandstone buildings. When I finally got my wish many years later, it did not disappoint. The breathtaking imperial complex was the result of an extensive planning and construction effort in the late 16th Century. However, the visit was also accompanied by a bit of sadness. Fatepur Sikri was more of a ruin than the vibrant city depicted in the pictures I remembered from my childhood. Not much other than the palace complex was intact, and only the periphery of this tourist attraction was inhabited. There was no running water, sewer system, or stable electricity. Such has been the state of this once glorious capital of the Mughal Empire since its demise in 1585, just under 15 years after its construction when the lake outside of the city walls, the sole source of water for its residents, dried up.

As I stood in the middle of this beautiful but strangely lifeless place, this dawned on me: “Why didn’t they find out more about their water situation before putting all this effort into planning and constructing a whole new city?” Clearly, they thought the lake would be there forever, regardless of how much water they took out of it – something we know not to be true. But then again, that was over 400 years ago. They did not have the knowledge of hydrology and scientific prowess that we have today.

The trouble is, I find myself asking the same question about the cities that were developed and substantially expanded centuries later. Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, Sao Paolo, Bangalore, Mexico City…. When it comes to cities that are concerned about the security of their water supply, the list goes on, and it is not limited to one specific area in the world. This issue of water security is what the Mughals had to wrestle with before making the dramatic decision of packing up and moving almost 400 miles north to Lahore, their new capital. Considering the scale and complexity of modern cities, abandoning home base is hardly an option for dealing with the issues related to water. The example of Fatepur Sikri may seem extreme, but it illustrates just how quickly things can get out of hand when no provisions were made for some-thing as elemental as water.

Besides, it is due time we put the sophistication of modern science, hydrology, and planning to work, and manage our water resources by aligning them with our planning and development priorities. The recent phenomena of erratic hydrological events, ranging from sudden, severe floods to extreme droughts, and water quality crises that touched as close to home as Flint, Michigan, are just a few reasons why a paradigm shift is needed when it comes to water, from extraction and exploitation to integrated management.

In urban planning and development, we have consistently ignored the natural boundaries within our environments in favor of focusing on the human-imposed ones, such as streets, property lines, and municipal borders. Many natural systems, hydrological systems in particular, do not follow these human-imposed boundaries.

As such, waterfront development presents a perfect opportunity to merge the two boundaries – natural and human. Any given development site is likely to be influenced by hydrology, regardless of whether the hydrological system is easily visible or not. For waterfront developments, considerations of hydrology and water use are more immediate and visible to planners and stakeholders alike; it may be easier to forget about issues such as runoff and ground water contamination when the development site is miles inland. Often, developers and other stakeholders do not pay much attention to impacts beyond the site’s property lines, but when there is surface water body present, it becomes more difficult to ignore the relationship between the site and its influence on neighboring communities, local wildlife, etc. This gives us a chance to look at water as not only a resource to exploit and extract, but to conserve, replenish, and manage in an integrated way that contributes to the communities around it, without being depleted.

What does an integrated approach look like? It depends on the local context, but there are certain common characteristics. An important step is to assess and identify the unique starting points for each community before pushing preformulated solutions unfit for the priorities of the local community. It is also important to do an inventory of studies, activities, and partnerships already conducted or ongoing in the area in order to avoid duplication, share knowledge, and work towards the common goal of doing good for the community with whom we work.

One current example of an integrated approach for a waterfront development involves a private-public partnership in Victoria Falls, located on the Zambezi River between Zimbabwe and Zambia. Instead of taking a fragmented approach that only looks at one particular need at a time, the project takes a holistic look at planning the future of water, energy, and food for the area. Rather than proposing a presumptuous solution without any feedback from the local community, the first step was to understand the issues that mattered to the community. Next in order was to assess existing resources (both human and natural) and knowledge to tackle these issues at once through providing access to two foundational components for any sustainable community: water and energy. By engaging, communicating, and coordinating with community members and local actors with active initiatives on the ground, individual priorities, interests, and unconventional ways to align them were identified. The plan is to help promote the cultivation of a new cash crop – tabasco chilies – by providing the local farmers training on sustainable farming of chilies and water management. The water will be conveyed from the river using renewable energy generated from the kinetic force of the waterfalls; various water management strategies, including education programs, will be implemented to keep the water body replenished. The eco-nomic empowerment to the local farmers (most of whom are women) is generated by non-polluting sources of energy that take into account the hydrological challenges of the area. While generating new economic opportunities, through non-polluting energy sources and long-term water security, the effort addresses one of the major concerns expressed by the community: human-elephant conflicts in the farming villages. Elephants from a nearby preserve were causing casualties in these villages on their visits to fetch food, but they are not very fond of chilies and will not come near them. Thus, the new cash crop could also serve as a natural barrier against dangerous intruders.

As we have witnessed time and time again, from ancient times to modern history to today’s water crises in various cities, looming water scarcity turned into a reality for many in a short period of time, and repairing the damage can be lengthy and costly. In many locations around the globe and within our country, efforts are underway to improve cities’ abilities to withstand and bounce back from extreme climatic events. Taking a holistic approach that integrates not only the traditional planning elements but also the natural systems and the people is the only way forward. Not only will it put our communities on a path towards long-term sustainability with self-determination, it will also help us use our resources and time more wisely. It might also keep unwanted elephants away.

To see the original article on Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum’s Urban Waterways Newsletter (pp.4-6), click here.