Reactivating Public Life through Water. Lessons from the Forgotten Historical Canals in Guangzhou

Abstract

In the heart of the Pearl River Delta, the city of Guangzhou is fast-growing and prone to flooding. In history, people constructed canals based on natural waterways to deal with water problems. The canal system not only served as an important infrastructure but was also as the backbone of urban life. The city was built around its canals; they were the lifeline of Guangzhou. But with the development of the road network in recent decades, the urban canals in the historical inner city have been neglected and are disappearing, losing their identity, and becoming the forgotten side of the city. Also, canal restoration projects often only address the historical canals as water infrastructure, without effectively addressing them as public spaces. They are no longer designed as socially inclusive urban spaces and so play no significant role in public life anymore. Restoration projects are not really concerned with the canals or their surrounding urban tissue as a system, neither do they connect the lives of local people to the water. Therefore, the newly designed public spaces in these projects often function poorly, if at all. What can be learned from the historical situation to re-activate the urban canals as carriers of socially and ecologically inclusive urban space?