Unfolding water interfaces: water between urban infrastructure and culture

Over the centuries, the process of urbanization has progressively expanded, altered and modified the natural water cycles: water has been urbanized. This paper proposes to analyze water infrastructure as the intertwining of distinct but yet interconnected networks: surface, ground, drinking, runoff, waste water. With the development of increasingly complex water machines, mainly conceived as a solely technical space, the link between the urban space and the water as an element and as a cycle has been progressively lost. Water urbanization has heavily modified not only each water system individually (through river vaulting, diversions, canals, dikes, drainage, supply and sanitations networks and devices) but also and most importantly the way in which they function as a whole, the way in which they interface. This paper proposes to read the process of water urbanization through the notion of water interfaces, defined as the spaces where different water systems meet, and where to analyze water as a systemic infrastructure and as a common culture at once. Water urbanization will be explored documenting, mapping, categorizing water interfaces within different socio-economic contexts: Bruxelles (BE); Sicily (IT); Kinshasa (DRC); Dakar (SNG). This approach will provide firstly a comparative overview on how water cultures have been modified by urbanization in the proposed case studies, secondly a systemic understanding of the role and potential that specific practices play as spatial interfaces between infrastructures and place-based cultures.