Reading the water: understanding people-water relations : a case study of the Malmö canal

Sammanfattning: The separation silo that exists between people, water and land creates a challenge when planning for equitable public water spaces in water environments/landscapes. This study discusses this challenge by bringing water to the forefront as a driving force for more inclusive and equitable planning practices. The project seeks to contribute to making local water knowledge become more available to planners and landscape architects, using water as a means to analyze social relations in urban water environments. The study focuses on understanding of dynamic relationships in water landscapes through the development and testing of a framework to harness people’s local water knowledge of their environments, it’s value in landscape planning practice and explore the potential of water knowledge to contribute to developing urban water environments. This study is created based on literature studies, walking the site, following and interviewing users of the canal. From this, a framework to identify and use local knowledge is developed and tested on a case study area that is the Malmö canal system. The result is a catalogue of selected activities on the canal and a framework to identify and utilize local water knowledge in the planning of urban water environments. The analytical framework to capture local knowledge proposed in this study, directs attention to the role of local knowledge in the different waters produced, and the relations and conflicts that exist between and within various user groups and their waters. The framework can be valuable for planners and designers as a means to capture local water knowledge and identify sites to intervene to push towards publicly accessible waters of good quality.