Urban and Metropolitan Rivers: Current Processes, Trends and Challenges

What is an urban river? What physical factors characterise it? What social implications does it have, above all, for urban planning and risk management? And, what historical, heritage and cultural values can we ascribe to it? These and other questions are specifically addressed in this chapter, with the aim of responding in a concise, structured manner to the objectives that this book sets itself. The urban river presents a quite specific geomorphology, one subject to notable alterations as the result of human transformations in the course of history. Thus, to the changes wrought by the civil works that sought the domestication of river channels as they run through the urban fabric have been added urban-territorial planning actions that seek the most appropriate form of technical-political management, measures that have marked much of the evolution of urban rivers. Social perceptions of the urban river, moreover, are critical for understanding the attitudes, values and influences that derive from their cultural representation at each moment in history. Urban rivers today are an object of study of great geographical interest, best analysed by adopting an integrative perspective that concerns itself with the physical, social, economic and cultural factors that come together in the river territory.