Introduction

Continuous urbanization results in increasing urban population, exerting high resource and environmental pressures, and challenging regional sustainability. Urban waters play a major role in the formation and development of cities; however, the close relationships also lead to unprecedented threats to urban waters, which have already drawn attentions from government. Such human-water relationship is prominent in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region of China. This book tries to study urban rivers in the PRD region, evaluating the relationships between them and human activities, thus to provide some suggestions for urban river management. This chapter elaborates the research background, motivation, research objectives and questions as well as the significance.