Urbanisation and its Effects on Water Bodies- A Case of Cooum River, Chennai

Abstract

Since the primitive era, the mankind has been attracted to watercourses, mainly because they provide drinking water and food. The natural landscape has been influenced by gradual economic, politics and social changes of humans constantly occurring in the world. Industrial Revolution has the biggest influence of all, which changed the ideology of nations towards the nature. Rapid urbanization and migration of population into the urban centers started to transform its urban water bodies for serving the needs of the population. And the basic function of most of the urban water bodies changed as a repository for sewage effluent, dump yards for the city’s solid waste and home for slum dwellers. The paper aims to identify and analyze the parameters causing problems due to urbanization and to prevent further degradation and make the water body as an integral part of the society by proposing design strategies and guidelines taking into account the needs of the present and future generations.