Civic Water: Bridging Culture, Nature and People

The essay explores the potential reuse of traditional urban water infrastructures in Nicosia, with reference to the walled city. The political and physical partition of the city has not only pushed for the material decay of the built environment inside and bordering the Green Line, but also the abandonment of various common infrastructures, such as the water system. This is even more critical in Cyprus, an island suffering from severe water scarcity. Hence, Nicosia’s water legacy has been studied, mapped, and analyzed from its patrimonial perspective, with attention to its tangible and intangible manifestations. This research enables the potential to connect the two communities by virtue of a social and renewable use of water. To promote this vision, the research puts ‘water heritage’ as a theme under which community-based initiatives and the reintroduction of nature as a service in the urban fabric are proposed with different social and cultural target actors, based on the methodology of “stapling strategies”.