Promises and perils of water sensitivity as a new hydro-social imaginary for Kozhikode, India

Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) proposes integrating the management of urban water cycles into urban planning and design as a strategy to better respond to water challenges in the urban environment. Proposed frameworks try capturing urban water sensitivity in terms of generic, transferable principles. In this article, we trace the water history of Kozhikode in India to make a plea for epistemic justice and context-specificity in the definition of water sensitivity, recognizing how the quality and direction of contemporary urban water flows are the outcome of particular – (post-)colonial, neo-liberal – histories. We mobilize insights from political ecology to do this. Concepts like waterscapes and hydro-social imaginaries help acknowledge that waters and cities co-evolve to create often highly uneven waterscapes. This usefully denaturalizes and thereby politicizes urban water sensitivity, giving much-needed prominence to the ‘who’ questions: who will benefit (most), and who will stand to lose? For Kozhikode, with its fishing enclaves, sacred groves, ponds, and a colonial canal crossing its coastal plain, treating water sensitivity as a mere techno-managerial question risks reinforcing middle-class dominance and aspirations, while also provoking ecological decay. • WSUD risks creating a discursive genre that separates water from culture. • Kozhikode’s waterscape history highlights interlinked hydro-social processes. • Present-day Kozhikode is home to a multitude of hydro-social imaginaries. • A-historical and a-political WSUD risks perpetuating socio-ecological and epistemic injustice. • Water sensitivity is repositioned as part of context rather than universal goal.