A Comparative Study of Three Urban Water Supply Networks as City Landscape Infrastructures

Water, as the most vital human need and a life-giving element, has been the first concern in creating any permanent or temporary settlement. The water supply networks in the cities have also been the first urban facilities that have provided a suitable context for humans to live in and played an infrastructure role for cities on a large scale. However, throughout history, their presence in the city has not been limited to a mechanical facility. The reason is that they are a mixture of objective and subjective issues which has turned them into an element of the urban landscape. In this framework, a comparative study of water supply networks in the cities of Semnan in Iran, Bukhara in Uzbekistan, and Fez in Morocco was made as landscape infrastructures. Landscape infrastructure in the city is a city infrastructure that, in addition to serving as a mechanical and functional facility in the city, is a part of the citizens’ image and mentality of the city in the context of nature, which plays the role of a major landscape element on a large scale and with the acting of various components. The comparative study of the three mentioned cities shows that although the idea of a water system is proposed as a landscape infrastructure for those cities, the geographical and functional factors in the city have made differences in some three dimensions of the landscape. The factors have brought changes to the formation of their components and elements, which have also had different effects on each city landscape. The water storage pools in Semnan, the geometric ponds of Bukhara in a cultural service complex, and the numerous water springs in Fez are part of the differences that can be seen in each of these networks caused by the functional requirements and the type of water use affected by the geography and climate of the city. Despite these differences in both functional and aesthetic dimensions, the cultural affinity between these cities has brought the identity dimension of these infrastructures closer together.