Focusing on the many forms of water in cities ie., piped water, rivers, lakes, canals, wetlands and the sea, this module explores urban environments as both social and natural phenomena. Students will be introduced to the range of ways in which water has shaped urban development historically and in contemporary times. Delving particularly into case studies in the global south, the module will use water as a lens through which to understand processes like sustainability, privatisation, spatial inequality, environmental justice, governance, non-human lives, and subaltern lives and livelihoods. It will include at least one case from the global North to complicate narratives of development as a linear process.