Water Management in a City of Southwest China before Seventeenth Century

Being situated in southwest China, Kunming City is the capital of Yunnan Province with a current population of 7000000. It is also the largest city closest to Southeast Asia and it is planning to be built as a regional international city in future accordingly（Figure 1）. Today, 50% of Kunming City's residents are from other areas resulting in a lack of good understanding of the water situation，especially the history of the water in the city. Also, the rapidly enlarging urban body has disengaged with the traditional water supply design achieved in history. This situation has challenged the city's water supply and protection of water（Zheng 2008）. Rapid urbanization still progresses today, but it is a fact that Kunming City is one of the large cities in China with a shortage of water. Water has become a prominent restrictive factor for its sustainable future. Under such a situation, better water management is required that not just depends on more hydraulic projects but also for a good public understanding of the water situation, including a good understanding of the achievements and lessons of water management from history. The fact that Kunming has developed from a remote town in the eleventh century to a large city was basically achieved by successful water governance. Many major hydraulic engineerings, which are still in functional conditions even today, are the heritage from the history, especially from Song and early Yuan dynasties（1271—1368 A. D.）. Consequently, a good understanding of the role played by water and the logics of water management on the city's history is highly valuable, not just for shaping the public identity of water protection but also for managing water supply in a growing city. This paper aims to taking Kunming City as an example to understand the role of water governance and the logic of water management on its history as well as discussing what could be learnt from history for today's urbanization.

Fig.1 The location of Kunming City