How city rivers define the places we live in

Night falls in Seoul. A soft breeze rolls off the Han River, carrying with it the chatter of onlookers gathered to watch the twin-decked Banpo Bridge begin its nightly illuminated fountain show. The wind picks up the mist, obscuring the walkers, runners and cyclists making their way across the pedestrian lower deck, the Jamsu Bridge, in a rainbow cloud.

This massive, kilometre-wide channel through the heart of Seoul is many things to its city’s inhabitants: a conduit, a livelihood, somewhere to gather and play, a place to relax, sit, ponder. These fleeting moments are gone almost as soon as they come, taken away with the current and out through a larger body of water, eventually, to the great wide ocean.

How many of them do our rivers carry, as they flow wordlessly through our cities, connecting mountain to sea and lake to bay and everyone and everything along their path? Rivers are the lifeblood of cities, the veins of the earth. In constant motion yet ever constant, they come with serene sections and wild rapids, shaping and mirroring our lives. They’re a familiar companion on our daily commute, conduits to our destinations, somewhere to find sanctuary in nature, places of work, rest, play and life. They branch out across the cities of our world like alternate timelines.

The irresistible romance of Paris would be nothing without the Seine. Streetlights cast a warm orange glow on the undersides of trees and the cobbled riverbank as couples stroll along the water’s edge, hand-in-hand, past buskers and bustling bars. At Port de la Bourdonnais, they hop aboard a cruise for a candlelit dinner, champagne flutes chiming as they glide past the Eiffel Tower. Towering high above the riverbank, this symbol of Parisian character begins to glitter gold. Honeymooning in the city of love.

On the other side of the Atlantic, office workers lace up for their morning run along the network of rivers and canals that make up the Chicago River, which links the Great Lake system with the Mississippi River and, ultimately, the ocean, thousands of kilometres south. Suddenly, the earth moves. The runners slow to take in the scene. The DuSable Bridge splits as it raises, halting road traffic to allow tall sailboats to pass beneath. They float towards a day on the water at Lake Michigan, shaking their sails free of the kinks from being held in storage over the colder months. Among the big tour boats and kayaks that scull by, hulking barges carrying construction materials and scrap metal groan under their loads.

On the Isar River, a life cycle plays out: Munich’s children make its acquaintance early in their lives. First, they’re baptised in the waters by the vicar of St. Luke’s Church, and then later they picnic and paddle along its meadowed banks and cycle its length. On the adjacent Eisbach, one of the Munich City Streams, wetsuit-clad surfers leap fearlessly into the frothing waves at this hallowed birthplace of river surfing. They carve and spin, their boards appearing to levitate over the surface of the fast-flowing water that churns from an opening underground. One loses her balance and is submerged beneath the crashing waters. When she emerges farther down the stream, it’s with a grin on her face and to scattered whooping from onlookers on their way home and other surfers waiting their turn. This time, she’s the main character, though her story is carried by the current, and by everyone watching, there on the tree-shaded riverbank.