The Sabana de Bogotá is facing a continuously increasing conflict between urban development and a saturated water management system. The research investigates how current contested relations between low-income housing and environmental stress can be converted into a constructive interplay. The unquestionable necessity of building new social housing can be seen as a major threat for sustainable water management but also as a unique opportunity to propose strategic spatial interventions. This paper presents the results of a doctoral thesis that investigates how can the current contested relations between water, settlement and productive landscapes become a constructive interplay? The paper is divided in two parts. The first part describes the main challenges to address these issues. The second part presents the design investigations in two case studies that cut across the Bogotá River and are undergoing development pressure. In each site the design proposes a water structure that solve qualitative and quantitative water issues while delivers a framework for new housing fabrics. The design investigations develop new low income housing morphologies, settlements with waters that are differentiated from land-based morphologies.