The long-term evolution of urban waters and their nineteenth century transformation in European cities. A comparative environmental history

Abstract

The nineteenth century was marked by a fundamental change in city-river relations. The environmental history perspective employed in this article illustrates how the complex interplay between the diverse natural and societal endowment of four European cities (Brussels, Lyon, Munich, and Vienna) shaped urban aquatic networks. Throughout the long-term co-evolution of the urbanites and their aquatic network, different sources of waterpower in the cities had led to differences in use and transformation. In the nineteenth century, industrialization induced a shift to a fossil energy regime in all four study sites. Population growth and urbanization required new areas for housing, industry, and trade, as well as new means of sanitation. Main drivers of the transformation included river engineering, flood protection dikes, advances in the fight against epidemic cholera, improved sanitation, water supply, and sewage networks. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the water networks of the four cities were thoroughly transformed. Despite different natural endowments, the four cities had grown increasingly similar, using water mainly as a metabolic substance for consumption and waste removal. Smaller watercourses had become part of the subterranean sewage network; larger ones were often vaulted or encased by flood protection walls leaving legacies for urban authorities in the twentieth century and beyond.