Urbanizing nature : actors and agency (dis)connecting cities and nature since 1500

356 Pages·2019·22.533 MB·English

by  Tim Soens (editor), Dieter Schott (editor), Michael Toyka-Seid (editor), Bert De Munck (editor)

Urbanizing Nature
What do we mean when we say that cities have altered humanity’s
interaction with nature? The more people are living in cities, the more
nature is said to be ‘urbanizing’: turned into a resource, mobilized over
long distances, controlled, transformed and then striking back with a
vengeance as ‘natural disaster’. Confronting insights derived from
Environmental History, Science and Technology Studies or Political
Ecology, Urbanizing Nature aims to counter teleological perspectives
on the birth of modern ‘urban nature’ as a uniform and linear process,
showing how new technological schemes, new actors and new definitions
of nature emerged in cities from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.
Tim Soens is Professor of Medieval and Environmental History at the
University of Antwerp, Belgium.
Dieter Schott is Professor for Modern History at the Technical University
of Darmstadt, Germany.
Michael Toyka-Seid is Research Associate at the Technical University of
Darmstadt, Germany.
Bert De Munck is Professor in the History Department at the University
of Antwerp, Belgium.
Routledge Advances in Urban History
Series Editors
Bert De Munck
Centre for Urban History, University of Antwerp
Simon Gunn
Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester
This series showcases original and exciting new work in urban history. It
publishes books that challenge existing assumptions about the history of
cities, apply new theoretical frames to the urban past, and open up new
avenues of historical enquiry. The scope of the series is global, and it cov-
ers all time periods from the ancient to the modern worlds.
Cities and Creativity from the Renaissance to the Present
Edited by Ilja Van Damme, Bert De Munck and Andrew Miles
Migration Policies and Materialities of Identification in
European Cities
Papers and Gates, 1500–1930s
Edited by Hilde Greefs and Anne Winter
Urbanizing Nature
Actors and Agency (Dis)Connecting Cities and Nature Since 1500
Edited by Tim Soens, Dieter Schott, Michael Toyka-Seid and
Bert De Munck
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Advances-in-Urban-History/book-series/RAUH
Urbanizing Nature
Actors and Agency (Dis)Connecting
Cities and Nature Since 1500
Edited by Tim Soens, Dieter Schott,
Michael Toyka-Seid and
Bert De Munck
First published 2019
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Soens, Tim, editor.
Title: Urbanizing nature : actors and agency (dis)connecting cities
and nature since 1500 / edited by Tim Soens, Dieter Schott,
Michael Toyka-Seid, and Bert De Munck.
Description: New York : Taylor & Francis, 2018. | Includes
bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN
2018046898 (print) | LCCN 2018054345 (ebook) | ISBN
9780429024726 | ISBN 9780367110864
Subjects: LCSH: Urban ecology (Sociology)—Europe—
History. | Urbanization—Environmental aspects—Europe—
History. | Cities and towns—Europe—History. | Human
ecology—Europe—History. | Nature—Effect of human beings
on—Europe—History.
Classification: LCC HT243.E85 (ebook) | LCC HT243.E85 U74
2018 (print) | DDC 307.76094—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018046898
ISBN: 978-0-367-11086-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02472-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Figures viii
Series Editors’ Preface x
BERT DE MUNCK AND SIMON GUNN
Acknowledgments xiv
PART I
Introduction 1
Introduction: Did Cities Change Nature? A Long-Term
Perspective 3
TIM SOENS, DIETER SCHOTT, MICHAEL TOYKA-SEID AND
BERT DE MUNCK
PART II
Nature Into Urban Hinterlands 27
1 Long-Term Transitions, Urban Imprint and the
Construction of Hinterlands 29
SABINE BARLES AND MARTIN KNOLL
2 Concepts of Urban Agency and the Transformation of
Urban Hinterlands: The Case of Berlin, Eighteenth to
Twentieth Centuries 50
CHRISTOPH BERNHARDT
3 A Place in Its Own Right: The Rural-Urban Fringe of
Helsinki From the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present 65
MARJAANA NIEMI
vi Contents
PART III
Nature as Urban Resource 87
4 Urbanizing Water: Looking Beyond the Transition to
Water Modernity in the Cities of the Southern Low
Countries, Thirteenth to Nineteenth Centuries 89
RIC JANSSENS AND TIM SOENS
5 Cities Hiding the Forests: Wood Supply, Hinterlands
and Urban Agency in the Southern Low Countries,
Thirteenth to Eighteenth Centuries 112
PAULO CHARRUADAS AND CHLOÉ DELIGNE
6 Energizing European Cities: From Wood Provision
to Solar Panels—Providing Energy for
Urban Demand, 1800–2000 135
DIETER SCHOTT
7 Re-use and Recycling in Western European Cities 157
GEORG STÖGER
PART IV
Nature as Urban Challenge 177
8 Hydraulic Experts and the Challenges of Water in Early
Modern Times: European Colonial Cities Compared 179
KAREL DAVIDS
9 Stockholm’s Changing Waterscape: A Long-Term
Perspective on a City and Its Flowing Water 197
EVA JAKOBSSON
10 Air Pollution as Urban Problem in France, From the
Mid-nineteenth Century to the 1970s 217
STÉPHANE FRIOUX
PART V
Visions of Urban Nature 239
11 Urban Fringes: Conquering Riversides and Lakeshores
in the Nineteenth Century—Examples From Austrian
and Swiss Medium-Sized Cities 241
CHRISTIAN ROHR
Contents vii
12 Twentieth-Century Wastescapes: Cities, Consumers,
and Their Dumping Grounds 261
HEIKE WEBER
13 The Roots of the Sustainable City: The Visible
Waters of the City in Modern Mainz and Wiesbaden 290
MICHAEL TOYKA-SEID
PART VI
Concluding Essay 311
14 Beyond Cities, Beyond Nature: Building a
European Urban Stratum 313
CHRIS OTTER
Contributors 329
Index 333
Figures
1.1 Distinction between ‘hinterland’ and ‘Umland’ in the
work of Eugene van Cleef 33
1.2 Theoretically reserved zone (arrondissement) for wood
supply of Paris in the Seine basin as defined in 1785 43
2.1 Map of the Berlin region around 1780 55
4.1 Monumental neighborhood well with pump (demolished
in 1882) at the Antwerp Veemarkt, watercolor by Jozef
Linnig, 1849 95
4.2 Neighborhood pump at the Bontwerkersplaats in
Antwerp, photo Léon Keusters, c. 1935 98
4.3 Continuity and change in water supplies: neighborhood
pump with ‘tap’ connected to ‘modern’ network of piped
water, Antwerp, early twentieth century (?) 107
5.1 Map of the Low Countries, showing the principal cities
and the different political principalities 116
5.2 Map of the ‘Belgian’ forest cover at the end of the
eighteenth century based on the Ferraris map 118
5.3 Le livre des Déduis du roi Modus et de la Reine Ratio:
manuscript of the fifteenth century probably
made in Brussels 120
5.4 The lumber port of Liège around 1549 122
5.5 Lumberjacks cutting down tree rows 125
7.1 Pre-modern recycling practices persisted especially
among the urban poor, as this photography of a
chiffonnier’s premises in a Parisian shantytown by
Eugène Atget shows, 1910s 163
7.2 GDR press photo displaying the state-driven collection
of glass, paper and scrap metal in Eastern Berlin, 1974 170
8.1 Entrance of the canal of Nochistongo, constructed in
the seventeenth century as part of the drainage system of
Mexico City 185
8.2 Plan of the town of Batavia in the middle of the
seventeenth century 187
Figures ix
9.1 Stockholm panorama. Lithograph by Carl Johan
Billmark 1868 198
10.1 Comparison between the ‘topographical conditions of
industrial fogs’ respectively in the Meuse Valley (A) and
in Lyon (B) 229
10.2 Chart drawn after an airplane fog observation in the
Lyon area 230
11.1 The city of Wels according to the copperplate print by
Matthäus Merian, Frankfurt, 1649 243
11.2 The city of Wels shortly before the urban expansion
onto the former floodplains began 246
11.3 The city of Wels in 1895, shortly before the two
disastrous floods of 1897 and 1899 246
11.4 Johann Schauer’s personal visions for a new bourgeois
villa quarter in the former floodplains 247
11.5 The Volksgartenstraße in Wels during the flood of
1899 248
11.6 The provisional opening of the new steel and stone
bridge across the Traun River in 1901, celebrated as a
public fair 249
11.7 The city center of Lucerne—maps from 1840 to 1848 251
11.8 Lucerne and Lake Lucerne: view from the Schweizerhof
Hotel across the new Schweizerhofquai embankment
and Schwanenplatz square, colored lithograph,
around 1860 252
11.9 Lucerne during the flood of June 1910. View across the
Schweizerhofquai embankment with Saint-Leodegar
church in the background. 254
12.1 View from the Emscher River, noticeable in the front
of the photograph, toward the Emscherbruch central
landfill site 265
12.2 Waste workers, scavengers, dogs and a waste truck on
the Monte Scherbelino, around 1930. In the smaller
photograph, a worker is watering the dump. 270
12.3 Waste trucks, lorries and caterpillars on the ZDE, West
Germany’s model sanitary landfill, 1974 273
12.4 The Monte Scherbelino as seen from the air 277
12.5 Park benches, playgrounds, walking paths and greened
hilly spaces invited Frankfurt’s inhabitants to explore
the artificial Monte Scherbelino hill 277
12.6 Photograph from the first public inspection of the
cordoned-off Monte Scherbelino, 2012 283