Cities in a Sunburnt Country: Water and the Making of Urban Australia (Studies in Environment and History)

As Australian cities face uncertain water futures, what insights can the history of Aboriginal and settler relationships with water yield? Residents have come to expect reliable, safe, and cheap water, but natural limits and the costs of maintaining and expanding water networks are at odds with forms and cultures of urban water use. Cities in a Sunburnt Country is the first comparative study of the provision, use, and social impact of water and water infrastructure in Australia's five largest cities. Drawing on environmental, urban, and economic history, this co-authored book challenges widely held assumptions, both in Australia and around the world, about water management, consumption, and sustainability. From the 'living water' of Aboriginal cultures to the rise of networked water infrastructure, the book invites us to take a long view of how water has shaped our cities, and how urban water systems and cultures might weather a warming world.

Margaret Cook is an environmental historian, author of A River with a City Problem: A History of Brisbane Floods (2019) and co-editor (with Scott McKinnon) of Disasters in Australia and New Zealand (2020). She was the recipient of the John and Ruth Kerr Medal of Distinction in History (2020).

Lionel Frost is the author of The New Urban Frontier: Urbanisation and City-Building in Australasia and the American West (1991), winner of the Dyos Prize in Urban History (1994), and a contributor to the Cambridge History of Australia (2013), Cambridge World History (2015), and Cambridge Economic History of Australia (2015).

Andrea Gaynor is Professor of History and Australian Research Council Future Fellow at The University of Western Australia. An environmental historian, she seeks to use the contextualising and narrative power of history to support transitions to more just and sustainable societies.

Jenny Gregory AM FRHS is Emeritus Professor of History at The University of Western Australia. Her research focuses on urban history, primarily town planning and heritage. Her books include City of Light: A History of Perth since the 1950s (2003) and, as Editor-in-Chief, the Historical Encyclopedia of Western Australia (2009).

Ruth A. Morgan is an environmental historian, whose prize-winning work on the histories of water and climate has been generously funded by the Australian Research Council and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She is a Lead Author in Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report.