Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained: Rethinking City-River Relations (History of the Urban Environment)

Martin Knoll

ISBN 10: 0822944596 / ISBN 13: 9780822944591

Published by University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017

About this Item

2017. Illustrated. Hardcover. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780822944591

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained: Rethinking City-River Relations (History of the Urban Environment)
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822944596
• ISBN 13: 9780822944591
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Many cities across the globe are rediscovering their rivers. After decades or even centuries of environmental decline and cultural neglect, waterfronts have been vamped up and become focal points of urban life again; hidden and covered streams have been daylighted while restoration projects have returned urban rivers in many places to a supposedly more natural state. This volume traces the complex and winding history of how cities have appropriated, lost, and regained their rivers. But rather than telling a linear story of progress, the chapters of this book highlight the ambivalence of these developments.

The four sections in Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained discuss how cities have gained control and exerted power over rivers and waterways far upstream and downstream; how rivers and floodplains in cityscapes have been transformed by urbanization and industrialization; how urban rivers have been represented in cultural manifestations, such as novels and songs; and how more recent strategies work to redefine and recreate the place of the river within the urban setting. At the nexus between environmental, urban, and water histories, Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained points out how the urban-river relationship can serve as a prime vantage point to analyze fundamental issues of modern environmental attitudes and practices.

About the Author

Martin Knoll is professor for the History of European Regions at the University of Salzburg, Austria.
Uwe Lübken is professor of American history at Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich.
Dieter Schott is professor for Modern History at Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany.