How would the history of an urban area look if water were at the center of analysis? Water in the Making of a Socio-Natural Landscape explores the transition from early modern to modern water management in late nineteenth-century Rome. It merges local water management with national water policies aimed at promoting irrigated agriculture, industrial processes, and public health. It investigates perceptions and conceptualisations of water, changes in the water law, engineering projects, medical knowledge and practices, value of water in different productions, and needs and uses of local stakeholders. From which derives that water infrastructures are the complex outcome of the clash between different users and uses of water as well as the dynamic interaction between different levels of power. In this book, it builds upon Maria Kaika’s Cities of flows and Erik Swyngedouw’s Liquid power to introduce a new dimension to the analysis of urban water: the interaction among the three main uses of water: drinking, agriculture, and industry.
Water in the Making of a Socio-Natural Landscape is written for a specialist readership with an interest in environmental and urban history and science and technology studies, but it can also be used by graduate and PhD students.
Author(s): Salvatore Valenti
Series: Routledge Advances in Urban History
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 195
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Water, a neglected topic in the histories of modern Rome
Taming water: a national enterprise
Looking for an approach to the nature–society interactions
Water, Roman area, and the making of the space: an analytic proposal
Notes
References
Chapter 1: Water, experts, and modernity
Risorgimento or the Italian path(s) towards modernisation
Physical and moral regeneration: water in the medical debate
Physical and material regeneration: Engineers at the conquest of modernity
Redeeming Rome and its surroundings
Conflicting water modernity
Conclusion
Notes
References
Archival sources
Official documents
Printed primary sources
Literature
Chapter 2: Mapping, engineering, law, and the struggle for water control in the Roman area
The conceptualisation of water as a ‘natural resource’ in late nineteenth-century surveys
The Roman surroundings
Engineering water: local communities between historical uses and the dream of modernity
The Villoresi Canal and the Milanese area
Defining water: local disputes and the making of the Italian water law
Conclusion
Notes
References
Archival sources
Official documents
Printed primary sources
Literature
Chapter 3: Water, health, and disease
Doctors in the state
Medical perception of water and Asiatic cholera in the mid-nineteenth century
The waters of Rome
Monitoring, improving, and spreading water supply
Social medicine and water provision
Water, malaria, and the colonisation of the Agro Romano
Conclusion
Notes
References
Archival sources
Official documents
Printed primary sources
Literature
Chapter 4: The value of water
Reconnecting Rome to its ancient water veins: archaeological or commercial enterprise?
Public needs, private profits: a difficult coexistence
The rent of water in the countryside
Conclusion
Notes
References
Archival sources
Official documents
Printed primary sources
Literature
Chapter 5: Water uses and the making of a new socio-natural landscape: The growth of Southeast Rome
Water and migration
Water in the birth of an industrial district
The waste side of water: poor environmental quality and popular housing
‘Unruly’ water and self-built neighbourhoods
Conclusion
Notes
References
Archival sources
Official documents
Printed primary sources
Literature
Chapter 6: Euro-Mediterranean socio-natural trajectories
National rebirth and social question
Liberalising and reconceptualising water
The waters of Madrid and Athens
Water between public service and private profits
Agency from below: private uses of water and the creation of mixed landscapes
Conclusion
Notes
References
Printed primary sources
Literature
Conclusion
Index
