[Athena] Appel à communication "Cities and rivers ­ long term development of socio-natural sites"

[Genevieve Massard-Guilbaud <massard AT ehess.fr>]

Title: Appel à communication "Cities and rivers – long term development of socio-natural sites"

Call for Papers: European Association of Urban History, 11th Conference on Urban 
History “Cities and Societies in Comparative Perspective, 29th August-1st September 
2012 Prague, Czech Republic; Deadline for submission of paper proposals: 1st October 
2011  
 
Session: Cities and rivers – long term development of socio-natural sites 
 
Organizers: Dieter Schott (TU Darmstadt, Germany), Martin Knoll (TU Darmstadt, 
Germany), Martin Schmid (Center for Environmental History Vienna, Austria) 
Section: Main session 
Period: All periods 
 
What is the river’s place in urban history? The historical co-evolution of cities and rivers is a 
research topic that needs a combined perspective of urban with environmental history. Rivers 
have been essential for the foundation, growth, prosperity and development of many major 
cities in Europe. Cities have considerably altered river stretches and hydraulic regimes. Rivers 
perform a variety of basal functions for the cities they touch: transport, energy, food, drinking 
water, leisure site, at the same time they are universal sinks for waste. Rivers protect and link 
cities to each other, via natural fords or bridges they attract traffic from far afield. Whereas 
cities tried to control and manage their rivers for centuries, these attempts have never been 
fully successful due to the natural dynamics of rivers. Enormous variations in water discharge 
with frequent floods could result in heavy damages of urban infrastructure, pathogens from 
riverine landscapes, diffused by contaminated drinking water heavily affected urban 
populations. Rivers are an essential part of Europe's urban history. This panel approaches 
city-river relations in a comparative perspective, both in chronological and regional respect. 
The session's first part will focus on medieval and pre-modern cities. During this »Age of 
Water« – in André Guillerme's terms – the adaption of local watercourses played a crucial 
role for urban development and economy. Major manipulations of rivers already took place in 
this period but are still underestimated in current research. The session's second part will 
concentrate on the 19th and 20th century. Industrialization then offered new technologies to 
span hitherto unbridged rivers, to link ‘new’ rail transport to ‘traditional’ (but machine driven) 
river transport, to create artificial river beds on large spatial scales, to reshape the course of 
rivers to accommodate new functions such as extensive urban ports, industrial parks, hydro- 
power stations etc. With such a long-term approach from medieval to contemporary times, the 
panel aims to identify and discuss long term legacies as well as fundamental changes in city- 
river relations. As a common conceptual framework we suggest to approach cities and rivers 
as »socio-natural sites« (Winiwarter & Schmid 2008) and therefore as hybrids between 
nature, society and culture. 
 
We seek for contributions re-thinking cities as elements of highly dynamic fluvial landscapes, 
and re-thinking urban rivers as perceived and manipulated parts of urban infrastructure. In 
particular we encourage proposals which: 
 
• identify turning points in the development of city-river-relations, or 
• investigate spatial interfaces between  cities and rivers, such as bridges, ports, 
promenades, flood plains, sewage plants, freshwater reservoirs etc., and their 
transformation over time, or 
• focus on energy as an important link between nature and society and thus a way of 
approaching cities and rivers as socio-natural sites, that includes issues like kinetic 
energy use, the role of river transport for feeding and fuelling cities (e. g. fuel wood), 
riverine landscapes as a source of nutrients, food and fodder, etc, 
• follow or open up a comparative perspective within or between river basins, within or 
across periods from late medieval till recent times 
 
Please send an abstract of up to 250 words and a short academic CV to Dieter Schott 
(schott AT pg.tu-darmstadt.de) 
 
Deadline for submission: October 1st 2011.