Urban Rivers: Remaking Rivers, Cities, and Space in Europe and North America

摘要

Most historians have, at one time or another, used rivers as metaphors to suggest the flow of time. In contrast, the contributors to this volume have turned their attention to actual rivers, and with illuminating results. The collection explores rivers in Europe and North America that flowed directly through urbanizing and industrializing centers or lay within their expanding spheres of influence. Authored by historians and geographers, the twelve chapters cover the period between the seventeenth and mid-twentieth century and often include helpful maps, the best of which illustrate changes in rivers and their surrounding environments over time. The rivers under study played central roles in the development of Brussels, London, Oslo, Montreal, Paris, Vienna, Edinburgh, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and the cities of the Ohio River valley, and their stories demonstrate that the urban and industrial revolutions dramatically changed how Western societies related to their rivers.