Dieter Schott

Martin Knoll

Uwe Lubken

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.

Rethinking City-River Relations

Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained

Reinhold Reith

The environmental history of early modern times is a seminal and lively field of historical research. This volume offers ten concise essays that provide an overview of current research debates on a broad span of topics, such as historical climatology and climate reconstruction, coping with disaster, land use and agricultural knowledge, forest history, urbanization, the perceptions of (alpine) nature, and societal dealings with water and rivers. Taken together, the contributions establish early modern studies as a promising laboratory for new avenues in environmental history. (Series: Austria: Research and Science - History / Austria: Forschung und Wissenschaft - Geschichte - Vol. 10) [Subject: History, Environmental Studies]

Experiments and Perspectives

An Environmental History of the Early Modern Period

Werke der historisch-topografischen Literatur - wie die Merian-Topografien, in denen Länder, Regionen oder Städte in Text, Bild und Karte beschrieben wurden - waren Bestseller der Frühen Neuzeit. Martin Knoll untersucht dieses Genre erstmals als Medium historischer Umweltwahrnehmung. Ausgehend von einem praxistheoretischen Wahrnehmungskonzept spürt er den materiellen, sozialen und medialen Faktoren nach, die das topografische Bild von Gesellschaft und Umwelt prägten. Die Studie trägt damit nicht nur zur Kultur- und Umweltgeschichte bei, sondern ist auch interessant für Wissens- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Kartografiegeschichte sowie Kunstgeschichte.

Martin Knoll

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