Description: Urban Rivers examines urban interventions on rivers through politics, economics, sanitation systems, technology, and societies; how rivers affected urbanization spatially, in infrastructure, territorial disputes, and in flood plains, and via their changing ecologies. Providing case studies from Vienna to Manitoba, the chapters assemble geographers and historians in a comparative survey of how cities and rivers interact from the seventeenth century to the present.
Review Quotes: This outstanding collection demonstrates the crucial role rivers have played in the environmental history of Europe and North America. The authors make it clear that rivers have been far more than geographic backdrops to the history of cities. Industrialization and urban growth radically altered rivers and their floodplains. Government schemes to harness rivers often had unintended consequences. A cautionary tale, Urban Rivers should be of interest to historians, geographers, and urban planners focused on the relationship between cities and their surroundings.-- "Charles Closmann, University of North Florida"