The long history of water in the city shows the recurrence of fundamental problems of living together: supplying a growing number of inhabitants ; discharge wastewater without excessive pollution. From antiquity to the present day, this book highlights the variety of solutions and actors involved, studying how water became a political issue.
Contributed to this work Élisabeth Davin-Mortier, Dany Fougères, Frédéric Graber, Damien Larrouqué, Vincent Lemire, Chloé Nicolas-Artero, Bjørn Poulsen And Marguerite Ronin.
From Roman aqueducts which still capture the imagination to the treatment of drinking water whose composition calls for renewed regulatory efforts ; of the municipalization of water as a public good in Montreal XIXe century until its privatization in Santiago de Chile in XXe : the history of water in cities is far from being that of linear progress.
On the contrary, this hydrohistory shows the variety of practical, legal or financial solutions invented by urban actors and revealing the social balances at work. The chapters of this book each focus on a city to understand how the supply and treatment of water results from environmental and technical constraints, but also from political choices, inevitably expressed in a call for the common good.
Table of contents
– Preface, by Vincent Lemire
– Introduction, by Tobias Boestad and Pauline Guéna
L’WATER AT COUR OF POWER
– Water in Rome. Always too much, never enough, by Marguerite Ronin
– Tel Aviv water. Quenching the thirst of a city with exponential growth (1909-1948), by Élisabeth Davin-Mortier
SERVICE AUDIENCE, SERVICE PRIVE
– Water management in neoliberal countries: the case of Santiago de Chile, by Damien Larrouqué and Chloé Nicolas-Artero
– Drinking water in Montreal XIX th century: the birth of a municipal service, by Dany Fougères
DIES HISTORICAL
– Water in medieval Danish towns, by Bjørn Poulsen
– Water networks in French cities XIX th century, by Frédéric Graber
– Commented bibliography