
Projections Volume 14 | MIT Press
Editors: Andrea Beck and Isadora Cruxên
Abstract submission deadline: March 15th, 2018
Paper submission deadline: July 15th, 2018
The goods and ecosystem-based services provided by rivers have been indispensable for the emergence and development of many cities. The first urban civilizations arose on the floodplains of large rivers thousands of years ago. As documented by environmental historians and urban political ecologists, however, from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, urban rivers in much of the industrializing world served predominantly as shipping arteries, flood control channels, hydropower sources, and sinks for urban wastes in the quest for modernity and industrial growth. In the process of industrialization and urbanization, many rivers were being “pushed around” by planners and engineers, and many experienced morphological changes to such an extent that they came to resemble canals more than natural streams. Stretches of some urban rivers were even diverted into underground tunnels, paved, or filled, making them disappear entirely from the cityscape.
