How water and its use shaped the spatial development of Vienna

Hauer, Friedrich; Hohensinner, Severin; Spitzbart-Glasl, Christina

doi:10.1007/s12685-016-0169-7

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…In the UK River Mersey system, coal dust and brick-making residues were fed directly into rivers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in particular, as were human and animal waste. It is dominantly urban populations that now best get protected from floods and erosion through engineering structures, whilst watercourses have also constrained city layouts (Haur et al, 2016). Downstream rural environments have been less modified, but have paid a price in terms of the flooding and channel and floodplain pollution with toxic materials, as described above.…”

Section: Discriminating Anthropogenic Timelines In River Systems On a Global Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

River stresses in anthropogenic times: Large-scale global patterns and extended environmental timelines

Macklin

Lewin

2018

Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment

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Global perspectives on the complexities of environmental change impacts associated with past and present human activity are needed for the food and water security challenges of the twenty-first century. This is especially true for rivers, for which the onset and persistence of a range in human activities, altering their function and form, have been temporally and spatially variable. Ancient civilisations, states and empires extended geographically to cover sub-continental areas where their river modifying activities became linked to regional Earth system stresses arising from climate and land use change. We present a new interpretative framework for characterising and classifying human impact on river systems, emphasising that this has taken place over decadal to millennial time periods on a sub-continental scale. This 16-element classification and documentation of different human transformations, including land management, urbanisation, industry and engineering activities, is used to explore anthropogenic channel and floodplain disruptions that have followed each other in different sequences in different places. It is significant that these inadvertent and deliberate human interventions have also taken place in parallel with contrasting climatic fluctuations that have been sub-continental in scale and varied in time. We assess the influence of the dominant modes of regional climate variability (monsoons, El Niño Southern Oscillation, Indian Ocean Dipole, North Atlantic Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Siberian High) on the speed and pattern of river system adjustment to anthropogenic perturbations. Some river civilisations have proved resilient to change given their adaptive management, while others have been overwhelmed by climate-related changes in river morphodynamics. We conclude that integrated socioeconomic, climatic and hydromorphological histories provide usefully instructive antecedents for sensibly managing, as they evolve, the even more serious coupled environmental stresses likely in the future.

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Section: Discriminating Anthropogenic Timelines In River Systems On a Global Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

River stresses in anthropogenic times: Large-scale global patterns and extended environmental timelines

Macklin

Lewin

2018

Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment

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“…In other words, the co-construction of technology and modernity can be seen with exceptional clarity in the case of infrastructure. (Edwards 2003) Hydraulic infrastructures and their place and role in the naturally different riverine ecosystems of four European cities during the process of changing the energetic basis of society are the focus of the studies in this issue (Deligne 2016;Hauer et al 2016;Pollack et al 2016;Reynard 2016;Winiwarter et al 2016) For the United States of America, industrialization along the Merrimack River meant converting rural into urban space. However, Europe had been urbanized to some degree since the twelfth century and the cities we are comparing here all have a long history, predating the advent of the Industrial Revolution by centuries.…”

Section: Urban-river-systems and Their Transformation From An Environmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Hauer et al (2016) and Pollack et al (2016) can show in unprecedented spatially explicit detail, the above-and belowground aquatic network had a large bearing on urban development. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, water use was multifunctional.…”

Section: Vienna and The Danube The Wien River And The Wienerwald Creeksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They could easily be integrated to the sewer network without paying attention to natural flow dynamics and could be filled in just as easily. But the construction of the new harbor as an expensive waterborne infrastructure when such infrastructure was about to become obsolete provides an interesting parallel to the Wiener Neustadt Shipping Canal in Vienna (Hauer et al 2016).…”

Section: Munich and The Isarmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The long-term evolution of urban waters and their nineteenth century transformation in European cities. A comparative environmental history

et al. 2016

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The nineteenth century was marked by a fundamental change in city-river relations. The environmental history perspective employed in this article illustrates how the complex interplay between the diverse natural and societal endowment of four European cities (Brussels, Lyon, Munich, and Vienna) shaped urban aquatic networks. Throughout the long-term co-evolution of the urbanites and their aquatic network, different sources of waterpower in the cities had led to differences in use and transformation. In the nineteenth century, industrialization induced a shift to a fossil energy regime in all four study sites. Population growth and urbanization required new areas for housing, industry, and trade, as well as new means of sanitation. Main drivers of the transformation included river engineering, flood protection dikes, advances in the fight against epidemic cholera, improved sanitation, water supply, and sewage networks. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the water networks of the four cities were thoroughly transformed. Despite different natural endowments, the four cities had grown increasingly similar, using water mainly as a metabolic substance for consumption and waste removal. Smaller watercourses had become part of the subterranean sewage network; larger ones were often vaulted or encased by flood protection walls leaving legacies for urban authorities in the twentieth century and beyond. Keywords Urban rivers Á Industrial revolution Á Brussels Á Lyon Á Munich Á Vienna Introductory paper for the thematic issue ''Comparing Urban Rivers'' (Water History).

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“…In Bavaria as in Munich, the progress of industrialisation was slow and only started around the middle of the 19th century. As in many other European cities in the 19th century, the building of railways was decisive for the fate of the city's stream network (Hartung and Preuß 1996). The extensive network of postal coach routes connecting the residence to the Bavarian territory prefigured the later railway node Munich would come to be.…”

Section: Short Introduction To the History Of Munichmentioning

confidence: 99%

The rise and fall of Munich’s early modern water network: a tale of prowess and power

2016

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Until the 19th century, not just the Isar River and its natural branches but also the ''Stadtbäche'', artificial canals, provided Munich with water for drinking, commerce, waste discharge, defense, ostentatious display and for other functions. In particular, the streams were the main transport route and offered hydropower for many mills and other hydropower-dependent facilities in the Preindustrial and Early Industrial Ages. The Isaran alpine river-transported large amounts of gravel and would often change its course. Regularly, floods destroyed dams and weirs. A fair distribution of water to all users on both sides of the river was difficult to negotiate because securing constant, reliable flow was one of the biggest challenges water engineers faced. The joint development of Munich and its waters was also influenced by the conflicts between citizens and the Bavarian duke as well as by the city's simultaneous function as ducal court of the house of Wittelsbach and as administrative centre of Bavaria. In the second half of the 19th century, when Munich became a metropolis, the city's streams played an important role in the process of urbanisation but also became a growing problem. An unprecedented level of pollution from increasing industrial activities and growing population required action. Solutions had to be found for the many tasks that were fulfilled by the city's streams. As in many other cities, electricity and railroads as new technologies of the Industrial Age enabled Munich's inhabitants to replace the essential local functions of the river. The artificial canals could then be filled in and most natural branches of the Isar disappeared below ground. One of the defining characteristics of the city, its unique reliance on canals, had ceased to be.

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How water and its use shaped the spatial development of Vienna

Cited by 11 publications

References 33 publications

River stresses in anthropogenic times: Large-scale global patterns and extended environmental timelines

River stresses in anthropogenic times: Large-scale global patterns and extended environmental timelines

The long-term evolution of urban waters and their nineteenth century transformation in European cities. A comparative environmental history

The rise and fall of Munich’s early modern water network: a tale of prowess and power

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