Environment and infrastructure : challenges, knowledge and innovation from the early modern period to the present / Giacomo Bonan and Katia Occhi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bonan, Giacomo, author.

Occhi, Katia, author.

Series:

Studies in Early Modern and Contemporary European History

Studies in Early Modern and Contemporary European History ; v.6

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Infrastructure (Economics)--Environmental aspects.

Infrastructure (Economics).

Infrastructure (Economics)--Europe--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (246 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin : Walter de Gruyter GmbH, [2023]

Summary:

The material and energy flows that characterized the metabolism of preindustrial and industrial societies were organized through complex infrastructures based on interwoven social and natural elements. Analyzing infrastructures from many methodological and thematic perspectives, the present volume adopts an extensive periodization to identify the undeniable changes caused by industrialization and the persistence of pre-existing features and dynamics. The contributions range from the late Middle Ages to the 1990s and deepen historical characteristics of urban metabolism, the study of energy systems and their transitions, and the management and control of water resources. These reveal the strategies societies and states adopted to transform and adapt their surrounding environment in a constant and challenging equilibrium of diverse interests, whose impact over time has had environmental consequences on a global scale.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

The Hybrid Nature of Infrastructures

I. Overview

Provocations to Environmental History and History of Technology: The Anthropocene

II. Urban Metabolism and the Transformation of Hinterlands

Urban Environmental Infrastructure in the Eastern Alpine Region. (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century)

From “Stues” to “Çates”

Uranium Stories

III. The Multiple Scales of Enviro-Technical Systems

Water as Infrastructure and the Scalar Mismatch

The Ideal Public for Infrastructures

Dirty New Natures

IV. Hybrid Landscape: Infrastructures of Water Control

Coping with Water

Slow Infrastructures, Flood Protection and Extreme Weather Events

Decadent Infrastructure?

V. Conclusion

Afterword: Reflections on Environmental Infrastructure

Contributors

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Bonan, Giacomo Environment and Infrastructure

ISBN:

3-11-111275-6