Feeding and cleaning the city: the role of the urban waterscape in provision and disposal in Vienna during the industrial transformation

Abstract

This article presents an integrated socio-ecological perspective on the changing interrelations between Vienna’s “urban metabolism” and the river Danube during the industrial transformation in the nineteenth century. During this period of rapid urban population growth and industrial development, the amount of materials and energy used in the city as well as the corresponding outflows of wastes and emissions, that is, the size of urban metabolism, multiplied. These changes in urban metabolism had a profound effect on the relation between city and river. The paper explores the changing role of the Danube and its waterscape for urban supply and urban discharge in the period from 1800 to 1910. It presents quantitative information on urban resource supply and river transport and discusses the changing function of the river as a major transport route. It investigates urban discharge of waste water and the evolution of a sewer system and discusses how the changing waterscape was reflected in perception and discourse. We find that there was a qualitative change in the transport function of the river. While the river lost importance in the provision of the city with energy it remained crucial for the supply of cereals. Furthermore we observe a general shift from the significance of the river in supplying the city towards the river’s function for the disposal of waste.