An assemblage of urban water access: The geography of water marginalization in Amsterdam, 1690-1840

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

This article delves into the urban environmental history of early modern Amsterdam through the examination of water access. In this coastal city, environmental change combined with the late 16th and especially 17th century urban growth made ground and surface waters brackish and polluted. As a result, access to clean drinking water required substantial efforts. A combined system of mainly rain containers (cisterns) and surface water imports from upstream made for a complex and continuously changing water infrastructure. In this article, I employ novel data on the different ways in which people accessed potable water to explore the neglected spatial and environmental inequalities of early modern Amsterdam's water access. I discuss new data on thousands of previously underexplored rain containers that laid in public space but were for private use. I map and analyse the unequal access to water on a city-wide level, on the level of individual streets and on the level of individual households and their everyday practices.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)231-245
Number of pages15
JournalJournal of Historical Geography
Volume86
Early online date12 Oct 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 12 Oct 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s)

Funding

Funding: This publication is part of the project \u2018Coping with drought. An environmental history of drinking water and climate change in the Netherlands, 1550\u20131850\u2019 (project number 406.18.HW.015) of the research programme Open Competition SSH which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The author would like to thank Petra van Dam, Milja van Tielhof, D\u00E1niel Moerman, Marja Heier and Ranjith Jayasena for their insights on the draft text of this paper.

FundersFunder number
Petra van Dam
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek

    Keywords

    • Early modern
    • Environmental inequality
    • Rainwater
    • Water access
    • Water plurality

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