Urban Rivers: Remaking Rivers, Cities, and Space in Europe and North America. Pittsburgh

摘要

In Urban Rivers: Remaking Rivers, Cities, and Space in Europe and North America Stephane Castonguay and Matthew Evenden have edited a volume that captures the dynamic relationship between humans and their waterways. Each essay elucidates part of this most complex portion of the nature-culture continuum from the aspect of historical geography and environmental history. Although the collection is limited geographically in its coverage, the essays range widely in the issues that they confront. As a collection Urban Rivers effectively demonstrates a common human interaction with nature that transcends borders of time and space. The editors' thoughtful approach to the collection is one of the clearest reasons for its success. In their introduction and conclusion Castonguay and Evenden provide a primer on how historical geographers can unlock the meaning and significance of rivers for practitioners of any type of history, but particularly environmental. 'Rivers shaped cities both internally and externally,' they write, and they set out to examine 'both the role of rivers in the process of urbanization and the impact of urbanization on rivers' (p. 2). Through their insight the noticeably limited, selective collection appears inspired instead of arbitrary.