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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Wien River is the largest tributary of the Viennese Danube and was a center of urban production during industrialization. It's highly dynamic flow regime with small average discharge as well as recurrent big, fast floods posed challenges to its use. In this study we focus on the role of this urban watercourse for supplying water to crafts and industries and for wastewater discharge in the 19th century. Animal slaughtering, tanning, dyeing, textile printing, beer brewing, and chemical industry as main water demanding and polluting crafts were investigated. Their location in the catchment was determined and they were systematized by their needs of water and types of pollutants released into the river. Spatial distribution patterns of these industries from the end of the 18th to the end of the 19th century show a complex picture in terms of water supply and waste water discharge. We found very distinct patterns for different sections of the river as well as for different crafts and could observe a change over the time period investigated. Only few types of businesses lied close to the Wien River which can, to some extent, be explained with the high risk of flooding. Groundwater played a more important role for water supply while the main function of the river was wastewater discharge. Spatial distribution of crafts and industries, and changes in locations resulted from an interplay of environmental and social factors. Availability of surface waters, water supply, and discharge infrastructure (wells, pipelines, sewers) seem to have been important for the choice of location for production sites. Regulations concerning the exertion of industries, economic factors and technological innovation also played a role in the development of the observed spatial pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the relation between urban development and the Viennese Danube different periods can be identified from the late 17th to the early 20th century. These periods were strongly intertwined with both the history of the river and the history of the city. Urban expansion into the floodplains is demonstrated in this paper by investigating the island Unterer Werd, next to the city centre. In the late 17th century the fluvial dynamic still hampered urban development on the island. First measures to stabilise the river banks and to protect buildings from floods were taken soon thereafter, but the majority of practices aimed at mitigating the risks and impacts of the frequent floods: inundation was a part of the arrangement and the main target was to minimise the potential impacts. This practice also prevailed after the 1830s, when urban expansion began to move into the north and northwest of the island and the Danube floodplains were considered an important land resource for the growing city. In connection with new technologies and available means to channelise the river, the relationship between Vienna and the Danube changed fundamentally. Urban development in the riverine landscape gained new momentum. This process was initiated before the Great Danube Regulation from 1870 to 1875 was completed, the rate of growth accelerated after 1875. The last decades of the 19th century mark a turning point in the urban development of Vienna, with expanding urban areas becoming dependent upon a well functioning and maintained flood protection system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medieval Vienna was situated at the main arm of the swiftly flowing alpine Danube. From the fourteenth century onwards, the river gradually moved away from the city. This marked the beginning of 500 years of human intervention to prevent further displacement of the river and to preserve the waterway as a vital supply line. Archival research and the GIS-based reconstruction of the past riverscape allow a new view about the co-evolution of the city and the river. Following major channel changes in 1565/1566, repeated attempts to force the main arm into the old river bed were undertaken. By the early seventeenth century, the Viennese had accepted the new situation. Resources were now spent on maintaining the waterway to the city via the remaining Wiener arm. After the second Ottoman siege in 1683, improving the navigability of the Wiener arm, in conjunction with major expansions of the fortifications, became the main issue. Between 1775 and 1792, the first systematic, effective flood protection measures were established. These substantially influenced fluvial dynamics and enabled urban development in parts of the former floodplain. The all-embracing transformation of the dynamic riverscape into stabilised areas enabling urban growth and secure waterways was not achieved until 1875. With this successful 're-invention' of the Viennese Danube, an irreversible path was struck in the common life of the city and the river, a path which is still decisive for the interaction of Vienna with that great European river. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which insights can be gained from a long-term study for river management today? Vienna's layout and city budget are still influenced by interventions undertaken in the 19th century or even earlier. This introduction to a thematic issue on the Viennese Danube's environmental history from 1500 to 1890 offers a short overview of important events in Vienna's and the Danube's intertwined histories as well as an overview of the study's conceptual basis and summarizes the main results, ranging from method development and floodplain evolution reconstruction to the histories of settlement, sewage and regulation. Today, Vienna is a city with almost 2 million inhabitants, the capital of a small, landlocked country. Since the great regulation of the 1870s, the Danube river has flowed straight through it. A second, parallel river bed was designed in the 1970s to build a retention basin big enough to cope even with major floods. The path leading to this arrangement was both long and winding. To understand the complex interaction between urbanites and the river, one must look beyond the water-filled channel and take the entire floodplain into account. To do this, our interdisciplinary group of researchers synthesized results from river morphology and history into a long-term perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of an interdisciplinary project on the environmental history of the Viennese Danube, the past river landscape was reconstructed. This article describes the different types of historical sources used for the GIS-based reconstruction, the underlying methodological approach and its limitations regarding reliability and information value. The reconstruction was based on three cornerstones: (1) the available historical sources; (2) knowledge about morphological processes typical for the Austrian Danube prior to regulation; and (3) the interpretation of past hydraulic measures with respect to their effectiveness and their impact on the river's behaviour. We compiled ten historical states of the riverscape step-by-step going backwards in time to the early 16th century. After one historical situation had been completed, we evaluated its relevance for the temporally younger situations and whether corrections would have to be made. Such a regressive-iterative approach allows for permanent critical revision of the reconstructed time segments already processed. The resulting maps of the Danube floodplain from 1529 to 2010 provide a solid basis for interpreting the environmental conditions for Vienna's urban development. They also help to localise certain riverine and urban landmarks (such as river arms or bridges) relevant for the history of Vienna. We conclude that the diversity of approaches and findings of the historical and natural sciences (river morphology, hydrology) provide key synergies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alluvial rivers can show unpredictable channel changes and humans living along the river corridor repeatedly have to cope with the alterations of their physical environment. This was specifically the case in the mid-sixteenth century, when the Viennese were confronted with one major problem: the Danube River successively abandoned its main arm that ran close to the city and shifted further north. This was at the time when Vienna became the permanent residence of the Holy Roman Empire (except from 1583 to 1611 when it was moved to Prague), due to the Habsburgs holding the crown. Vienna was also the capital of the so-called Danube Monarchy, which came into being in the early sixteenth century. The city assumed increasing significance, being home to and hosting important authorities and persons. In particular after the first siege by the Ottoman army in 1529, the resource need for a complex fortification system was extremely high. This paper aims to highlight: (1) the morphological Danube dynamics together with floods and extreme weather situations in the sixteenth century; (2) the main actors in the transformation of the Danube; (3) changes of the river's course from 1550 to 1600/1650 and the consequences for bridging the river and the infrastructure as a whole; (4) the massive engineering measures that were undertaken in order to secure Vienna's requirements in the sixteenth century; (5) the question of floodplain settlements, and (6) the contested use of resources on the Viennese Danube floodplain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]