Urban Environmental History

Early modern Amsterdam was an ultra-modern city, laid out conforming to the triple demand of functionality, beauty and profit; a city that takes a unique place in European urban history because of its location, design, and impressive scale. 'Metropolis in the Making' tells the story of Amsterdam becoming one of the largest cities in Europe in the seventeenth century. Amsterdam was one of the cradles of capitalism, but at the same time one of the most meticulously planned cities in the world.
After the Fall of Antwerp in 1585, Amsterdam took over its position as the main trade hub in northwestern Europe. The city grew rapidly to become the central harbour town – and one of the largest European cities. The boom in harbours and industry went hand in hand with an explosive population growth. This resulted in two huge city extensions in 1613 and 1663, multiplying the territory of Amsterdam by five. Around the old town, the now famous ring of canals was constructed. Beyond this residential zone mixed-use and industrial districts were laid out, with a series of harbour islands along the borders of the IJ. This book deals with the question how Amsterdam’s administration managed to realize these immense projects from the viewpoints of urban design, infrastructure, logistics, and finance.
The first part of this book is dedicated to the extension projects. A thorough analysis of all remaining administrative archives and a great many cartographic documents has enabled the author to reconstruct the decision process about the scale, design, and realization of the extensions. The second part contains chapters concerning land use, public space and water management. 'Metropolis in the Making' tells the story of one of the cradles of early modern capitalism and at the same time one of the most meticulously planned cities in the world.

In this paper, I wish to explore the way in which ideas about water and land, swamps and wetlands have been played out in the town planning of one of the driest continents.
From the very beginning of settlement in 1829, the swamps and marshes around Perth, Western Australia, were viewed as a resource, either because of the water within them, or because of their value as garden land, if only the water were drained away. The first mill in the townsite was established on a water race, based on the rate of flow of water through the sand on which the town was built. However, the fear of miasmas and later, mosquitoes, saw the majority of the swamps filled or drained. In the 1870s, Frederick Aloysius Weld, Governor of the colony, became so concerned about the lack of fresh water for the townsite that he established a number of water reserves. In the 20th century, only a small proportion of the original swamps remained, and the memory of the original wetlands was lost, so much so that the pumps required in major buildings to keep the water at bay had almost acquired the status of myth. The remaining swamps were redeveloped as lakes.
More recently, the swamps have enjoyed a resurgence as wetlands, evidence of an environmental awareness and sensitivity missing in the past. Or is it? Dropping water tables, and an extended drought, have seen the 'lakes' become once more 'shallow depressions' and much debate has been expended on retaining the water through establishment of clay bases, recirculating pumps and the like.
Keywords: environmental history, urban history, town planning, swamps, lakes.

To Africa and Back Memoirs by J.D. Fage is one of the publications of well-researched Birmingham University African Studies Series. This book is one of the most siginificant contributions to the field of African history and African historiography, particularly the evolution of African history as a branch of the mother discipline – history. This work of history is an outgrowth of Fage's personal experiences with Africa, first, as military personnel who first knew the continent as a result of the Second World War and later as a reseracher, scholar and university don.

Avec ses vastes pelouses vallonnées, ses massifs d’arbres, ses nombreuses rocailles et ses étangs, le parc de Woluwe (Bruxelles) est aujourd’hui un lieu de promenade public très apprécié des citadins en quête de détente et de ressourcement. Mais en a-t-il toujours été ainsi ? L’auteur retrace ici l’histoire de ce grand espace vert de près de 70 hectares, dont les Parisiens firent l'éloge, non seulement dans ses dimensions paysagère et environnementale, mais aussi sous ses aspects humains : quels en furent les différents créateurs ? quelle fut son affectation originelle ? par qui a-t-il été fréquenté depuis son aménagement à la charnière des XIXe et XXe siècles ? Autant de questions auxquelles le lecteur pourra trouver réponse dans cet ouvrage.
[également disponible en e-book: http://patrimoine.brussels/fr/decouvrir/publications/bruxelles-ville-dart-et-dhistoire/le-parc-de-woluwe?set_language=fr]

During the first decades of its existence, Tel Aviv was characterized by rapid urban and demographic development. This growth resulted in a sharp rise of urban by-products, including vast increase in the volume of sewage that was mainly disposed of in the Mediterranean. The constructing of a municipal sewage system, which started at the late 1920s, increased the relative volume of sewage which was poured directly into the sea. In 1949 Tel Aviv's sea shore was declared polluted and bathing was prohibited. This situation lasted alternately for three decades. The deterioration of the beach area from its previous status as "Tel Aviv's Riviera" during the early 1940s into a malodorous urban back yard only a decade later, resulted in a project aiming at sea purification and reuse of the sewage for agriculture purposes. This article examines the ways in which Tel Aviv municipality dealt with the need of sewage disposal, including the environmental influence of the sewage on sea pollution, as well as the spatial development of the city's sewage system.

Un elemento acompaña al viaje de forma ineludible: el mapa. Cuando la popularidad de la bicicleta creció durante los últimos años del siglo XIX, la visión del espacio urbano y rural de los ciclistas se plasmó también en una particular cartografía. Mapas para ciclistas, hechos por ciclistas como Joaquim Bordons .

Major topics covered by this edition:

• Urban Environmental Conflicts
• Sustainable Construction
• Regional Development
• Energy Efficiency
• Ethics and Sustainability
• Environmental Management
• Innovation Management
• Technology Management
• Management of Cities
• Social Innovation
• Sectorial Reverse Logistics
• Urban Mobility
• Urban Territorial Planning
• Public Policy
• Corporate Social Responsibility

Review article that focuses on twenty years of publications on the city of Bangalore with special attention to:
- Askew—A Short Biography of Bangalore by TJS George
- Reengineering India—Work, Capital, and Class in an Offshore Economy by Carol Upadhya
- Encoding Race, Encoding Class—Indian IT Workers in Berlin by Sareeta Amrute

This paper served as the initial background research for the museum exhibition, Rethinking Porkopolis: Cincinnati's Environmental History, Through Pigs. It was presented at a special conference on the environmental history of the Ohio River Valley in fall of 2015.

The article presents the current trends of development of urban environmental history. The author explores the methodological approaches to the analysis of the environmental problems of the urban environment of the 19th – early 20th centuries and analyzes the reflection of the problems associated with household, industrial pollution and its consequences in the foreign and Russian historiography of urban environmental history.

Urban and environmental historians are becoming increasingly interested in the social construction of expertise in the management and control of natural resources. Experts are often depicted as disinterested, neutral and objective professionals, sufficiently qualified to gauge an independent perspective on a given problem. Yet what happens when an expert's judgment is called into question by other professional experts? The micro-analysis of socio-technological disasters offers one way to interrogate the construction and challenge of professional expertise at both the empirical and conceptual levels. Taking a comparative approach towards the study of two major reservoir failures involving considerable death and destruction in the United Kingdom – Holmfirth in 1852 and Sheffield in 1864 – this paper draws on the under-utilised research of the sociologist Barry Turner and others on the social aetiology of disasters as a route into revealing and accounting for the contested nature of expertise within the Victorian engineering professions. It is based on extensive archival research, including the written records of local and central government, private waterworks' proprietors, the printed press and the records of public inquiry. The cases reveal remarkable continuities in administrative and professional knowledge regarding the explanation of socio-technological disasters, as well as the widespread use of outside experts to interrogate the supposed failings of interested parties.

Free copy available until 4 December from http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Ps~P15XEnSlBh

During the 1980s, Roxbury and North Dorchester residents established a durable community development organization that confronted inequality through a variety of environmental improvements. African American, Latina/Latino, and Cape Verdeans drew upon their cultural traditions to plan and prioritize the objectives of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), an effort in which women took a leading role.
    The DSNI balanced the needs of stakeholders in the community, developed plans for an urban village in Dudley Square, acquired a level of political stature that allowed it to advance its agenda, and obtained outside funding for major projects. The DSNI accomplished these objectives with the help of leadership who had been veterans of the community development movement extending back to the 1960s.

Статья посвящена анализу процесса включения компонентов природной среды в сферу политики городского благоустройства в последней трети XIX в. Автор выдвигает и прорабатывает гипотезу о том, что городская реформа 1870 г. явилась ключевым
фактором в определении компонентов окружающей природной среды как объектов политики органов городского управления.

Rethinking Porkopolis was a museum exhibition that I researched, wrote and curated in partnership with the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati, Ohio. It uses environmental history to help Cincinnatian's reexamine the city's role as the capital of pork-packing in antebellum America, and how that industry forged connections between the city and the larger region, and especially the cotton plantations of the Deep South. It was a special exhibition at the Stowe House in Cincinnati in the fall of 2016, and will travel to sites around the region in 2017.

https://issuu.com/robertgioielli/docs/porkopolis_sample_pdfs

Makary Górzyński, University of Warsaw

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY PUBLIC PARK IN KALISZ:
A GARDEN OF CIVILIZATION


The aim of this book is to provide a detailed historical reconstruction of the comprehensive, late nineteenth-century renovation, expansion and restoration of the Kalisz’s famous public garden, opened for the public in 1798. Kalisz had been one of the Polish Kingdom’s (est. 1815) provincial capitals, and later became a governorate city (1867-1914), a modest town in the Russia-ruled Polish provinces. Despite it’s provincial size (ca. 25 000 inhabitants in the 1880s) Kalisz was perceived as a crucial borderland seat of the imperial administration, located close to the western outskirts of the Russian Empire. It was also a multiethnic trade, commerce and cultural centre for the Polish, Jewish, German and Russian communities. It’s picturesque public gardens, located on the banks of Prosna river, by the 1900s became one of the most elaborate town parks among Polish cities, famous for its statues, buildings, grottos or for a variety of charming vistas. In this book I try to examine not only the process of the complete renovation and enlargement of the garden from the 1870s to the 1910s, but also to describe the main ways of its functionalization in the local public sphere, cultural and social life. I perceive the Kalisz’s Belle Epoque park as one of the most elaborated Polish public spaces of a culture-based, human invention of the “Nature”, serving various actors of the urban population for entertainment, public hygiene or to articulate the political or the moral discourses of the local middle class and elites, being patrons of the garden. I will try to connect the garden architecture and sculptures from around the 1900s with the Kalisz’s contemporary public sphere and visual culture. Architectural structures and gardening style-patterns shaped crucial spaces of the modern recreation and commerce in this industrial city. At the same time, the Kalisz’s public garden may serve as a perfect example for studies of the spatial manifestations and interactions of the narratives of history, Russian government politics or private, sensual desires. All of these phenomena in the public park – a “garden of civilization” – were unfolding class-, national- or gender-based divisions and imperial politics in this Russia-ruled provincial Polish town, offering a fascinating field for contemporary urban and cultural studies.

The research addresses a central tension of modern society between materialism and retail expansion on the one hand and growing environmental awareness on the other, during the 1970s and 1980s. It does so through a study of the operations of Marks and Spencer, with comparative reference to other leading retailers, principally Sainsbury’s and the John Lewis Partnership.

Marks and Spencer experienced a complex renegotiation of its relationship with the environment and resource use as it underwent rapid expansion and changes in the period 1968-1992. This has yet to be addressed by academics, especially in relation to the notable growth in environmental concern at this time. It is this changing retail context, as experienced by Marks and Spencer, coupled with the evolving significance of the broader environmental agenda, which this thesis addresses. It makes extensive use of the Marks and Spencer Company Archive to address the importance of the company’s changing commercial operations, its relationship with consumers, the government and British society more broadly, in shaping its approach to the environment and resource use.

The thesis contributes to existing academic literature concerning retailing and the environment by illustrating the extent to which the environment was a highly constructed and negotiated retail concern, which invariably predated the environmental fervour of the late eighties and early nineties and the subsequent commercial clamour to be seen to be green. The research addresses Marks and Spencer’s response to environmental issues, its energy conservation efforts, its retail store development, as well as the internal and external environments of its stores. It shows how the relationship between retailers and the environment was shaped as much by the outlook and operations of individual retailers and the changing nature of modern retailing, as it was the wider environmental agenda and growing popular concern.

Cette contribution vise à situer le rapport entre la nature et la ville dans une perspective historique. Elle se concentre sur l’aménagement des espaces plantés parisiens sous le Second Empire, ainsi que sur la mise en place d’instruments nouveaux, techniques et culturels destinés à répondre aux attentes politiques et sociales de la ville « moderne ».

We trace the relationship between cities and rivers throughout history, following the evolving riverfront through the succession of shifting attitudes towards the river. From the early river-as-god, provider and destroyer, onto the harnessing of the river for economy and protection, through cycles of destruction and neglect, we analyse the shifts in uses, scale and structure of the waterfronts leading up to what we consider to be an era of opportunity, marked by a renewed awareness of the river's importance as a natural ecosystem corridor and as a major component of any riverine city's green structure.

This study analyses how and for what purpose water-construction works were carried out in the Kingdom of Hungary ín light of sources from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. The study aims to determine how the masters who took part ín these works acquired the necessary skills. The most important source studied is an account of the reconstruction of a mill in Sopron (Hungary) in 1540, which along with other sources is used to analyse the tasks of millers, ditch-diggers and pond masters.

One of the fundamental notions of realization of sustainable city within the framework of the theory of sustainable development is what affects the urban green spaces as well as the influence they may have. As the upshot of years' worth of experiences in the ideology of Iranian urban design, Iranian garden is of magnificently high position which possesses the potentials to act as the green space with a variety of functions to serve the promotion of sustainability in today's cities. Closely studying Dolat Abad garden as one example of the exquisite Iranian garden architecture in a comparative analysis, this study examines the role of gardens in the achievement of today's cities to sustainability within the frameworks of the theory of sustainable city. It will also attempt to prove the hypothesis regarding that Dolat Abad garden and the Taj Mahal have established themselves as sustainable elements in the two contemporary cities of Yazd and Agra, and will accordingly continue to remain so.

In 1904, the young landscape architect Jules Buyssens was appointed as Parks and Plantations Inspector by the City of Brussels. During the exercise of this office, he was responsable for some major projects such as the restoration of the gardens of the Abbey of la Cambre/Ter Kameren and the construction of Osseghem Park as part of the 1935 World Expo. As a champion of the “New Picturesque Garden”, he devoted a great deal of attention to floral decorations, which under his policy increased considerably in number, and introduced new species. However, this article delves beyond the projects that he did within the framework of his office. It outlines the scope and diversity of his mission and places the urban policy of the City of Brussels in a national and international context.

Von Thünen's model of land-use is very popular in the teaching of agricultural geography in schools and universities despite its demonstrable shortcomings. Concentric rings of land-use were not evident even around early nineteenth century London and there are other reasons why the model is not an appropriate context for the explanation of the location of horticulture and milk production at this time. A re-evaluation of over-simplistic methods of teaching von Thünen's ideas is necessary.

The paper discusses, how the metabolism of European cities was organised in the early 19th century and how this changed fundamentally throught the implementation of large technical networks like water and sewage systems, energy and transport systems. It further deliberates, how far cities became less sustainable in the course of these processes and how over the last decades the paradigms governing urban development became questioned.

Par leurs investissements successifs, les Schneider entraînent une densification de l’espace industriel constituant dès la fin du XIXe siècle l’une des plus grandes usines européennes. Jusqu’à son déclin progressif en 1939, cette ville industrielle se caractérise par une concentration impressionnante de procédés techniques polluants. Non circonscrites aux établissements industriels, les fumées industrielles se propagent dans les quartiers d’habitations donnant à la ville une mauvaise situation hygiénique. Pourtant, les fumées de cette ville-usine ne provoquent que peu de plaintes de la part des habitants ; ce sont davantage les observateurs extérieurs à la ville qui vont les décrire, les penser et les représenter de multiples manières. Les représentations des fumées de ce grand centre industriel évoluent en fonction des contextes économiques, politiques et sociaux du Creusot et de la France, passant d’un véritable culte des fumées à la prolifération de critiques.

Almost ten years ago, Denis Byrne noticed that Aboriginal heritage was gradually becoming foundational to our identity as a nation.  Australia’s quest for a “longer past” necessitated acknowledgement of the continent’s Indigenous roots (Byrne 1996: 82).  However, relatively little attention is being directed to analyzing the heritage of what Rapoport termed the more pragmatic manifestations of Aboriginal presence (Rapoport 1972) – for example, campsites. 

This paper proposes that considering increasing evidence for Aboriginal camping grounds not only surviving after settlement but became historic camps (‘fringe’ camps or town camps), these entities may have shaped the origin and character of our towns and suburbs to a far greater degree than is usually conceded. Examining the history of several camping grounds in and near Brisbane (Queensland), the author demonstrates their role in the founding of particular suburbs, and how the current location of many parks and reserves is a direct result of their endurance into the 1890s or even into modern times.

For more information on drObs and historical articles written by students, colleagues and me to support this social project see:
https://tu-dresden.de/gsw/phil/ige/fnz/studium/drobs-schreiben-fuer-die-dresdner-strassenzeitung

drObs 12 (2017), 19-20

The main objective of this thesis is to provide elements for the consolidation of a new culture of the territory and for a new theory & practice of urban and territorial planning, based on the the so-called paradigm ecological and the battery of concepts arisen around it, so contributing to complement and redirect the range of instruments developed by the urban discipline since its formation. To develop this objective, a double hypothesis has been used as a starting point: - First, that the new perspective from the ecology that was consolidated throughout the twentieth century in parallel with the increasingly clear symptoms of a global environmental crisis, is really a new global paradigm, intrinsically multidisciplinary, which can be called ecological paradigm, whose basic components and whose construction in epistemological and propositive terms reached maturity half a century ago. - Secondly, that this paradigm has already been translated in the field of urban and territorial planning in response to the crisis of cities and the crisis of urbanism, but that these theories and practices are not yet sufficiently articulated with each other and that there are many fields in which the new perspective has not yet been consistently applied. The epistemological perspective developed by the philosopher and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari in his work The Three Ecologies (1989) has been used as a framework of reference, built around what he defines as the three basic ecological dimensions: environmental, social and mental. This framework is very suitable to address the multidimensional nature of the new paradigm in relation to urban-territorial reality, considered as a mental and social phenomenon in permanent interrelation with its environment, and as an artifact product of the metabolic flows of energy, materials and information generated within a certain model of appropriation-transformation-distribution and consumption. This three-dimensional framework has allowed a systematic approach to a rhizomatic reality, in which many more interconnected dimensions can be identified. In order to adjust the dissertation to the necessarily linear structure that a written text must have, the thesis has been ordered in a series of thematic chapters according to the following sequence: 1. CONTEXT_Global crisis in an urban planet: the global crisis is addressed as a framework of reference, and then a synthetic tour is carried out through the movements of opposition to that crisis throughout the twentieth century, emphasizing the search for a unifying paradigm. 2. ECOLOGY_ Systems of relations: based on the biological roots of knowledge, as well as on the concept of paradigm according to Kuhn's formulation, the main features of the two conflicting paradigms, that of progress and the ecological one, are presented, tracing the origins of the latter. After presenting the three dimensions of ecology as an expression of a new Ecosophy, the grounds for the elaboration of a Theory of Needs are introduced. 3. SPACE_ The material configuration of the place: the bases for a theory of the space are established, following the formulation of Henri Lefebvre (The production of the space, 1974) and Placemaking by means of open and recursive strategies is proposed as the main objective of spatial planning 4. ACTION_ Objectives, subjects and tools for the ecological transition in urban and territorial planning: the proposal of an autopoietic utopia, that is, in permanent self-construction, really constitutes the core of the dissertation. The unavoidable vectors for the ecological transition are identified and the objectives and tools for a new urbanism inspired by the ecological paradigm are presented. 5. SCENARIOS_ Visions of a possible future: the main advances in the field of spatial planning following the ecological paradigm are set out, pointing out possible ways for its better articulation and focusing on the relevance of the creation of counter-spaces as mechanism of implementation of the open planning model proposed. The last chapter, TOWARDS THE CITY OF THE THREE ECOLOGIES, is offered as a coda or epilogue in which all the themes of the dissertation are presented intertwined and interwoven, revealing its articulation, and identifying the City of Three Ecologies as the utopia in progress or autopoietic utopia that needs to be built as a new model for the species' relationship with the Biosphere.

El objetivo principal de la presente tesis es aportar elementos para la consolidación de una nueva cultura del territorio y para una nueva teoría y una nueva práctica de la planificación urbana y territorial que, a partir de los materiales conceptuales que se articulan en torno al denominado paradigma ecológico, contribuya a complementar y reorientar el abanico de instrumentos desarrollados por la disciplina urbanística desde su formación, Para desarrollar dicho objetivo se ha partido de una doble hipótesis: •en primer lugar, que la nueva mirada desde la ecología que se fue consolidando a lo largo del siglo XX en paralelo con los cada vez más claros síntomas de una crisis ambiental global, constituye realmente un nuevo paradigma global, intrínsecamente multidisciplinar, al que podemos llamar ecológico, cuyos componentes básicos y cuya construcción en términos epistemológicos y propositivos alcanzó la madurez hace medio siglo. •en segundo lugar, que dicho paradigma ya se ha traducido en el ámbito de la planificación urbana y territorial como respuesta a la crisis de las ciudades y a la crisis del urbanismo, pero que estas teorías y prácticas parciales aún no están suficientemente articuladas entre sí y que son muchos los campos en los que todavía no se ha aplicado de forma consistente la nueva mirada. Como marco de referencia se ha recurrido a la perspectiva epistemológica desarrollada por el filósofo, y psicoanalista Félix Guattari en su obra Las tres ecologías (1989), a partir de lo que él define como las tres dimensiones ecológicas básicas: la ambiental, la social y la mental. Este marco resulta muy adecuado para abordar el carácter multidimensional del nuevo paradigma en relación con la realidad urbanoterritorial, considerada como fenómeno mental y social en permanente interrelación con su medio, y como artefacto producto de los flujos metabólicos de energía, materiales e información generados dentro de un determinado modelo de apropiación-transformación-distribución y consumo. Este armazón tridimensional ha permitido abordar de forma sistemática una realidad rizomática, en la que se pueden identificar muchas más dimensiones interconectadas. Con el fin de ajustar la disertación a la estructura forzosamente lineal que debe poseer un texto escrito la tesis se ha ordenado en una serie de capítulos temáticos de acuerdo con la siguiente secuencia: •1 CONTEXTO_Crisis global en un planeta urbano: se aborda la crisis global como marco de referencia y se lleva a cabo un recorrido sintético por los movimientos de respuesta a dicha crisis a lo largo del siglo XX, haciendo hincapié en la búsqueda de un paradigma unificador. •2 ECOLOGÍA_ Sistemas de relaciones: partiendo de las raíces biológicas del conocimiento, así como del concepto de paradigma según la formulación de Kuhn, se presentan los rasgos básicos de los dos paradigmas en pugna, el del progreso y el ecológico, rastreando los orígenes de este último. Tras presentar las tres dimensiones de la ecología como expresión de una nueva ecosofía, se introducen las bases para la elaboración de una teoría de las necesidades. •3 ESPACIO_ La configuración material del lugar: se establecen las bases para una teoría del espacio, siguiendo la formulación de Henri Lefebvre (La producción del espacio, 1974) y se propone como principal objetivo de la planificación espacial la Configuración de Lugares mediante estrategias abiertas y recursivas •4 ACCIÓN_ Objetivos, sujetos y herramientas para la transición ecológica en la planificación urbana y territorial: la propuesta de una utopía autopoiética, es decir, en permanente autoconstrucción, constituye realmente el núcleo de la disertación. Se identifican los vectores ineludibles para la transición ecológica y se exponen los objetivos y las herramientas para un nuevo urbanismo inspirado en el paradigma ecológico. •5 ESCENARIOS_ Visiones de un futuro posible: se exponen los principales avances en el campo de la planificación espacial de acuerdo con las premisas del paradigma ecológico, señalando posibles vías para su mejor articulación y haciendo especial hincapié en la relevancia de la creación de contraespacios como mecanismo de puesta en práctica del modelo de planificación abierta que se propone. El último capítulo, HACIA LA CIUDAD DE LAS TRES ECOLOGÍAS, se ofrece como una coda o epílogo en el que se presentan entrelazados e imbricados todos los temas de la disertación, poniendo de manifiesto su articulación e identificando la Ciudad de las Tres Ecologías como la utopía en marcha o utopía autopoiética que es preciso construir como modelo de relación de la especie con la Biosfera.

This article explores the relationship between the Brisbane River and its river-plain dwelling citizens between 1824 and 1900 through four distinctive narratives. The first is praise for the river for its economic and utilitarian potential until severe flooding in 1893 prompts a second response of incredulity, followed by a third viewpoint demanding engineering solutions to tame nature to prevent future floods. A fourth subordinate voice appeared as an undercurrent to the demands to control nature, reflecting a burgeoning realisation that human action had created the flood hazard. Settlers had created a problem for both the river and the city. I argue that despite the accumulation of flood experience and climatic knowledge, prospective actions have evolved little since the initial British settlement in 1824.

During the Middle Age centuries, the roads close to the towns were reorganized in accord with urban transformations.
Even in road links between cities and in planning rural landscape, the middle age culture has its own project vision which not always followed those of the ancient times.
The geography around cities takes form in many symbolic ways. New place names give a new plan to the territory. Sometimes the territory was designed with good drawing quality, sometimes it was described
more synthetically. In many cases, this plant was only a mental idea used for the mnemonic or the oral description of the places. Different
regional Italian places are studied in order to recognize words and theoretical and technical models used at that time. The result is a revaluation of the Middle Age people's ability in planning and managing roads and lands.

Nei secoli del medioevo le strade intorno alle città vengono rinnovate in relazione con le trasformazioni urbane. Anche nei collegamenti tra le città e nel disegno del paesaggio agrario la cultura medievale esprime una propria visione progettuale che non sempre ricalca le
forme del tempo antico.
La geografia del territorio delle singole città prende forma a seguito di  molteplici nuovi riferimenti simbolici e toponomastici. Il disegno delle nuove piante del territorio, talvolta di concreta qualità topografica, viene nella pratica corrente descritto mediante schemi essenziali spesso funzionali a processi verbali o di registrazione
mnemonica. Lo studio di differenti casi regionali italiani permette di avviare nuove ricerche su terminologie, modelli tecnici e teorici, verso la progressiva rivalutazione della perizia medievale nel governo e nel progetto del territorio.

Simandan D (2009) Industrialization, In R Kitchin & N Thrift, (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography , Oxford: Elsevier, volume 5, pp. 419-425.
ABSTRACT: This article (1) defines industrialisation and indicates ways in which it can be measured, (2) highlights the importance of the timing of industrialisation and the inherent limits to the proper scientific explanation of this phenomenon, (3) disentangles the often confused conceptual relation between industrialisation and capitalism, (4) explicates the causal links between industrialisation and modernisation, (5) undertakes a brief assessment of the relative costs and benefits of industrialisation, and (6) discloses the defining contours of scholarship on industrialisation in Anglo-American human geography and illustrates it with a recent attempt to integrate the field with the help of a master metaphor called ‘recursive cartographies’. Its portrayal of economic reality as interplay of legacies, rhythms, and events conveys the usefulness of spatial thinking in industrialisation research.