The Dilemma of Water in the City - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 3

to control and subdue nature for human ends and subsequently solidifi ed
their central role in urbanization processes. The second phase, the Heroic
Moment of Modernity's Promethean Project, lasted from roughly the late
nineteenth to the fi rst three quarters of the twentieth century and was a
period of large-scale construction of infrastructure networks. It was during
this period that large technical systems would come to dictate the form and
function of contemporary cities, serving as the material and administra-
tive backbone of urban development. And the third phase, Modernity's
Promethean Project Discredited, began in the last decades of the twentieth
century and continues to the present day. This period is characterized by
increasing demand for resources as well as crumbling infrastructure and
environmental disasters. Here, it is understood that nature is no longer
tamed but rather a source of crisis, with humans exerting widespread
detrimental impacts on nature. 12
The Promethean Project is a simplifi ed narrative of the changing rela-
tions between nature, technology, and humans. Taken too literally, it could
be interpreted as a teleological notion of societal progress with humans
slowly becoming “enlightened” about the negative consequences of em-
ploying technology to control nature. But the Promethean Project serves
as a helpful heuristic framework to describe the dominant narrative of
human progress and the resulting dilemma of nature. It highlights the cen-
tral role of technology and technical experts in the mediation of human/
nature relations in the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century ur-
ban development and is particularly apt for understanding the process of
urbanization as a means to rework nature for human ends. 13
The Engineer as Champion of the Promethean Project
Undoubtedly, the hero of the Promethean Project is the engineer who
became “the modern Prometheus, the One Man who would stand alone
against nature.” 14 The profession of engineering emerged in the fi rst half
of the nineteenth century as self-trained experts were increasingly tapped
to resolve the nature/culture dilemma. 15 Well into the twentieth century,
the engineer was widely understood as the harnesser of nature for human
ends, as illustrated by the 1913 proclamation of a chemical engineer:
What is Engineering? The control of nature by man. Its motto is the primal one—
“Replenish the earth and subdue it.” . . . Is there a barren desert—irrigate it; is
there a mountain barrier—pierce it; is there a rushing torrent—harness it. Bridge
the rivers; sail the seas; apply the force by which all things fall, so that it shall lift
things. . . . Nay, be “more than conqueror” as he is more who does not merely slay