The Dilemma of Water in the City - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 4

or capture, but makes loyal allies of those whom he has overcome! Appropriate,
annex, absorb, the powers of physical nature into human nature! 16
This quotation from a 1913 issue of the Journal of Industrial and Engi-
neering Chemistry epitomizes the arrogance and boldness of engineering
ambition at the turn of the twentieth century. 17 The work of engineers
was central to Progressive Era reform efforts in which it was understood
that improved material conditions of cities would lead to improved moral
and physical health of urban residents. As Kaika argues, “The heroes of
modernity promised to dominate nature and deliver human emancipation
employing imagination, creativity, ingenuity, romantic heroic attitude, and
a touch of hubris against the given order of the world.” 18 Engineers simul-
taneously positioned themselves as a technical elite that would save society
through the application of scientifi c and empirical knowledge while also
purporting to be apolitical and effi cient problem solvers. 19 Urban histori-
ans Stanley Schultz and Clay McShane note that “engineers professed to
work above the din of local politics” and became the dominant actors in
municipal government:
Engineers stamped their long-range visions of metropolitan planning on the public
consciousness over the last half of the nineteenth century. Their successful demands
for political autonomy in solving the physical problems of cities contributed to
the ultimate insistence for effi cient government run by skilled professionals. At the
heart of physical and political changes in the administration of American cities, in-
deed at the very core of city planning, stood the work of the municipal engineers. 20
Creating Modern Urban Water Metabolisms
In addition to the engineer, water was and continues to be a central actor in
the pursuit of societal progress, the rollout of large technical systems, and
the form and function of the contemporary city. As geographer Matthew
Gandy writes, “Water is not simply a material element in the production of
cities but is also a critical dimension in the social production of space.” 21
Three types of urban water networks would be central to modernization
efforts in the nineteenth century: water supply, sanitary sewerage, and
drainage. The fi rst two networks are tightly linked through the introduc-
tion of consistent and plentiful water supplies and the subsequent develop-
ment of the water-carriage form of sanitary waste disposal. These technical
networks would provide sanitary services for urban residents and emerge
as the hydrologic circulatory system of the contemporary city. 22
The third form of water network, drainage, has received less attention
from urban environmental historians because the systems do not embody