The Politics of Urban Water

Changing Waterscapes in Amsterdam

Title Details

Pages: 208

Illustrations: 8 b&w photos

Trim size: 6.000in x 9.000in

Formats

Paperback

Pub Date: 05/01/2015

ISBN: 9-780-8203-4795-0

List Price: $30.95

Hardcover

Pub Date: 05/01/2015

ISBN: 9-780-8203-4794-3

List Price: $120.95

eBook

Pub Date: 05/01/2015

ISBN: 9-780-8203-4836-0

List Price: $30.95

The Politics of Urban Water

Changing Waterscapes in Amsterdam

How Amsterdam’s waterscapes became a flashpoint for activism and development

Skip to

  • Description
  • Reviews
  • Awards

Fifty years ago, urban waterfronts were industrial, polluted, and diseased. Today, luxury homes and shops line riverbanks, harbors, and lakes across Europe and North America. The visual drama of physical reconstruction makes this transition look swift and decisive, but reimaging water is a slow process, punctuated by small cultural shifts and informal spatial seizures that change the meaning of wet urban spaces. In The Politics of Urban Water, Kimberley Kinder explores how active residents in Amsterdam deployed their cityscape when rallying around these concerns, turning space into a vehicle for social reform.

While market dynamics certainly contributed to the transformation of Amsterdam’s shorelines, squatters, partiers, artists, historians, environmentalists, tourists, reporters, and government officials also played crucial roles in bringing waterscapes to life. Their interventions pulled water in new directions, connecting it to political discussions about affordable housing, cultural tolerance, climate change, and national identity. Over time, these political valences have become embedded in laws, norms, symbols, markets, and landscapes, bringing rich undercurrents of friction to urban shores. Amsterdam’s development serves as both an inspiration and a cautionary tale for cities across Europe and North America where rapid new growth creates similar pressures and anxieties.

On the whole, this is a good book, easy to read, and useful to readers with an interest in urban regeneration, waterfront redevelopment, and of course, urban island studies. For readers with specific island studies interests this book provides data that is relevant to islanding themes, and to the concept of island cities.

—Elizabeth Pigou-Dennis, Urban Island Studies

Short-listed

International Planning History Book Prize, International Planning History Society

About the Author/Editor

KIMBERLEY KINDER is assistant professor of urban planning at the University of Michigan.