The Fabric of Space - 9780262028257

Water lies at the intersection of landscape and infrastructure, crossing betweenvisible and invisible domains of urban space, in the tanks and buckets of the global South and thevast subterranean technological networks of the global North. In this book, Matthew Gandy considersthe cultural and material significance of water through the experiences of six cities: Paris,Berlin, Lagos, Mumbai, Los Angeles, and London. Tracing the evolving relationships among modernity,nature, and the urban imagination, from different vantage points and through different periods,Gandy uses water as a lens through which to observe both the ambiguities and the limits of nature asconventionally understood.

Gandy begins with the Parisian sewers of thenineteenth century, captured in the photographs of Nadar, and the reconstruction of subterraneanParis. He moves on to Weimar-era Berlin and its protection of public access to lakes for swimming,the culmination of efforts to reconnect the city with nature. He considers the threat of malaria inLagos, where changing geopolitical circumstances led to large-scale swamp drainage in the 1940s. Heshows how the dysfunctional water infrastructure of Mumbai offers a vivid expression of persistentsocial inequality in a postcolonial city. He explores the incongruous concrete landscapes of the LosAngeles River. Finally, Gandy uses the fictional scenario of a partially submerged London as thestarting point for an investigation of the actual hydrological threats facing that city.