Privileging Water in Lima, Mexico City, and New Orleans: An Environmental History charts the development of the indigenous hydro-social territories and their colonial transformations into “modern” political ecologies. This book begins with a summary of the environmental histories of these regions before the arrival of people. To give water its due as an agent of historical processes, it is important to understand its role in shaping these three distinct ecosystems – a role it still plays today despite thousands of years of human intervention in the hydrological nature of those systems. It is certain that, as human-caused climate changes rework ecosystems worldwide, surviving the Anthropocene in Mexico City, New Orleans, and Lima will require other ways of knowing water – as hydro-social territories that challenge modern notions of urbanism and foreground ways of knowing formerly considered archaic. Following the inextricable histories of water and anthropogenic landscapes provokes many questions about the nature of cities, especially questions of environmental justice. The answers should not be abstract or universal. Instead, Clare Cardinal-Pett argues that urbanization on the planet must be reimagined and reconstructed as bio-regional systems and hydro-social territories that can be best defined more comprehensively as political ecologies.
The environmental histories of Lima, Mexico City, and New Orleans provide provocative case studies of the role of water in shaping urban realms and political ecologies. This book discovers common ground for rethinking the futures of these places in the impact of colonialization on indigenous American bioregions and hydro-social territories.
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Clare Cardinal-Pett had already changed the way we understand the spaces of the Americas with her History of Architecture and Urbanism in the Americas from 2016. In Privileging Water in Lima, Mexico City, and New Orleans: An Environmental History, she goes deeper into the relationship between cities and water, from ancient times to European colonization and contemporary challenges. Stitching the Americas once again, this book makes a fundamental contribution to the urgent effort of decolonizing the knowledge of our own spatial history. -- Fernando Luiz Lara, University of Pennsylvania
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The environmental histories of Lima, Mexico City, and New Orleans provide provocative case studies of the role of water in shaping urban realms and political ecologies. This book discovers common ground for rethinking the futures of these places in the impact of colonialization on indigenous American bioregions and hydro-social territories.
Introduction: What is Water?
Chapter 1: Indigenous Landscapes
Chapter 2: Colonial Transformations and Industrial Revolutions
Chapter 3: Decolonizing the Contemporary Metropolis
Conclusion: Following the Water
Clare Cardinal-Pett is associate professor emerita in the Architecture Department at Iowa State University.
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