Michael Holleran, "The Urban Ditch: Landscape, Life and Afterlives"
Abstract:"The Urban Ditch: Landscape, Life and Afterlives" explores the history of surface water distribution - acequias, zanjas, canals, ditches - in cities of the US West. These channels were the first water systems, not only for irrigating gardens and street trees but for every urban purpose: drinking and cooking, washing bodies and clothes, fighting fires and sprinkling streets. Urban history largely ignores this technology and landscape in favor of modern piped water. Urban ditch networks were not quickly supplanted but for decades grew alongside pressurized mains serving parallel functions, and in many cities they still flow. How did cities and ditches develop together? How and why have urban ditches persisted? I answer these questions through original research on four cities: San Antonio, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and Phoenix, from their European settlement to the present. This is a history of urban infrastructure, urban environment, urban social institutions and governance, the shaping of public and private space, and urban daily life.
Comment: Paul Sutter, University of Colorado Boulder