Dividing the Waters: Urban Growth, City Life and Water Management in Amsterdam 1100–2000

Abstract

Taking a long-term view of urban water metabolism in a single city reveals the regime-like quality of specific water trajectories and hence their ephemerality. In Amsterdam’s long history with water, each successive regime was based on specific values attributed to water and hence was the outcome of latent or overt social conflicts. This relativistic view gives hope that contemporary oppressive or unsustainable water regimes may also not be forever. This study of Amsterdam’s water metabolism goes back to the founding of the city around 1100 up to the present. It shows a succession of water regimes based respectively on the core values of safety, commerce, residential segregation, and ecology/tourism. ‘Safety’ was embodied in a ‘division of the waters’ between salty and treacherous outer water and fresh and pacified inner water. This value was renegotiated in subsequent regimes until the transformation of Amsterdam’s hydrological context in the late nineteenth century put the burden of safety on regional and national sea defences. At the same time new shipping and harbour technologies liberated Amsterdam’s inner waters from their commercial yoke and paved the way for their transformation into a major international tourist attraction and urban playground.