SUPERVISOR: Martin SCHMID

PROJECT ASSIGNED TO: Tobias HÖHN

Industrialized Riverine Landscapes are a relatively recent phenomenon, emerging with the systematic integration of fossil energy reserves over the last 200 years. In social ecology, this shift is recognized as a transition in energy regimes. In pre-industrial society (social-ecologically speaking: agricultural energy regime), energy for the social metabolism was primarily retrieved from renewable biomass. In contrast, the industrial energy regime shifted its energy basis heavily towards fossil energy reserves, starting with coal and later transitioning to oil and natural gas (Fischer-Kowalski & Haberl 1997). This dissertation project examines the industrialization of the Viennese riverine landscape from a historical perspective. To keep source material manageable, the study is limited to the period before World War I, focusing on the phase of coal-based industrialization.

This phase entails three distinct modes of riverine industrialization:
(1) The “Great Regulation”, performed by coal-powered steam engines, drastically altered the Danube floodplain in Vienna, permanently changing land use patterns and the resources that could be gained (Haidvogl 2013).
(2) The construction of railroads shifted transportation away from the riverscape. Cities generally rely on material and energy inputs from surrounding areas. Waterbodies, such as rivers, could extend these radii, allowing for more effective transport compared to land routes. Metabolism studies have coined this dynamic city-hinterland relationship (Krausmann 2013).
(3) Vienna’s population grew from around a quarter of a million around 1800 to more than two million before World War I. The railroad contributed to this expansion by transporting food to the city. The increasing demand for food led to a corresponding increase in the discharge of excrement. The issue of what to do with the nutrients contained within the excrement, which were lost for agricultural use in the hinterland, became a hotly contested issue (Gierlinger 2016).

This dissertation project addresses these developments through the concept of urban metabolism. Within the HR21 Doctoral School, this research is situated in the metabolism cluster. The leading research questions emerging from these developments are: 

(1) What role did the Viennese Danube floodplain play in the industrialising urban metabolism of the city? 

(2) How did the railway change patterns of river transportation? 

(3) What alternatives were envisioned for handling excrement? 

To answer these questions, various historical sources are needed, ranging from the Franciscean Cadastre to railroad transportation data and records from the city health authority, the Stadtphysikat.

References

Fischer-Kowalski, Marina, Helmut Haberl. 1997. ‚Stoffwechsel und Kolonisierung‘. In Gesellschaftlicher Stoffwechsel und Kolonisierung von Natur. Ein Versuch in sozialer Ökologie, edited by Fischer-Kowalski, Marina, Helmut Haberl, Walter Hüttler, Harald Payer, Heinz Schandl, Verena Winiwarter, Helga Zangerl-Weisz, 25-35. Amsterdam: G+B Verl. Fakultas

Gierlinger, Sylvia, Fridrich Hauer, Gudrun Pollack, and Fridolin Krausmann. 2016. ‘Metabolism and Waterscape in an Industrialising City. A Quantitative Assessment of Resource Use and Its Relation to the Transformation of the Urban Waterscape in 19th Century Vienna’. Agua Y Territorio 7(1), 109-124. DOI: 10.17561/at.v0i7.2966

Haidvogl, Getrud, Marianna Guthyne-Horvath, Sylvia Gierlinger, Severin Hohensinner, and Christoph Sonnlechner. 2013. ‘Urban land for a growing city at the banks of a moving river: Vienna’s spread into the Danube island Unterer Werd from the late 17th to the beginning of the 20th century’. Water History 5 (2), 195-217. DOI: 10.1007/s12685-013-0078-y

Krausmann, Fridolin. 2013. ‘A City and Its Hinterland: Vienna’s Energy Metabolism 1800-2006’. In Long Term Socio-Ecological Research, edited by Singh, S.J., Helmut Haberl, Marian Chertow, Michael Mirtl, and Martin Schmid, 247-268. Human-Environment Interactions. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-1177-8_11