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The Paris Sewers and the Rationalization of Urban Space
Author(s) -
Gandy Matthew
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/j.0020-2754.1999.00023.x
Subject(s) - sanitary sewer , empire , modernity , rationalization (economics) , urbanization , urban space , public space , urbanism , sociology , aesthetics , philosophy , law , history , political science , archaeology , architecture , economics , economic growth , regional science , environmental science , architectural engineering , environmental engineering , engineering
Sewers are perhaps the most enigmatic of urban infrastructures. Most citizens of modern cities are aware of their existence, yet few could accurately describe their layout or appearance. This paper takes as its starting point a key moment in the cultural representation of urban space: the photographs of the Paris sewers taken by Félix Nadar in the early 1860s. These images capture a dramatic transformation in subterranean Paris, initiated in the early 1850s by Baron Georges Haussmann and his chief engineer Eugène Belgrand as part of the comprehensive reconstruction of the city's infrastructure during the Second Empire of Napoléon III. This paper argues, however, that with respect to the underground city, we cannot consider the Haussmann era to be the unproblematic epitome of modernity. The reconstruction of subterranean Paris revealed a series of tensions that were only to be resolved in the post‐Haussmann era in response to the combined influence of growing water usage, the persistent threat of disease and changing conceptions of public health policy. It is concluded that the flow of water in Second Empire Paris is best conceived as a transitional phase in the radical reworking of relations between the body and urban form engendered by the process of capitalist urbanization.