An assemblage of urban water access: The geography of water marginalization in Amsterdam, 1690-1840

Abstract

This article delves into the urban environmental history of early modern Amsterdam through the examination of water access. In this coastal city, environmental change combined with the late 16th and especially 17th century urban growth made ground and surface waters brackish and polluted. As a result, access to clean drinking water required substantial efforts. A combined system of mainly rain containers (cisterns) and surface water imports from upstream made for a complex and continuously changing water infrastructure. In this article, I employ novel data on the different ways in which people accessed potable water to explore the neglected spatial and environmental inequalities of early modern Amsterdam's water access. I discuss new data on thousands of previously underexplored rain containers that laid in public space but were for private use. I map and analyse the unequal access to water on a city-wide level, on the level of individual streets and on the level of individual households and their everyday practices.