Gandy, Matthew. 2014. The fabric of space: water, modernity, and the urban imagination. Cambridge USA: The MIT Press. Reviewed by Pedro Paulo Soares

Pedro Soares

doi:10.2458/v22i1.21121

Abstract

Gandy, Matthew. 2014. The fabric of space: water, modernity, and the urban imagination. Cambridge USA: The MIT Press. Reviewed by Pedro Paulo Soares

Highlights

In this book Matthew Gandy examines the ways through which city and nature dialectically coconstruct each other in a process traversed with cultural, historic, economic and political features
The idea of water as set of processes, practices, and meanings is essential to the entrenchment of political ecology as a disciplinary field
The first chapters have an emphasis on sensibilities and in hydric imaginaries related to hygiene in Paris and recreation in Berlin, but further discussions present a more politically-oriented approach which takes into account modernity as a "promethean project"(Kaika, 2005)

Summary

Introduction

In this book Matthew Gandy examines the ways through which city and nature dialectically coconstruct each other in a process traversed with cultural, historic, economic and political features. Gandy states that these cases point to the extent to which the constitution of the "hydrological subject" should be a measure of urban citizenship in different social-environmental contexts (p.221). Even though these notions of modernity do not sidestep Norbert Elias' influence, the following chapters draw this concept closer to other works in urban political ecology.

Results

Conclusion