Urban environments in transition. The case of Linz

The project examines transformations of urban environments during the transitional phase to modernity (ca. 1700- 1900) by investigating a specific example, namely the town of Linz (Region of Upper Austria). Methodologically, the project pursues an approach that interprets urban areas as ecosystems, thus interactions between town inhabitants and their environments will be considered. At present there is not much known about pre-20th-century urban environments and their transformations. When dealing with the time before 1900 urban as well as environmental historical studies have mainly considered the period from mid-nineteenth century onwards. They focused on a phase, in which population increase and industrialization led to new environmental problems and "modern" supply and disposal systems were introduced in Western European cities (labelled as "sanitation" resp. "Assanierung"). Researchers often described pre-modern urban areas in a stereotypical way, as dirty and shaped by environmental problems, which were barely considered relevant by inhabitants and thus persisted until the modern age. However, for the pre-modern period newer studies have pointed towards significant alterations of urban environments carried out by inhabitants and towards differentiated and partially very complex technical solutions for urban environmental "problems". Based on these findings - that have stayed mosaic-like so far - the project will investigate urban environments and their transformations for an exemplarily mid-size town during a long-term period. It will thus reconstruct paths leading to "modern" urban environments. So far larger cities dominated research, leaving mid-size and smaller towns largely aside. A mid-size town allows an in-depth analysis and - in addition - the work with (by urban environmental historians) hardly used sources. The research project understands environment as an overall system - therefore not only environmental problems (such as pollution or disposal) shall be considered. Questions of "nature" in the town and urban "artificial" environments, of energy and materials supply - also from the perspective of an urban "metabolism" - are central as well. In addition, aspects of "natural environments" - mainly the impact of weather, climate or natural disasters on the town - will be reconstructed; furthermore policies that changed urban environments and the perception of these environments by townsfolk will be examined. The research project aims at bringing together concepts of both urban and environmental history, initiating scholarly debates in this field and it could stress the potential of an ecological view towards pre-modern urban areas. While Austrian archives will be used for the empirical works, the proposed stay at the "Centre for Urban History" (University of Leicester) should allow the applicant to discuss and to alter the projects methodological approaches and hypotheses with renowned scholars in this field. At the same time the stay could prepare the integration of the applicants own research into international debates within urban history.