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95 THe links between paris and the Seine are as old as the city itself, whose history can hardly be imagined without that of its river.1 The Seine and its tributaries (figure 5.1) assured Paris’s supply of commodities of (nearly) every kind and provided the energy essential to the skilled crafts, the preparation of flour, and therefore of Parisians’ bread. Their metabolic role is therefore very old, and they channeled many flows of matter and energy toward the capital . On one hand, this role was mechanical: transport and energy production were driven by float, slope, and flow. Paris’s role as a capital city also led early on to the urbanization of the hydrographic system, in the sense that the rivers, even far from Paris, were organized according to Parisian requirements and controlled by Parisian public officials. From the end of the eighteenth century, the industrial and urban revolutions nevertheless led to a transformation of relations between Paris and the Seine. While the latter remained an important supply route, this role declined , initially for power and then for all but the heaviest commodities, with the arrival of rail and then roads and later the globalization of trade. But the river gained two capital functions in every sense of the term: as a water supply —not that it did not provide this before but very little—and, later, as a receptacle of Parisian excreta. Finally, and from the point of view of urban metabolism and support of inward flows, the river became both an inflow itself and an outlet for outflows. The urbanization of the Seine and its tributaries therefore changed in both nature and form and resulted in the creation of upstream and downstream urban dependencies. •5 THe seine anD Parisian MeTabOLisM Growth of Capital Dependencies in the nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries SaBine BarleS 96 sabine barles inDUsTriaLiZaTiOn, UrbaniZaTiOn, HYGienisM: THe neW rOLe OF WaTer, 1800–1890 The urbanization of the Seine and part of its basin preceded the Industrial Revolution by several centuries. The role of the river grew from the seventeenth century, with the development of rafting for fuelwood, which extended Paris’ energy supply area.2 The need for lumber rafting also gave the Parisian administration a fundamental role in the management of the hydrographic system far upstream from the capital. In the nineteenth century, however , fuelwood rafting receded to make way for navigation and rail transport, as well as alternative energy sources. Nevertheless, the Seine and its basin did not lose their Parisian functions, due to the emergence of a new need: cleaning . Water became a universal cleaning agent that guaranteed public, urban, and corporeal hygiene.3 This transformation was reflected in the growth in the capital’s control over the resource. At the end of the eighteenth century, water distribution relied primarily on the Seine, supported by a few springs (Belleville, PréSaint -Gervais, Arcueil). Water carriers provided a portion of the service, and Parisians drew on wells and sometimes rainwater for the balance. Prior to the revolution, doctors, architects, and engineers fought for broader water distribution, which was finally implemented under Napoleon with the construction of the Canal de l’Ourcq (a tributary of the Marne), which served both as an aqueduct and a navigation channel (figure 5.2).4 The decision was taken in 1802, and work began under the supervision of the civil engineer Pierre-Simon Girard; the Bassin de la Villette, Paris’ first major water reservoir of the modern era, was completed in 1808. Production capacity increased twelvefold between 1807 and 1852, while unit consumption quintupled. This network was primarily used for street cleaning,5 and it was not intended to serve individuals; it was therefore doubly public: first, because it was planned, built, and managed by the public sector, and second, because it was destined for public spaces. It was designed in contrast to the doubly private London system, which, according to French engineers, had led to a degradation of hygiene conditions in the English capital.6 The inconvenience of the Parisian solution was that it relied on public funds to finance the infrastructure, which is why, from the 1830s, the city began to seek ways to develop private subscriptions , albeit tentatively at first.7 Urban growth strengthened in the Second Empire—Paris abruptly gained four hundred thousand inhabitants with the 1860 annexation of the outer communes; the demand for comfort asserted itself among the middle class; the emphasis was on the need to clean private spaces and...

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