Fluid Uncertainty: Prospects of Urban Water

An event hosted by LSE Cities

This workshop, hosted at LSE Cities, expanded beyond conventional discussions of water, infrastructure, and cities in order to address the broader cultural and political questions raised by attempts to anticipate and prepare for future hydrological events (e.g., flood, drought, contamination, runoff) across a range of urban locations.

The Urban Uncertainty workshop series is an integral part of LSE Cities’ collaborative investigation into emerging ways of envisioning and governing the future of cities. Each session focuses on a different dimension of urban uncertainty, from health and housing to crime and climate, and brings together scholars from a handful of disciplines whose work converges on common themes.

You can download a PDF summary of the worshop here.

Event materials

Profiles

    Sarah Bell

    Sarah Bell is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at the University College London. Her research interests lie in the relationships between engineering, technology and society as they impact on sustainability, particularly in relation to water systems.

    Matthew Gandy

    Matthew Gandy is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University College London. He has investigated the theme of “urban metabolism” through research into the development of sanitation, water supply and urban environmental politics in Britain, France, Germany, India, Nigeria and the United States.

    Michael Guggenheim

    Michael Guggenheim is a Senior Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. His work is about the relationship between experts and lay people, the role of objects for this relationship and on methodical and theoretical innovation derived from the combination of science studies with sociological theory.

    Andrew Karvonen

    Andrew Karvonen is a Lecturer in Architecture and Urbanism in the Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC) at the University of Manchester. His research bridges the design disciplines and the social sciences with a particular focus on urban sustainability.

    Alex Loftus

    Alex Loftus is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography at
 King’s College London. Working within the broadly defined area of urban political ecology, his research has looked at people’s ability to access water, as well as the acts and the sense-making involved in provisioning a household with water.

    Rita Samiolo

    Rita Samiolo is a Lecturer in Accounting at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She works on the sociology of accounting and calculative practices, focusing on notions of resilience, hydrodynamic models, and economic representations of the urban and natural environment in the case of flood protection schemes in Venice.