The Thames as a system of Valves

The Thames moves material and socio-economic relations in multiple directions. Through our fields trips and physical engagements with the river, we have examined how the river is quantified and its flows distributed, i.e. through tidal barriers, flooding defences, impounding and pumping stations. Its inputs and outputs can be likened to valves, managing pressure and flow.

A hydrosocial relationship - The Tidal Thames as a Polyvalve systems

The Polyvalve:

The river Thames as we know it, is a human construct, result of controlling flows and organizing the river’s forces. It is a mechanism of defining strict borders between water and the city, wet and dry. The banks of the river are a collection of concrete load bearing walls that bears the weight of the city on them. Construction of Canary Wharf, as part of the financial development project, whether on the banks or on the water, is an assembly of structures realized through the management and displacement of deranged parcels of water by drainage using pumps and filling in voids with concrete as the city forcefully penetrates the designated border. **The Canary Wharf Station project is one an example of a nexus of displacing waters. In the process of these constructions/structures, some parts of the river are separated as pools and water needs to be mechanically pumped between them and the river in order keep the river's natural flow.

Considering these ideas of the hydrosocial cycle:

“We define the hydrosocial cycle as a socio-natural process by which water and society make and remake each other over space and time. This concept incorporates several key ideas drawn from the theoretical work described in the previous section; they are summarized here and elaborated below:

First is the idea that the need to manage water has an important effect on the organization of society, which in turn, affects the disposition of water, which gives rise to new forms of social organization and so on, in a cyclical process.

Second is the idea that by virtue of this relationship, water and society are related internally, which means that particular kinds of social relations produce different kinds of water, and vice versa.

Third is the idea that despite this production of water, and despite the social construction of representations of water, the material properties of water play an active role in the hydrosocial process, sometimes structuring social relations and sometimes disrupting them (as in the case of a major flood).”

• Jamie Linton and Jessica Budds, The hydrosocial cycle: Defining and mobilizing a relational-dialectical approach to water, Section 4

The city of London´s relationship to the tidal river take many forms.

The complexity of tidal Thames manifest through:

Barriers, keeping away, protection, separation

Valves- Pressure, push, pull, containing, regulating, quantifying.