A Modern Stream: Water, Landscape, Modernism, and Geography

Abstract

In this paper a conjunction of geography, environmental thought, and modernism in the early twentieth century is discussed, around the metaphor of ‘a modern stream’. It is focused on the work of Patrick Geddes and Vaughan Cornish. After an outline of Geddes's conceptions of human and environmental evolution and progress, the focus is on the writings of Geddes, Cornish, and Lewis Mumford on nature, technology, and electricity are discussed. Cornish's accounts of the Panama Canal, with their emphases on energy, science, hygiene, race, and beauty, are then considered in detail in order to bring together these wider arguments around a particular landscape. The paper ends with the suggestion that the ‘modern stream’ metaphor contains within it many of the key themes of modern geography.