On the Border: An Environmental History of San Antonio

History of the Urban Environment

by Char Miller (Editor)

These 11 essays trace the 300-year struggle that the peoples of San Antonio have waged with their environment. With the underlying question of whether people define San Antonio's environment or vice versa, experts examine the history and impact of issues that challenge San Antonio today - most notably urban sprawl, water rights, and unchecked economic development. Deeply entwined with these environmental issues are questions of the city's social ecology, which the essays also chronicle, ranging from the history of the city's parks to that of its sewer systems and everything in between.

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 25, 2001

Reviews

[Rohit · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid and colorful collection of essays on the history of environment and development in and around San Antonio, Texas, touching on everything from Spanish colonization hundreds of years ago, right up to fights around water management and commercial landscape architecture in the late 20th century. Some of the essays are much better than others, and some are downright snoozefests, but in general this is a must-read for anybody in the region and/or interested in history and urbanism and environmentalism.

[Marisol Cortez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tho its analysis is now somewhat dated--he has more recent books about SA that I like better--this is a critical text for anyone interested in San Antonio's political ecology, and one of the only books around in this subfield. Chapters by Heywood Sanders in particular are crucial for understanding the politics of SA's public utilities as they inform contemporary environmental fights over energy and water. Chapter on how Henry B won sole source protection is very good. There's something about Miller's analysis that rubs me the wrong way, though, and it's hard to put a finger on. It's not so much that Miller is not from here and more that he seems to continue a long tradition of reading SA's (colonial) political structure as somehow "quaint" or "peculiar" or "backwater." It's not explicit, though--it's subtle. Also, as someone who has been involved in SA environmental justice struggles for a couple decades, since the fight over the PGA Village, I've seen how central to these struggles Chicana analysis and labor are. So a book on SA's environmental history without ANY essays by Chicana scholars--and very few Chicanos, for that matter--is just weird, and makes me feel like his analysis misses something vital.

But like I said, it's a key text within a probably narrow subfield, so it should definitely be read as a point of reference for later work on SA political/environmental history.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical, political, and environmental perspectives (including an excellent focus on water issues) in San Antonio by several local professors and experts.