Negotiating water and citizenship in Copenhagen 1850–1950

The chapter shows Copenhagen’s welfare services and citizenship through water as a resource, and that this resource was, in a sense, affecting these categories. From the mid-1800s, emergent official offices became instrumental in defining the citizens through water management and large public investments, while water closets were opposed for reasons of private property. When this opposition was overcome and a coherent water system established, cleanliness for all became defining, and achievable, and bathing halls provided a place for the now more independent citizen to cleanse herself. With the mutation of bathing to swimming halls, a new contract was in place, where citizens could expect, and were expected to, participate in multiple water activities, sustaining the clean, healthy and happy urban welfare citizen.