Before the birth of modern infrastructures, towns in Europe kept experiencing difficulties in providing water and a healthy environment for their inhabitants. Freshwater was not only essential for basic hygiene and drinking but water resources, especially urban streams played a key role in local economies. The article addresses the pressure the increasingly diverse utilization of water put on such streams by comparing six urban centers – Sopron, Pápa, Zagreb, Miskolc, Felhévíz, and Kőszeg – in premodern Hungary. Using GIS, the paper attempts to find out about the topographical patterns – similarities and differences – in the relationship between urban facilities and the respective streams, to understand whether there was a conscious policy to keep certain parts of the water systems from potential polluters. In doing so, it focuses on the spatial arrangement of industrial and other facilities in the vicinity of urban streams.

在现代基础设施诞生之前，欧洲城镇在为其居民提供水和健康环境方面一直面临困难。淡水不仅对于基本卫生和饮用水至关重要，而且水资源，特别是城市溪流在当地经济中发挥着关键作用。本文通过比较前现代匈牙利的六个城市中心——肖普伦、帕帕、萨格勒布、米什科尔茨、费尔赫维兹和科塞格，解决了水的日益多样化利用给这些河流带来的压力。本文试图利用 GIS 来找出城市设施与相应河流之间关系的地形模式（相似点和差异），以了解是否存在有意识的政策来防止水系统的某些部分受到潜在污染。在此过程中，它重点关注城市河流附近工业和其他设施的空间布局。