UrbanPlanner_Shafaat's Reviews > Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

Many environmental problems of today can find the explanation for their causes in history. These explanations can take examples from somewhat peculiar cases like commodity flows between a city and its country. Yet such linkages essentially explain the impacts that first nature takes from the interventions of second nature. Cronon (1991) takes on the project of explaining how first nature and second nature mutually shape each other in example of nineteenth century Chicago. In doing so, he remarkably contributes to the literature as he urges the readers to negate the imaginary city-country boundary and rather see the both as components of a single big process wherein both shape each other in reciprocity.
While farmers in the hinterlands of Chicago plowed up the prairie, the merchants built the warehouses and later the elevators in the city. Likewise, as the lumberjacks cut the pine trees of the north woods, lumber factories developed their networks in the city. And while the hog and cattle were domesticated and slaughtered in the countryside, the city developed operations of meat processing and packing. In all these instances, the city and the country acted together and shaped each other. Yet in all these interventions of second nature upon first, the man was masculine, singular, active and all-encompassing, while the nature was feminine, singular, passive, and ever more controlled (Cronon 1991, 16).
He draws reader’s attention to a strikingly odd dilemma that when humans today wish to ‘preserve’ nature, they unconsciously affirm an inherent belief that we ourselves are unnatural. Nature is the place where we are not (Cronon 1991, 18). Yet this is exactly what he problematizes in his work by asserting that city is part of nature. While a city usually is filled with stories of shaping the nature in controlling ways, the city is affected by the nature in return at many other instances. Therefore it is illogical to understand the city without considering it a part of the nature.
Chicago boosters, the writers who envisioned the 1830s site on the south shore of Lake Michigan as a future metropolis, attributed resources of the region, transportation routes and climate forces as justifications to their claims. Chicago’s harbor and canal corridor were considered major resources for the future metropolis. But Cronon contests these arguments by asserting that there were other places with their own contextual natural resources but the major reason why Chicago superseded other competitors was the alignment of second nature – artificial nature made and induced by man – with first nature (Cronon 1991, 23–54).
River and lake apparently refused to fulfill their destiny as a harbor and Chicagoans cut a deep new channel and built piers extending hundreds of feet out into the lake to make a decent harbor. Another natural feature of Chicago landscape was bad drainage to which the second nature responded by raising the city from four to fourteen feet. Similarly, while earlier linkages of the countryside to the city were seasonal and spanned over days, the making of the Illinois and Michigan Canal in 1848 followed by the railroads in 1850s changed the movement patterns, temporality, and speed which in turn changed the linkages between the city and the countryside. Yet important to note here is that the later development of railroads caused relative decline to the preceding Illinois and Michigan Canal. This offers the epochal evidence wherein unnatural instrument replaced a previously enhanced natural resource but still helped the city meet its natural destiny. This mutual dependency, enhancement and annihilation, compromise and conflict, and inherent linkages provide the overarching argument of how nature and man, or city and country work together (Cronon 1991, 55–93).
Commodity flows become the instrument for telling the story of linkages. Wheat, the epochal example of the grain market, offers an astonishing example of the development and enhancement of a market over time. While a period of sacks prevailed in wheat market and was a seasonal work, the invention of steam-powered grain elevator caused a major shift in the patterns of the market. Yet this new invention could not possibly continue the practice of wheat sacks. The mixing of wheat from various farmers, on the other hand, produced challenges and conflicts. These tensions led to the making of Chicago Board of Trade, which though initially struggled to develop, turned out to be the major regulator of wheat market. The invention of the quality of the wheat classification by the Board of Trade was then another shift in the market which ensured the selling and buying of the receipts while the grain was the collateral. A new market of cash flow developed out of grain market but ended up with issues of frauds or market control and invited protests from farmers’ community. Issue had to be regulated through political involvement and legislation. These dynamics of the grain market itself show how both the city and country dynamics were strongly knit together and were depending on each other (Cronon 1991, 56–147).
Cronon beautifully labels the resources that made Chicago as wealth of the nature which man could use, utilize, refine or even build a city from but could not produce it. This inherently hints the limit of the resources but Chicagoans of 1850s apparently did not consider that the nature could have any limits. This is evident from the story of lumber market in Chicago. The resource of Pine trees to the north were so gigantic that nobody could imagine that their cutting and extraction would ever cause a lack of timber. The white pine to the north had its key feature that unlike other hardwoods, it floated. Therefore, the task for the man was only to cut and put it to the river body and the shipment of the wood through miles would be the job done by water. Thus, water would carry the lumber to the mill and market. Since lake connected to the forest to the city, and city had railroads connecting to the East Coast and to the Rocky Mountains on the west, the lumber business flourished with its linkages to the forest, water, rail, mill and the city. But here again, one change in one of the elements in the change of the linkages affected whole chain. When the rail company started charging for the weight of the wood, the yard owners changed the priority from buying undried wood to only the dry wood and mill owners did not have the infrastructure to dry the wood before taking to Chicago. Moreover, same forests that once made fortune for Chicago started to work against it as railroads expanded to other cities in the west and found better locus for lumber forests (Cronon 1991, 148–222).
Another commodity flow that highlight the linkages for Chicago and its hinterland is meat. While in the presence of Cincinnati which was leading in the meat market, Chicagoans managed to dominate the market by introducing the packed meat and transported especially through their iced refrigerators. This produced a complete cycle of economy wherein meat processing industry founded in the city while the ice harvesting became the business in Wisconsin and Minnesota and the standardized packed meat parts replaced the retail scale slaughter houses which had no option but to join Chicago style meat industry in a long run (Cronon 1991, 223–59).
Taking its current form in 1830s, Chicago made a noteworthy mark in capital and credit flows in less than half a century. These linkages, as investigated through the legal records, offer insights into the industry specific flow and outreach. In this context, the Urban Hierarchy as theorized by Johann Heinrich von Thünen in 1826 as Central Place Theory seems to offer many tangents for insights. Though in one respect Chicago spatial patterns confirmed the economic uses of land over a factor of distance, the stark boundaries of the model now seem to be far more diffused into each other. The case of Chicago could not possibly be explained by Central Place Theory because it did not develop as like a gradual market evolution but rather through a gargantuan influence of second nature. A wholesale market that made its place in Chicago gave birth to a number of other inventions as mentioned before. Another example is the service industry of delivery of goods which seems too good to be true when it started. But it was the invention of the time and the quality of the service made its market (Cronon 1991, 260–340).
These stories of the city which developed through conscious actions of human inventions have been shaped by nature sometimes through an opportunity and at other times in case of a challenge or crises. And each of these inventions have changed the natural systems in return. In doing so, the city and the country have both contributed to shape each other. Considering this, the hatred for city and the nostalgic love for the countryside is questionable. And it inherently hints that the city is considered an evil satanic force in opposition to a spiritual countryside. Yet once city and country are both seen as two sides of the same coin, the mutual history will be told and only then the inherent qualities of each will be appreciated alongside their limitations. And that is when the path will open for exchanging goods from both to each other because they are not two different entities but essentially one! (Cronon 1991, 341–85)