Natural Chicago

Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126

Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127

As jeatikinson’s post mentioned, Cronon describes the advantages Chicago has geographically as a city—convenient transportation, natural resources, central location, nearby bodies of water. This argument reminded me of Kenneth Hewitt’s emphasis on geography. According to Hewitt, geography is one of the most important aspects of a city. I think that jeatikinson, Cronon, and Hewitt all make a valid argument about locations being important. Unlike Hewitt though, I wouldn’t say it’s the sole determinant in a successful city although it is a major concern. Cronon suggests that geography alone is not the only factor, which I think might be more reasonable than geography and geography alone. He writes, “natural avenues of transportation might play important roles in shaping a city’s future, but the preexisting structures of the human economy—second nature, not first nature—determined which routes and which cities developed most quickly.” Jeatikinson also mentions how New York City has similar qualities to Chicago. It too served as a sort of gateway like Chicago served as a gateway for the west, as elcaldwell notes in his post. New York was a funnel for many immigrants into America.

Cronon’s discussion of what “natural” actually means reminded me of my essay on the “State of the Emergency” exhibit. I saw that even in seemingly unnatural disasters like Hiroshima, nature could still be affected. As a child, Cronon inherently called the rural farms “natural” and the city “unnatural.” An older Cronon wonders whether plowed fields are any more natural “than the streets, buildings, and parks of Chicago. For Cronon, humans have drastically change nature in both situations. This idea, however, implies humans are somehow unnatural. I think the distinction Cronon attempted to make as a child might be better termed country/rural vs. urban. It seems term “nature” almost needs to be better defined. Are humans not part of “nature”? I mean we are technically living beings and a type of animal, but at the same time, a railroad is not a living being although living beings create it. Some of Cronon’s argument makes it seem as if humans try to count new technologies as natural, for instance Cronon writes of “rhetorical mysticism when they likened the railroads to a force of nature, but there can be no question that the railroads acted as a powerful force upon nature, so much so that the logic they expressed in so many intricate ways itself finally came to seem natural.

Another point I find interesting in Cronon’s argument is about the far-reaching effects of Chicago. Chicago is removed from much of the developing West. It is not obviously tied to “the great tall grass prairies would give way to cornstalks and wheatfields, The white pines and the north woods would become lumber, and the forests of the Great Lakes would turn to stumps. The vast herds of bison…would die violent deaths.” Still, Chicago, according to Cronon, is central in all these events. A small pebble can create large ripples that hit the distant shore.