nature’s metropolis – American Disasters

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In reading Cronon’s Natures Metropolis, I was particularly taken by his contention that the boundary between what is natural and unnatural might not be as clear cut as is often thought. It seems that my classmates have taken particular interest in this same point, as everyone mentioned this notion to some degree or another in their blog posts. For me, having grown up primarily in large, urban cities, I have always seen rural life as separate and unfamiliar–perhaps even ignorantly, less “modern”. To then read Cronon’s take on cities forced me to think more deeply about how I view urban vs. rural spaces in relation to one another. Further, Cronon’s argument that, “City and country might be separate places, but [are] hardly isolated,” led me to consider whether cities and the country are truly independent spaces. As Cronon writes, “The more I learned the history of my home state, the more I realized that the human hand lay nearly as heavily on rural Wisconsin as on Chicago” (p. 7). Even further, cities and countrysides are quite interdependent. It is at this point where defining what is natural vs. unnatural becomes problematic.

I see the same issues in defining nature as in defining disaster. Wells brings up in his post Cronon’s idea of “First Nature” and “Second Nature.” I think these terms are helpful tools when discussing what is/is not nature. In my historiography paper, I discussed the vagueness of the word disaster and it’s potential to be problematic in the field of disaster study, but concluded (through examination of Bergman, Hewitt, and Biel) that it may not be that problematic after all. A changing/vague definition forces us to constantly reconsider the subject, perhaps leading to some new, previously overlooked, ideas on the subject.

Going now in a slightly different direction, I enjoyed Amani’s discussion of the morality of city and country. I think her question is a great one because there does seem to be a widely accepted notion that country represents the natural, which is better than cities which represent the unnatural. But if we consider Cronon’s argument that the two are interdependent, and that rural farms are not as natural as we might think, then this ascription of moral adjectives is no longer viable.

Blog Post 4 (for Thursday, 2/6)

Sarah Walters points out in her post that “as a child, Cronon inherently called the rural farms “natural” and the city “unnatural.” Except for the sake of tradition, it doesn’t seem to make sense that urbanity is constantly juxtaposed with nature. We’ve touched on this in class— if cities are made by humans, and humans are natural, aren’t cities also natural? William Cronon identifies this problem in his book Nature’s Metropolis, writing: “putting the city outside nature meant sending humanity into the same exile” (8).

Perhaps we juxtapose urbanity and nature because the notion of “naturalness” with regards to one’s surroundings was much less prominent before the industrial revolution. This period of capitalism, technological advancement and urbanization created unprecedented environments. Smoggy and crowded, industrial era cities did not resemble anything that had existed before.

It was much easier to recognize cities during the middle ages or early modern period as part of a “natural” trajectory of human progress than it was for industrialized cities. Basically, these new cities were considered mutated versions of the cleaner, less crowded urban environments that existed before.

The urbanity/nature juxtaposition, it seems, is not for distinguishing between cities and non-cities, as it is usually used, but rather for distinguishing between industrial era urban environments and whatever preceded them.

Undermining this juxtaposition, Cronon suggests that the city itself is maybe a natural entity for other reasons that its association with humanity: “by massing the combined energies and destines of hundreds of thousands of people, the city, despite its human origins, seemed to express a natural power” (13). The massive, growing, energized urban environment seemed to posses a mind of its own. Furthermore, it seemed to be out of human control in the same way that natural forces are out of human control: “it seemed at times to radiate an energy that could only be superhuman” (13).

So perhaps the city is unjustly opposed to nature after all.

Aside: what makes a rural environment any more “natural” than an urban one? Both places have been shaped in ways that do not represent a natural state. Cronon describes the rural landscape surrounding Chicago as “yielding not grass and red-winged blackbirds but wheat, corn, and hogs” (7). These symbols of cultivation demonstrate that, in the making of both rural and urban environments, the landscape has been transformed— though perhaps unequally.

Tag: nature’s metropolis

The Difficulty in Defining What is “Natural”/”Unnatural”

“The City’s Place in Nature”