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What I had found interesting in Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis was how adamant the author was in rejecting urban life in the beginning, commenting that “If asked to choose between city and country, I’d have felt no hesitation about my answer” (pg. 6). He goes on to question his view of how whether or not Chicago in his mind was “unnatural” because of what Cronon considered the ills that Chicago had carried, stating how artificial and crowded the city was and that it was a blight on such a great landscape (pg. 7).
What Elizabeth talked about in her post, A Rural to Urban Change, how “rural and urban areas are two sides of a coin…both are important” makes me think about how we today could experience going from living in a rural area and then moving to an urban city. Would our experience be the same as William Cronon’s? How has time changed our perception of rural and urban life? While reading Cronon’s article, it was these two questions that kept me wondering if our experience would be any different, and if it was different then how much a difference would there be?
Understanding Cronon’s experience in 19th century Chicago versus somebody’s experience in today’s 21st century Chicago can show us what has and hasn’t changed and it is through these experiences that we can understand more about focused topics such as the history of Chicago, the perspective of a rural transplant to a large city like Chicago and adapting to arguably a considerable lifestyle change can tell us exactly what a city like Chicago turned into and how did those changes affect the Windy City.