Urban Environments in the Late 19th Century
I.
Growth of Cities
-the industrial city as a new type of landscape (previous cities had been trading
centers)
II.
The View from Space: Cities and their Hinterlands
(resource concentration and distant ecologies)
-Seattle’s hinterlands
-water supply in NYC
-Croton Aqueduct, 1842
-New Croton Aqueduct/New Croton Reservoir, c. 1890
-Catskill Mountain reservoirs (Ashokan), 1905
-Delaware River, NJ (1927—legal battle; 1940s-50s—new system
constructed)
-other examples: LA and Owens Valley, SF and Hetch Hetchy, Seattle and Cedar
River
III.
The View from the Ground: The Environment within Cities
-inequality shapes differential experiences of the city
-environmental characteristics of the industrial city:
-overcrowding
-pollution (water, garbage, air)
-effects on human health (waterborne disease, respiratory disease, rickets)
-effects on other species?
IV. Urban Environmental Reform: Progressivism (c. 1880-1920)
A. Who were the Progressives?
-urban people; cross-class, cross-race; key role of women
B. "Municipal Housekeeping"
--Mary Ritter Beard
--Jane Addams, Hull House
--Katherine Bowlker, Women’s Municipal League of Boston: “One peculiar and
inalienable function of women is the provision of a suitable environment for her
offspring.”
C. Urban Reform often exacerbates “environmental inequality”
V. Evaluating the Industrial City
--antithesis of “nature” or a new kind of ecology?
-industrial cities dependent upon distant ecologies….networks are extensive but
obscured….
--industrial city has (1) biological effects (on humans and other animals); and (2)
differential social effects
--increasing economic inequality accompanied by increasing environmental
inequality