The title of this book is somewhat misleading. Cronon does not focus on the politics of Chicago or the industrialization. Rather, he shows how the development of the city was linked to the surrounding countryside. He argues that the rural and urban are not separate realms, but are intricately related to one another with the borders being extremely blurred.

He looks at how Chicago was one of many possible cites to serve as a the commercial center of the midwest for the 19th century. It's natural advantages were somewhat offset by other disadvantages, such as a shallow harbor, a high water table and surrounding marshes. The efforts of the leaders of the city to overcome those disadvantages, plus the massive expansion of railroads, allowed Chicago to emerge as the first city of the west.

After setting up the story of Chicago's rise through transportation, he spends the majority of the book discussing specific commodities, how they were produced, transported and traded. He looks at how the city developed as well as how it affected the surrounding areas. It is an odd mix of regretting the impact of the human intervention, being resigned to it, and admiring human ingenuity.

Cronon's work is both an environmental and an economic history. It does not discuss the politics of industrialization. The omission of the labor/capital split is particularly striking. Cronon intentionally omits that side of the story to bring the environment side to the forefront. It is a remarkable work, even with the limitations he puts on his work.

A great read. This book is about far more than Chicago. ( )

In Nature’s Metropolis William Cronon assigns himself not only the arduous task of detailing the rise of the city of Chicago but also interpreting what that rise meant to the shaping of western United States – and frontier cultures. Cronon directly challenged Jackson’s Western Frontier theory and placed the agency of growth of the west not with nature’s bounty but rather with man’s manipulation of nature’s bounty or what the author refers to as “first nature” and “second nature” respectively. It was man who remade natural advantages and harvested their potentials to his desires rather than nature remaking man. Although Cronon’s core chapters were well researched and offered insight into the changing economic market, there were moments in his analysis when Cronon the champion of nature overwhelmed Cronon the objective historian.
The prolog and first chapter laid out two main viewpoints of the author. In the former, the author not only staged the groundwork for connecting the rural hinterlands to the urban city blocks but also introduced his philosophy of nature. Cronon argued that although mankind claimed to be disconnected from nature “we must still understand that all people” share with all living and non-living things the “abstraction called nature” (p.19). This idea was fair enough but often pushed in later chapters to a resounding crescendo that exceeded the envelope of objective scholarship. In the latter chapter, Cronon explored Jackson’s frontier thesis. Jackson argued that cities arose only at the closing of the frontier and sprung into existence by the natural amenities inherent in a particular locale. Jackson viewed this process as rural country giving way to urban growth. Cronon introduced, or exhumed, Von Thünen’s Isolated State theory to counter Jackson’s arguments. Von Thünen’s theory stated that urban and rural were connected by a series of concentric circles dictated by economic needs of the two endpoints of the isolated state dynamic – city and country connected and augmenting each other.

Cronon used the next three chapters to explore how the Illinois landscape was changed by man’s “improvements” to build the city of Chicago. Although acknowledging a latent power of geographic location contributing to the rise of Chicago, Cronon placed the ultimate agency of growth with the interest of man in the city. Chicago may have been at the southern end of a large lake system with a river that offered the only protective harborage on the lake but it was man’s improvement on this harborage and his investment of capital that sparked the growth of the city. Eastern merchants needed to have a port of access to the frontier. Cronon placed Chicago’s growth in context of man’s agency to open those markets. Whether it was by transforming the port by dredging, building up the city to escape flooding, or building canals (first) and railways (later) to connect these markets, growth always hinged on man’s desire for capital.
The author’s detailed breakdown of three major industries (wheat or agriculture, lumber, and meat) was incredibly informative. In each he detailed how interests of producer and consumer intersected with nature to reshape nature to their vision and needs. For example, as the rail lines expanded farmers could deliver their agricultural products to market from farther away. Nature’s prairie landscape gave way to an organized farm landscape (first nature to second nature); this argumentative element was repeated for the other industries as Cronon explored the inter-connective aspects of the industry, mankind, nature and the city. It is in that exploration that Cronon often reads as if he was scolding mankind for the “shameless” exploitation of nature. For example, rather than simply detailing the massive slaughter of the meat market Cronon injected his musings on mankind’s “proper” relationship to the slaughter (p.208). This repeated chastisement blunts the brilliance of the core chapters of the work. Even so, Cronon’s interpretive skills made this a valuable addition to the study of urban growth. ( )

William Cronon describes his book Nature’s Metropolis as "a series of historical journeys between city and country in an effort to understand the city’s place in nature" (p. 8). He adds more complexity by asking: What is nature? What is not nature? For Cronon, the urban-rural and human-natural dichotomies are cultural categories, created by and infused in human activities and identities. City and country, nature and culture, first and second nature; neither can be properly understood without considering both sides of the coin. Put within this framework, Chicago becomes a lens that Cronon uses to explore economic and ecological transformations that have affected all of North America “and the rest of the world besides” (p. xvi). Nature’s Metropolis is well written, well researched and full of insights for the reader. It is one of those rare environmental histories that manage to make bold, yet profound statements about nature and culture without losing sight of the human element. ( )

http://www.archidose.org/books/cronon... ( )