Urban by Nature: Seattle and the Making of the Modern American Environmental Metropolis

FAIN: FT-52796-04

Matthew Klingle
Bowdoin College (Brunswick, ME 04011-8447)

"Urban by Nature" combines environmental, social, and cultural history to analyze why Americans see cities and nature in conflict. Contrary to current attitudes, 19th century Americans considered urbanization as a process for improving nature. Trained experts, from engineers to landscape architects, believed that finishing nature through public works projects released its regenerative properties to advance reform. As a result, they created an "environmental metropolis," a fusion of artifice and nature that could be manipulated to produce both consumer goods and civic unity. But while these changes benefited some, they also spawned ecological instability and social inequality, events that split nature and cities in the minds of postwar Americans.

Media Coverage

Radio interview for Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Scher, Steve
Publication: Weekday with Steve Scher
Date: 12/11/2007
Abstract: Interview on leading morning show on KUOW-FM (Seattle) on my book.
URL: http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=13947

Radio interview for Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Horn, Diane
Publication: Mind over Matters, Sustainability Segment, with Diane Horn
Date: 1/8/2008
Abstract: Interview on leading weekly show on KEXP-FM Seattle on sustainability.
URL: http://www.kexp.org/

Associated Products

Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle (Book)
Title: Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle
Author: Klingle, Matthew
Abstract: At the foot of the snow-capped Cascade Mountains on the forested shores of Puget Sound, Seattle is set in a location of spectacular natural beauty. Boosters of the city have long capitalized on this splendor, recently likening it to the fairytale capital of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, the Emerald City. But just as Dorothy, Toto, and their traveling companions discover a darker reality upon entering the green gates of the imaginary Emerald City, those who look more closely at Seattle’s landscape will find that it reveals a history marked by environmental degradation and urban inequality. This book explores the role of nature in the development of the city of Seattle from the earliest days of its settlement to the present. Combining environmental history, urban history, and human geography, Matthew Klingle shows how attempts to reshape nature in and around Seattle have often ended not only in ecological disaster but also social inequality. The price of Seattle’s centuries of growth and progress has been paid by its wildlife, including the famous Pacific salmon, and its poorest residents. Klingle proposes a bold new way of understanding the interdependence between nature and culture, and he argues for what he calls an “ethic of place.” Using Seattle as a compelling case study, he offers important insights for every city seeking to live in harmony with its natural landscape.
Year: 2007
Primary URL: http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300116410
Primary URL Description: Official Yale University Press website
Publisher: Yale University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780300116410

“Fluid Dynamics: Water, Power, and the Reengineering of Seattle’s Duwamish River” (Article)
Title: “Fluid Dynamics: Water, Power, and the Reengineering of Seattle’s Duwamish River”
Author: Klingle, Matthew
Abstract: As in the rural West, water in the urban West during the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries was more than an instrument for building cities. It was also an integral tool for producing and maintaining social and environmental order. In Seattle, early Euro-American colonists, who arrived in the 1850s, tried without success to improve drainage or create solid land from the muddy, marshy Duwamish. Their efforts often worsened the very physical conditions they sought to ameliorate. By the beginning of the twentieth century, a new generation of Seattle residents, led by city and federal engineers, positioned themselves to “finish” nature by rescuing it both from its physical shortcomings and from those who had previously damaged it.4 With dikes, pipelines, sluices and hoses, engineers remade the river, but in so doing they also set forth a new social and ecological regime for the Duwamish.
Year: 2005
Primary URL: http://journalofthewest.abc-clio.com/
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of the West
Publisher: ABC-Clio

“Changing Spaces: Nature, Property, and Power in Seattle, 1890-1945” (Article)
Title: “Changing Spaces: Nature, Property, and Power in Seattle, 1890-1945”
Author: Klingle, Matthew
Abstract: Environmental historians have tended, until recently, to overlook how inequality is generated and reinforced in the metropolitan landscape. One way to historicize urban environmental justice is to analyze the transformation of property through space and time. This essay explores how engineers and reformers in early twentieth-century Seattle launched several earthmoving projects, called regrades, to renovate the downtown core. The regrades removed millions of tons of earth, flattened hills, and erased tidelands, but they also unleashed landslides and ripped apart neighborhoods populated by poor and minority residents. Environmental volatility and social inequality thus reinforced one another to shape Seattle’s political and physical geography. By telling spatial stories about property, urban environmental historians can better map social power against shifting landscapes.
Year: 2006
Primary URL: http://juh.sagepub.com/
Access Model: online
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Urban History
Publisher: Sage Publications

“Fair Play: Outdoor Recreation and Environmental Inequality in Twentieth-century Seattle” (Book Section)
Title: “Fair Play: Outdoor Recreation and Environmental Inequality in Twentieth-century Seattle”
Author: Klingle, Matthew
Editor: Isenberg, Andrew
Abstract: This essay argues that there was a complex historical relationship between the new leisure economy and the transformation of urban space in the years before the modern environmental movement, one that encompassed more than debates over wilderness protection and access to public lands. In Seattle, this history began with the rapid physical growth of the city at the turn of the twentieth century. Redirecting rivers, filling estuaries, and building parks completely reworked the landscapes of the city and its environs for the benefit of middle-class outdoor recreation. The production of these new spaces from the late 1890s to the Great Depression generated a new geography of leisure for middle-class Seattleites. Remaking urban space became a process, both material and symbolic, that not only enhanced nature but also enriched society by promoting consumption.
Year: 2006
Primary URL: http://www.urpress.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=10555
Primary URL Description: University of Rochester Press website
Publisher: University of Rochester Press, in association with the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University
Book Title: The Nature of Cities: Culture, Landscape, & Urban Space
ISBN: 9781580462204

“Fishy Thinking: Salmon and the Presence of History in Urban Environmental Politics” (Book Section)
Title: “Fishy Thinking: Salmon and the Presence of History in Urban Environmental Politics”
Author: Klingle, Matthew
Editor: Miller, Char
Abstract: For more than a century and a half, disputes over salmon have figured into almost every debate in and around Seattle over how to balance society and environment. A century ago, the terms of the debate revolved around improving nature to improve society by redirecting rivers, leveling hills, filling estuaries, and luring industry. By millennium’s end, restoring nature propelled discussions over redefining human community. The story of Seattle’s salmon suggests a more complicated view of how history, human and non-human, creates and splinters the idea of community through time. Paying attention to the persistence of the past can suggest how, if Seattleites think historically, they might be able to rebuild a city that is home to salmon and people, too.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://www.nvbooks.nevada.edu/Browse/Titles/Cities%20and%20Nature%20in%20the%20American%20West;2221?PHPSESSID=304a45e070791bbe39917f461c8531a3
Primary URL Description: University of Nevada Press website
Access Model: book
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
Book Title: Cities and Nature in the American West
ISBN: 978-0874178241

“Seattle, Washington” (Book Section)
Title: “Seattle, Washington”
Author: Klingle, Matthew
Editor: Brosnan, Kathleen A.
Abstract: An encyclopedia entry of Seattle's history from precontact to the present day, focusing on the relationship between the city's development and its changing physical and social environments.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://www.infobasepublishing.com/Bookdetail.aspx?ISBN=0816067937
Access Model: book
Publisher: Infobase Publishing/Facts on File, Inc.
Book Title: Encyclopedia of American Environmental History
ISBN: 978-0816067930

“Wallis T. Edmondson” (Book Section)
Title: “Wallis T. Edmondson”
Author: Klingle, Matthew
Editor: Koertge, Noretta
Abstract: An encyclopedia entry on the life and career of Wallis T. "Tommy" Edmondson, a prominent limnologist and zoologist at the University of Washington, whose research on Lake Washington helped to drive pollution control efforts throughout metropolitan Seattle and its environs during the 1960s-1980s.
Year: 2007
Primary URL: http://www.gale.cengage.com/ndsb/
Primary URL Description: Gale Cengage Learning website
Access Model: book and online
Publisher: Charles Scribner’s Sons/Thomson Gale
Book Title: New Dictionary of Scientific Biography
ISBN: 978-0684313207

“Building Nature: Topics in the Environmental History of Seattle and Spokane—A Curriculum Project for the History of the Pacific Northwest in Washington State Schools” (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: “Building Nature: Topics in the Environmental History of Seattle and Spokane—A Curriculum Project for the History of the Pacific Northwest in Washington State Schools”
Author: Klingle, Matthew
Abstract: This project consists of particular episodes in the environmental history of two Washington cities: Seattle and Spokane. The project divides into four sections, each exploring particular facets of city’s history. These sections may be taught together as a unit, or used separately as individual lessons. Questions and teaching suggestions accompany each section, as well as more general activities at the end of the essay. A proper name and subject index is included as a finding aid. A timeline provides important dates in the environmental history of Washington and the Pacific Northwest. Finally, the project includes a bibliography, suggested videos, and on-line resources that teachers may consult for further information.
Year: 2006
Primary URL: http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Curriculum%20Packets/Building%20Nature/Building%20Nature%20Main.html
Primary URL Description: Curriculum packet website
Secondary URL: http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/index.html
Secondary URL Description: Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington, Department of History, primary website
Audience: K - 12

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