FinalExam Names Flashcards
Worster
What is environmental history
Nature and Culture with humans distinctly within the culture side
- History of Nature before human contact
- Techology’s effect on Nature and Social Construction-Power
- Cognitive Relationship with nature-ideology
- Focused only on agroecological system NOT CITIES
- It completley left out the built environment/urban areas. There wasn’t even a connection made between the fact that agroecological systems actually fed into cities. Worster’s claim played into the seperation of Nature and the built environment. Why is rural environment not an expression of human culture like cities?
Boyden
What is environmental history
Biological and Culture with humans involved with both
-cultural reform needed for humans to interact well with environment
Cronon
The history of urban environments in North America
What does Cronon mean when he says wilderness “is quite profoundly a human creation”?
Answer: As we moved into a more sedintary lifestyle our goal was to tame the ‘wilderness’ in order to make the land in which we lived more liveable. Then when we became successful in removing much of the natural world, the ‘wilderness’ became how we see it today: beutiful and truly natural.
-socially constructed
-ideas about a place
-overtaking god in a godly place
-go to the wilderness to find the sublime, God-European viewpoint
-fronteir(US viewpoint) move from wildnerness being Godly to conquerable
-comparison of scarcity of land in europe compared to NA
-WILDERNESS CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT THE CONTRAST OF CITIES
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taking the life of an animal could be so indifferent,effecient, and calulating
-compares lumberyards and grain elevators to stockyards
-stockyards were originally outside of city, but city expanded around them
-chicago unified there stockyards into one big one that railroad company connected to
-obsession with reducing waste to save and increase economic value
Rosen and Tarr
The history of urban environments in North America
4 DIMENSIONS to Urban Enivornmental History
- Impacts of Cities on the Natural Environment
- Impact of Natural Environment on Cities
- Response to urban environment change and environmental problems
- Urban perspective and the built environment In environmental history
Melosi
The history of urban environments in North America
Answer: The nexus essentially splits the world into two distinct areas, one being human built and the other a natural construct which excludes humanity. This view affects the way researchers from different disciplines approach environmental history and avoid and/or exclude the built environment(Declensionist Narrative).
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What does Melosi mean when he refers to urbanites’ “budding environmental consciousness?” (17)
ANSWER: The consciousnous brought on by necessity!
.Heightened awareness of environment
Gandy
Transforming natural space into urban space
Answer: Gandy’s use of the circulatory system is interesting as he linkes water with money.
- only good source of water in 18th century was sold by Tea-water men to those who could afford it
- Historian of New York
- water a huge economic resource potential
-“The factors that determine the long-term viability of cities and regions rest ultimately not with natural limits, which are in any case largely culturally and technically determined, but with the strategic significance of places within a wider set of social and economic dynamics.”
-.Second nature is when we have forgotten what the original state of natural components looked like
.New york is actually worse than, because most people dont know that water wasnt originally coming through in this manner
Examples of First Nature in New York:
- No one had control over the slope of the hill as water flowed
- the weather and season in which the story happened
- the fact that corn could not withstand the flooding
Pabis
Transforming natural space into urban space
Historian of New Orleans
-story of human need to conquer water/nature
-Pabis: talks about nature and humanity as at odds,
“levees as a tool to conquer nature”
Second nature is when we have forgotten what the original state of natural components looked like
–New Oreleans on the other hand still see’s the difference and where water wants to move despite us blocking some of the compartments
Examples of First Nature IN New Orleans:
- interesting that the influence of 1st Nature on 2nd in that we knew to use the levees because we noticed the prescene of natural levees
- the flow of the river eroding the banks
- new orleans is right in the middle of a delta so water wants to spread out into the marshland
- difference in elevation is not much between coast and farther inland so the river meanders
Upton Sinclaire
The Jungle by Upton St.Claire:
.Informing american public about food industry
.so business like, was the pork processing
-slaughtering machine
-nature has become a commodity, 1st nature to 2nd
-assuming you can have complete control over nature
Upton Sinclair
The Jungle by Upton St.Claire:
.Informing american public about food industry
.so business like, was the pork processing
-slaughtering machine
-nature has become a commodity, 1st nature to 2nd
-assuming you can have complete control over nature
Tarr*
Material and energy flows of the city
How have people used technology to tackle the challenges of growing cities?
“Altered urban biological systems”-Tarr
.basically to adapt the natural environment in order to better benefit humanity
Walking: Water and sewage
Network: Public transit and associated infrastructure
Metro: Car and associated infrastructure
Environment: Environmental and Health indicators
.technology can cause problems and fix problems
Walking city: distances small and density high; main environmental concerns came from water,wastewater, air polution, and site modification
- period of rapid development and technology
- walking city was very sustainable, this changed as you moved forward into different periods
Networked City:
- population and number of cities increased
- middle and upper class started moving out into suburbs
- new wastewater system for higher population
- nature existed for benifit of human kind
- development of central business district which became the control panel for the network and things to link it like streetcars
- suburbanization expanded cities out
- distances increased imensely
Metropolitan:
- after ww2
- huge population increase
- increased production caused increased environmental damage despite attempts to avoid it
- continued movement of industry from urban to rural, only new technology allowed for iindustry to remain downtown
- increase in consumption and associated waste disposal
- everyone started owning a car because of increased distances
- improvement in air quality in cities by moving industry out
- technology aided human health, but hurt environmental health
Environmental Era:
- 1960’s-1970’s
- development of outer cities which acted like a downtown core
- continued expansion of cars
- cars most important tech
- land consumption increased despite density decreasing
Stilgoe
Material and energy flows of the city
New York=“a nation in a hurry”-1900
-obsessed with rapid transit and rapid everything
Why was “a more orderly, more efficient scurry” or a “systematized ‘steady-flow’ movement” so important to North American cities, according to Stilgoe? (26)
Scurry and Rat Race
-implies ignoring your environment and others
-technology forces you to scurry
-created urbban environment because there is an escape valve in nature
-generation of that time thought to be modern and progressive
-rapid transit created this cultural rush
-rapid transit was shocking to most
-population growth after 1870
-development came from improving traffic congestion, hustle and bustle
-‘rat race’ a bad association for rapid transit
-our environment vs. Our society- rapid movement is okay, rapid society/culture not
-effeciency to get the job done, about being well oiled machine not about happiness
.tension between the individual and the collective
-increased effeciency means we use it more
-at a time when so many wanted to celebrate thhe individual
Benidickson
Urban waste and garbage
.social and state regulation of flushing toilet
.tension between the individual and the collective
-very idea that the government would tell you how to build your home and connect to the sewers was hard(personal home being regulated)
Davis
The Decline of the City
Why is it so easy for us to imagine a future in which the urban environment has been destroyed?
Answer: It is litterally falling apart around us
Why is the city so commonly the setting for imagined futures of apocalypse, collapse and chaos in North America?
Answer: we see ourself as a plague on the earth and are waiting to be removed
What globalized social and political consequences does Davis foresee from the depiction of cities as environments of terror and collapse?
What does Davis mean when he says that “fundamental interfaces with nature [in the city]… are usually in disequilibrium.” (362)
Answer: I think he is saying that they are in a constant sttate of decay and without constant upgrades will eventually deteriorate byond repair
In Davis’ view, what might ‘dead cities’ tell us about the urban environment?
What is the difference between fictionalized versions of the failed city and the realities of most postwar American failed inner cities?
Answer: Fictionalized versions generally revolve around external inputs which cause the failure, with exception to zombies, when in reality these failures come from us as a society not doing what we have to to keep it up.
How does the concept of geomorphology help to understand the environmental history of inner city decline?
How are physical security systems a manifestation of the decline of the city?
Answer: they work not as a form of protection but as a barrier to the truth which is hidden because we dont want to know the truth
It what ways might we think of urban decline as a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Notes:
.No more mixing of classes, seperated!
Video: 28 days later 1/5 and Dawn of the Dead 2/11
.Post 9/11 zombie movies
-pre 9/11 they were slow moving groning things, now running
.justaxposition of quiet suburb and busy downtown london
.human systems start to break down
-expect to see humans in charge
-escape excessive order
-you could see Cronons Paper on Wilderness in here
The big appeal is that we can see BUILDING IT AGAIN, NOT FIXING THE ISSUES WHICH RESULTED IN THIS
Remnants of the indistrial revolution are both a story of decline and a story of things getting better
