Autumn 2010 Regionalisation / Memorial Parks / J
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JoLA JOURNAL of LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE autumn 2010 Regionalisation / Memorial Parks / J. B. Jackson / Five Years Regionalisation: Probing the urban landscape of the Great Lakes Region Pierre Bélanger, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, USA Abstract Over 40 million people live within the watershed region of the Great Lakes “In its recognition of the region as a basic configuration in human life; Figure 1 The Region & The Globe: Low earth orbit view of the in North America, the largest body of fresh water on the planet. During in its acceptance of natural diversities as well as natural associations and Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario) and the the past two centuries the region has been given a series of idiosyncratic uniformities; in its recognition of the region as a permanent shore of cul- Atlantic Coast seen from the International Space Station. designations such as the Great Cutover, the Manufacturing Belt, the Rust tural influences and as a centre of economic activities, as well as an im- Source: NASA Visible Earth, 2008. Belt, the Great Lakes Megalopolis and the Megaregion by well-known ur- plicit geographic fact – here lies the vital common element in the region- banists from Patrick Geddes to Jean Gottmann. Emblematic of different alist movement. So far from being archaic and reactionary, regionalism processes of colonisation, industrialisation and urbanisation, these histor- belongs to the future.” ical characterisations reveal a landscape of geo-economic significance be- (Lewis Mumford 1938: 306) yond the conventional limits of the city while testifying to a deeper ontol- ogy of regionalist canons whose focus is the hydrophysical system of the “The Great Lakes, with the immense resources and communications which Great Lakes. Referencing a series of overlooked plans, projects and proc- make them a Nearctic Mediterranean, have a future, which its exponents esses, this essay demonstrates how the Great Lakes Region is a macrocosm claim may become world-metropolitan in its magnitude.” of change, a case study in the urban transformation of the continent with (Patrick Geddes 1915: 49) relevance to other parts of the industrialised world such as France, Ger- many, Britain, Italy, Russia, Japan and Australia. As a revival of the revo- “The Chicago press now urges that the depth of water in the [Great] lakes lutionary régionalisme of Jean Charles-Brun in late 19th-century France and the lake harbors should be regulated and maintained by a series and as a challenge to contested globalisation identified by Saskia Sassen at of great dams. [...] This may be required if, to natural causes which re- the end of the 20th century, this essay proposes that the regionalisation of duce the depth of water is to be added an outflow of 600,000 cubic feet per ecological, economic and political conditions is of crucial significance to minute for the removal of Chicago’s sewage and the promotion of com- the global discourse on urbanisation. merce on a ship canal through the State of Illinois. The public should un- Figure 2 Divide, Divert and Conquer: 1847 map of the planned Illinois Figure 3 Cordon Sanitaire: The 45-kilometres-long, 60-metres-wide, derstand what the situation is, for we shall hear more about these projects. & Michigan Canal running 96 miles (155 km) to open boat transpor- 6-metres-deep Sanitary & Ship Canal that effectively reversed the xxxxxxxxxxxx / xxxxxxxxxxxxxx / xxxxxxxxx / [...] Canada, as well as [the United States], has a considerable interest in tation from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Chicago River, diverting sewage away from Lake Michigan. xxxxxxxxx / xxxxxxxxx them.” Mexico. Source: Chicago Historical Society. Source: A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum Archives. (The New York Times 1897: 12) On January 2, 1900 a dam was unlocked on the southwest shore of Lake an exploding urban population. Technologically, the Chicago Canal was Michigan releasing water from the Chicago River, the first watercourse an engineering marvel in both size and scale. (Fig. 3) Through chlorina- ever to be reversed in North America. Planned and built in less than 10 tion of the water supply and a comprehensive sewer separation, typhoid years, the project was the outcome of two previous public works projects. fever was virtually eliminated by 1917. (Chicago Department of Health 1919: Like the Toronto and Duluth portage routes, the Chicago Portage in 1673 1424) The Canal irreversibly opened the Western Frontier and the Deep and the Illinois & Michigan Canal in 1845 had already set the precedent South of the United States. Securing Chicago’s future as the main portal for shortcuts across the continental divide. (Fig. 2) The third and final di- to westbound-eastbound commerce, the canal linked two coastlines (the version was the Sanitary & Ship Canal. This 45-kilometre trench was com- Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico) by connecting two of America’s largest pleted in the 7 years following the 400th anniversary of the discovery of trading centres, New York and New Orleans, via Chicago. Using the ca- the New World during the Chicago World's Fair. Responding to typhoid nal as an infrastructural link, the mid-continental divide was conquered and cholera epidemics, the objective of the reversal was to divert sewage by the year 1900. away from drinking water intakes located offshore in Lake Michigan for 6 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 7 Regionalisation: Probing the urban landscape of the Great Lakes Region Pierre Bélanger Figure 4 Land Economics: Logging blocks in Northern Wisconsin Figure 5 Regional Pre-Planning: 1911 resettlement diagram of in the region that became known as the Great Cutover during Cutover lands by Benton Mackaye for the U.S. Forest Service of the late 19th century. Source: Board of Regents of the University the northern portion of Minnesota and Wisconsin. AYLOR BROTHERS T of Wisconsin System. Source: The Papers of Benton Mackaye, Dartmouth College Library. The Great Cutover and the contours of conservation Reversal of the Chicago River precipitated another important effect. Chan- The diversion focused a wide and contentious lens on the urban pressures, Like the construction of the Calumet-Saganashkee and North Shore Chan- between 1890 and 1920. Historically recognised as the Great Lakes Cutover, nelled away from the Llake, sewage poured downstream into the Illinois the physiographic magnitudes, the hydrologic complexities and the juris- nels a few years later, the reversal of the Chicago River was a response to un- the region served as the hinterland of modern commercial centres such River towards the Mississippi by way of St. Louis. Locally, complaints from dictional constituencies of the region. The conflicts, confrontations and foreseen population explosion in the Great Lakes cities as a transit node be- as Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington. Without any formal downstream residents in Southwest Chicago were almost immediate. As crises that originated with the Sanitary & Ship Canal also laid the ground- tween the urban markets on the Atlantic Coast and the Grain Belt of the plans for reforestation, the devastation of forests resulted in the ongoing the sewage moved further downstream across state lines, so did the back- work for a history of other water diversions, extractions and abstractions Prairies; lucrative logging and mining industries were attracting Europe- westward march in the late 19th century that left in its wake a landscape lash. Regionally, St. Louis engaged in a bitter legal battle over pollution up to the present day. Pre-dated by water works across the Great Lakes ans seeking to escape food shortages, oppressive taxes and wars (Fig. 4) to of stumps, swamps, and scoured fields. With land rendered useless from a well before canal construction started in 1892. While sewage overloading such as the Erie Canal and Ohio Canal Systems in the 19th century, fol- Chicago as the gateway to the Western Frontier. Revolutionary farm tools logging perspective, a group of conservationists, planners and industrial- played a role, the major case focused on the excessive shipping traffic from lowed by other mega-projects like the Niagara Falls hydroelectric dam and such as the McCormick mechanical reaper, the Baker wind engine and the ists emerged to develop strategies for the re-utilisation of these razed areas. Chicago to the Mississippi originating from a city outside the river basin. the St. Lawrence Seaway in the 20th century, the reversal of the Chicago John Deere steel plough (Collins 1990; McGrath 1999) were invented through- One of the most notable proponents was Benton Mackaye, a renowned Geopolitically, the reversal of the river imposed external effects on resi- River can be interpreted as a turning point in North American water man- out the Midwest in what became a golden age of agricultural innovation. forester and pioneer of the U.S. conservation movement. (Sutter 1999) Recog- dents in the valley of the Illinois River. Although injunctions submitted agement. Technologically, the diversion displayed the prowess of civil en- But immigrants soon encountered a reoccurence of their European plight nised for his conception of the Appalachian Trail on the East Coast, Mackaye by the State of Missouri to halt the reversal were rejected by the Supreme gineering in one of the most important public works projects of the 20th of density and disease. With the rise of steam navigation,