JoLA

JOURNAL of LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

autumn 2010 Regionalisation / Memorial Parks / J. B. Jackson / Five Years

Regionalisation: Probing the urban landscape of the 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 , 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, , Huron, Erie, ) 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 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 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 , Ger- many, Britain, Italy, Russia, Japan and Australia. As a revival of the revo- “The 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 . 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 / [...] , as well as [the ], has a considerable interest in tation from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Chicago River, diverting sewage away from . xxxxxxxxx / xxxxxxxxx them.” Mexico. Source: Chicago Historical Society. Source: A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum Archives. (The 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 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 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 and Wisconsin.

t AYLOR BROTHERS of Wisconsin System. Source: The Papers of Benton Mackaye, Dartmouth 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 , 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 and 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 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, canal construction, drew up reclamation diagrams for the Department of Labor and the Forest Court, limits on water diversion were eventually enacted by 1925. (Chang- century. (APWA 2000) Leading to the formation of the Chicago School of rail transport and cross-continental mobility, the birth of the pre-Civil War Service in the early decades of the 20th century. He was exploring new re- non and Harper 1994: 16B38) In the decade-long process, the proceedings Earthmoving, it set the precedent for other construction projects such as commercial metropolis and the rise of the 19th-century industrial factory gional economic geographies in Minnesota and Wisconsin bordering Lake made visible the downstream effects of upstream urbanisation. Geopoliti- the Panama Canal. town led to an explosion of urban population followed by a concurrent ru- Superior. Influenced by Gifford Pinchot from the U.S. Forest Service and cally, it could be deduced that the effects of cities lie well beyond the gov- The reversal of the Chicago River also marks a major moment in the re- ral vacuum. Chicago’s population, for example, jumped from 5,000 in 1840 to Michigan conservationist P.S. Lovejoy, Mackaye deplored the idle, unpro- erning limits of the city itself, and that the source of historical conflicts gionalisation – an operative term that designates the geographic, economic over 1.5 million in 1900. (Mohl 1997) In the absence of an integrated water in- ductive waste of more than ten million acres of cutover lands in Michigan. often flows from the discrepancies, or differentials, between biophysical and ecological process of characterising and forming regions according to frastructure, sewage disposal in Lake Michigan polluted fresh water supplies. As observed by Lovejoy in his critical survey of the Cutover Michigan’s Mil- systems across man-made political boundaries. overlapping geopolitical and biophysical boundaries – of the Great Lakes. The diversion of sewage away from the lake through the Sanitary & Ship Ca- lions of Idle Acres, the crisis was essentially agricultural. (Lovejoy 1920) Soils Less than a quarter-century after its construction, the Chicago diver- Whereas in the past each lake was perceived as one of a series of loosely nal was the simplest and most logical solution. With a battery of concurrent were either too wet or too infertile to turn a profit with crop farming; or sion had other unplanned consequences: water levels throughout the Great connected water bodies, a major change occurred in the understanding of farm drainage programmes and land reclamation acts in outlying areas, the too shallow for crop cultivation or rotation swamped by naturally rising Lakes were dropping at visible rates. International conflict was imminent. their interconnectedness. The politics of the diversion later resulted in the super-urbanisation [1] of Chicago became synonymous with renegade trade water tables after clear cut logging. (Kates 2001) Once a great timber pro- Ten thousand cubic feet of water per second was being diverted from Lake milestone enactment of the Boundary Waters Treaty in 1909 (Quinn 1988), generated from the industries of mass logging and mass mining. From mass ducer, the Great Lakes state became a net importer: home-grown hemlock Michigan, rousing concerns as far away as , the Canadian soon followed by the inception of the International Joint Commission (IJC), industrialisation across the region there emerged a series of proto-conserva- was outcompeted by fir from the West, hickory from the East and oak from neighbour to the north that consistently opposed any freshwater diver- a cross-border organisation exclusively mandated to help resolve disputes tion groups who would shape the future of urbanisation. the South. Mackaye’s strategies reconceived the landscape of the failed ag- sions from the Great Lakes. Bordering on four of the five Great Lakes, the and to prevent future ones, primarily those concerning water quantity and ricultural experiments of the Northern Wisconsin region and several other Province of Ontario was losing more than 300,000 cubic feet of water per water quality along the boundary between Canada and the United States. Harvest and heist cutover regions in the Northwest United States. Borrowing from the pro- minute from the diversion, a significant loss for the hydroelectric dam at More than a century later, the IJC has grown in size and influence to be- Following the clear-cut logging and slash fires in the virgin forest regions totypes of woodland settlements published by the Canadian Commission Niagara Falls. Two more diversions and two more reversals would be con- come a model of transnational cooperation and watershed governance, rec- of the and central Canada, a massive reclamation on Conservation, Mackaye and Lovejoy foresaw imminent urbanisation by structed on Lake Michigan in less than a quarter-century. Chicago headed ognised worldwide. Paradoxically, the making of a simple water channel project took place. From Northern Michigan to , ram- sketching out regional reclamation diagrams that coupled reforestation straight ahead for a 100-year battle over water rights. The State of Missouri revealed the pre-eminence of the region and how it functions as an essen- pant clear-cutting of hardwoods (oak, maple, birch) and softwoods (white with repopulation. (Fig. 5) As a countermeasure to careless, frontier land joined forces with Wisconsin, Michigan and New York in a coalition to put tial urban infrastructure that binds cities to their watersheds. pine, spruce) stripped bare over 65 percent of the 40 million northern acres development in the 19th century, their work pioneered renewable econo- an end to the diversions. of choice timber in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio and New York mies of conservation areas, selective logging zones and village settlements.

8 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 9 Regionalisation: Probing the urban landscape of the Great Lakes Region Pierre Bélanger

Figure 6 Economic Geography: Map of productive regions of the Figure 7 Agrarian Urbanisation: Layout view of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Figure 8 Rise and Fall of a Great American City: United States and Canada as a synthesis of agricultural and political Broadacre City representing a decentralised Midwestern structure of Dubbed ‘The Machine Shop of the World’, ­ divisions in North America. Source: ©Land Economics, 1940. urban land settlement in the 1940s. Source: ©The Living City, 1958. owed its rise to the industries of machinery, meats and malts that flourished after the Civil War but declined after the Great Depression. Source: Courtesy of Milwaukee Public Library and Department of City Development, Society for Industrial Archeology (1901).

Reclamation and reconstruction Landscape economics With the groundwork laid by Mackaye and Lovejoy, developments in land Founder of the American Economic Association and bullish proponent of city, they all sought to escape conventional forms of conservation without plies of ore were shipped by rail and by ship from Duluth at the western planning evolved into the research of Richard T. Ely, a German-trained labour organisations and the public management of resources, Ely prem- reverting to pro-rural isolationism or anti-urban pastoralism. (Robinson extremity of and moved eastward to steel mills in the lower reform economist from the University of Wisconsin. With his large-scale ised his work on the advantage that groundwater resources and surface 2005; Wright 1941) While their work remained reactive to existing condi- Great Lakes near vast supplies of Appalachian coal. Finally, long and flat perspective on the challenges of land settlements, Ely formulated meth- watersheds offered replenishable capital. (Rabinowitz 2004: 109) In the Cu- tions, they opened a broader prospect of the region as a design territo- steel for product manufacturing or construction projects made its way by ods of effective land utilisation based on regional forest economics, argu- tover Region, Ely promoted the de-zoning of land – rather than the set- ry, capable of engaging more diversified processes at larger scales, across rail to growing urban centres on the Atlantic Coast. (Time 1952) From this ing for a more consolidated understanding of the Cutover Region. Disfa- tling of it – taking it out of urban or industrial use for public forestry longer periods of time. For them, in practice and in theory, the region was geographic network rose an industrial shed that was underpinned by the vouring the uncoordinated efforts of greedy land hustlers and reckless practices. Ely mapped out land uses as directly generated from soil types, becoming the medium. geophysical landscape of the Great Lakes. City appellations signified their farmers, Ely theorised strategies that synthesised the imperatives of land microclimates and water resources that were primarily agrarian. In his might: the Steel City, Sudbury the Nickel City, Hamilton the conditions and urban economies. Those innovations later took shape dur- view, collective farsighted reclamation of land had to supplant the near- Globalisation and the corrosion of the Manufacturing Belt Steel Town, the Chemical Valley, the Motor City, ing the 1940s in a book entitled Land Economics. Leading to the birth of sighted renegade efforts of private landowners. It was no coincidence that Before and during the World Wars, the Great Lakes states underwent con- the Bridge City, Toledo the Glass City, Buffalo the City of Light, Milwau- a new field, this publication exhaustively articulated an alternative ap- in the 1940s Frank Lloyd Wright – a Prairie School architect from the Mid- siderable growth in the areas of steel production, chemical processing, kee Supplier to the World. (Fig. 8) proach to the development of land. Different from land planning or real west – would simultaneously unveil an intricately detailed scale model weapons manufacturing and automobile production. The abundance of estate development, land economics was a hybrid discipline drawing on representing a hypothetical four-square-mile community proposal for the iron ore, coal and electricity along with vast fresh water resources and Deindustrialisation and decentralisation economics, politics and agriculture. It was based on a regional perspective denuded landscape of rural Illinois. Aptly named Broadacre City, the model navigable waterways fed the development of large factory towns in the A few decades later, after a relatively short-lived peak in production fol- for the effective reorganisation and reuse of land over long periods of time experimented with a unique Midwestern structure where hydrology and region of the Great Lakes and industrial metropolises of the Northeast- lowing the World Wars, industrial growth plummeted. The U.S. steel in- rooted in the pre-existence of resources and the future of urban settle- topography pre-figured as primary infrastructures amidst an expansive ern Seaboard. With an abundance of farm and factory labour the region of dustry workforce fell from 509,000 to 240,000 between 1973 and 1983. Out- ments. Relying on the empirical understanding of biophysical resources field of agriculture, housing and civic services. (Cucci 1979) (Fig. 7) Con- the Great Lakes, especially near the Midwest, became a frontier of boom- sourced production, rising energy prices and increasing trade deficits all as economic structure (Fig. 6), Ely’s work was premised on bringing urban ceived at his Taliesin studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin, 150 miles west towns. (Meyer 1983) Large, centralised, heavy industry facilities developed contributed to manufacturing’s demise and the abandonment of heavy longevity to the Cutover Region. (Ely and Wehrwein 1940) Using a regional from Chicago, Wright’s urban-agrarian proposal was largely an antithesis at a rapid pace to secure the region’s international reputation as the Man- industry. From Wisconsin to Upstate New York, the widespread pattern lens, Ely established the foundations for the reorganisation of land, show- of the European concept of the centralised industrial city. Almost two dec- ufacturing Belt. of deindustrialisation had incendiary effects including the decentralisa- ing where a new geo-economic structure could be achieved through col- ades later, parallel to the land policy objectives of Richard Ely and the re- Where timber and transportation had dominated the previous century,­ tion of city centres. (Garreau 1981) What was once admired worldwide as lective models of governance that privileged the integration of hydrologi- gional strategies of Benton Mackaye, Wright as an architect/urbanist dis- the discovery of iron-bearing taconite in Minnesota’s Mesabi Range the U.S. Manufacturing Belt became universally known as the . cal systems, regional cooperation and state legislation. tilled the essence of the Midwestern land challenge in his 1958 manifesto fuelled the industrial engine of the Manufacturing Belt. By World War I, (Jacobs 1970) Burdened by large, overbuilt structures and public works dis- Living City, proclaiming, “We should have a system of economics that is Minnesota was meeting two-thirds of U.S. demand for iron ore. (Hall 1997) investment, this massive economic shift precipitated the erosion of pub- structure … that is organic tools”. (Wright 1958: 162) Looking beyond the A geography of extraction, processing and distribution emerged. Vast sup- lic infrastructures. America’s public facilities were wearing out faster than

10 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 11 Regionalisation: Probing the urban landscape of the Great Lakes Region Pierre Bélanger

Figure 11 Regional Register: Icon of Modernism, the Farnsworth House designed by Mies van der Rohe Figure 9 Aquatic Bio-Indicator: Brown bullhead from Wisconsin’s Figure 10 Crisis as Catalyst: Aerial view of the in and built in 1951 succumbs to a record flood from the Fox River with lip tumours demonstrating the presence of aromatic­ Woodbridge during in November 1954, Fox River but survives as a geophysical registration hydro­carbons used for dyes, pharmaceuticals and agro-chemicals, subsequently leading­ to the Conservation Authorities Act. of perennial rain levels in the region. which are known carcinogens. Source: National Geographic, 1974. Source: National Library & Archives of Canada. Source: 2008 Landmarks Illinois, National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Urbanisation and the systemic reclamation of the Great Lakes watershed Although deindustrialisation and decentralisation are dominant motifs torically, a pattern of ground and water contamination could no longer of the Rust Belt, what is often marginalised is the long-term effect of in- be ignored nor treated separately as it was before. It was now being un- Disurbanism and disassembly dustrial operations. The depletion of cheap resources, the depopulation derstood regionally as a new systemic understanding of the effects of in- they were being replaced. (Choate and Walter 1983) From decaying sewers The economic fallout further precipitated the population vacuums of in- of factory towns, the decrease in tax revenues and the failure of urban dustrialisation emerged. to bridge collapses, incidents across the region were indicative of liber- ner cities and former company towns in the Rust Belt from the 1950s on- infrastructure epitomise that legacy. Most notorious were the environ- al programmes of deregulation, deferred maintenance and delayed con- ward. Cities were left the victims of decaying oversized infrastructure, mental after-effects across the region including oil fires on urban rivers Re-engineering and re-planning struction that exacerbated urban disaggregation and the hollowing out contaminated vacant land, heavy tax burdens and social attrition. Despite in Cleveland, Toronto, and Chicago, over-fertilisation from farm effluent One of the most influential organisations to emerge in Hazel’s after- of inner city cores. good intentions – copious amounts of money were poured into urban re- and sewer overflow of and Lake Michigan, algal blooms from math is the Toronto & Region Conservation Authority. (Fig. 10) Found- The decline of the Rust Belt in the second half of the 20th century newal projects such as new stadiums or convention centres in Detroit, eutrophication in and Lake Ontario and mercury contamina- ed on the ecological tenets of landscape architect Michael Hough, TRCA mainly stemmed from six factors: the global mobility of corporations, Flint, Milwaukee and Buffalo – little has improved the economic circum- tion from industrial discharge that closed fisheries on Lake Superior, Lake has grown over the past 50 years to become an influential think-tank and the attrition of innovation, the inflexible demands of labour associations, stances. (Glaeser 2007) Milwaukee for example now has twice as many mur- Michigan and in the 1980s. (Fig. 9) action group engaging in watershed management, ecological planning, the displacement of workers to new sectors of defence, oil, and aerospace ders as Los Angeles. Buffalo has double the taxes of New York City, and The total impact of industrial effluents, chemical dumps and urban habitat restoration, floodplain acquisition and urban development. This in the Sun Belt, and an aging work force. Policies for the globalisation Flint has the third highest crime rate in the nation. General Motors CEO floods was largely invisible until a quarter-century after the Manufactur- non-profit, quasi-governmental organisation now mandates five major of the region and deregulation of national trade began with the Gener- Roger Smith closed down all the assembly plants in Flint, leaving over ing Belt passed its peak. Three events within 17 years defined the ecologi- watersheds draining into Lake Ontario that support the 5.5-million pop- al Agreement on Tariff and Trade in 1946, grew with the North American 40,000 people jobless and the entire city virtually bankrupt in the 1980s. cal enlightenment about the fallout of mass industrialisation: Hurricane ulation of the (GTA), while innovating strategies of Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 and matured with the formation Since then, city mayors have been toying with tourism as a substitute for Hazel in 1954, the Milwaukee River point source discharges in 1967 and groundwater infiltration (permeable surfaces instead of gutters and pipes) of the World Trade Organisation in 1995. Transnational trading policies urban economic regeneration and environmental reconstruction. Down- the Love Canal Incident in 1971. [3] With the respective efforts across the and sewage separation (sludge recycling instead of landfilling). With the opened international borders southward and westward where labour and town Flint has seen its share of big city ideas: a 13 million-dollar Hyatt Re- region by landscape architect Michael Hough, the Milwaukee Sentinel dai- abundance of available permeable surface area and green leaf coverage in raw materials were cheaper and environmental laws less stringent. As a gency Hotel and a 100 million-dollar AutoWorld theme park were rolled ly newspaper and the Love Canal’s Lois Marie Gibbs, a series of milestone suburban areas as well as their suitability for change, the ultimate aim is result of global outsourcing (Friedman 2005), plant relocations led to in- out to arrest decline but failed to jumpstart local economies. (see Michael legislation ensued: the Conservation Authorities Act in 1946, the Environ- to reduce loads on stormwater systems while contributing to groundwa- dustrial disincorporation, further leading to land un-development, pop- Moore's documentary, Roger & Me, 1989) Reduced to junk bond status, the mental Protection Agency of 1971, the Superfund Bill of 1980 and the Clean ter recharge. (Hough 1983) From continuous flood events across Ontario to ulation unemployment and de-urbanisation throughout the Great Lakes generic landscape of GM’s assembly plants is like the rest of the city, va- Water Act of 1977. Point source separation of industrial effluents, encap- the ongoing flooding of the Farnsworth house in Illinois, the challenge cities. In stark resemblance to Henry Ford’s premonition of industrial de- cant and abandoned on the overgrown banks of the Flint River. (Danda- sulation of chemical dumps and planning of urban floodplains soon be- of urban flooding in the Great Lakes has yet to be resolved in any compre- concentration in the Northeast (Ford 1922: 192), boomtowns became ghost neau 1996; Harvey 1996) As the sun has set on this disurbanising landscape, came underlying principles in the re-planning of cities. Non-compliance hensive way and will persist. (Fig. 11) Larger and larger urban agglomera- towns while abroad, relocating industry found surrogate cities: Bangkok [2] decline and neglect seem to have become the progenitors of ecological and lack of enforcement does threaten this ambitious objective, but the tions, aging sanitary sewers, leaking water supply lines and the increasing supplanted Detroit, Shanghai supplanted Cleveland, Taipei supplanted regeneration, displaying the latency of biophysical dynamics that existed Clean Water Act has managed to cast light on a dark industrial age when frequency of rain storms will need to be addressed using integrated man- Toledo, and Mexico City supplanted Milwaukee. (Jones 2004) before industry. (LeDuff 2009) Americans could no longer swim in major rivers like the Mississippi, the agement measures that closely correlate urban patterns with the dynam- Potomac or the Hudson. (Hoornbeek 2005; Sandin 2001) Reconsidered his- ics of hydrological systems.

12 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 13 Regionalisation: Probing the urban landscape of the Great Lakes Region Pierre Bélanger

Figure 12 Doxiadis’s Dream: The speculative bounda- ries of the growing from the hand of ekistics guru-cum-world planner Constanti- nos A. Doxiadis. Source: Emergence and Growth of an Urban Region (Volume II), 1970.

Reclamation and remediation Sub-urbanisation and super-urbanisation of the Great Lakes Addressing the divide between economy and ecology, a massive remedi- Horizontal spread and peripheral expansion remain the predominant egies are modest but effective. The Mahoning River was once the sewer of Grounded in geography and economics, Gottmann’s observations charac- ation programme in the Great Lakes Region was spearheaded by the In- forces that restructure towns and cities across the Great Lakes, but cit- Youngstown’s steel mills; now it serves as the backbone of an emerging terised the Northeastern Seaboard of America from Boston to Washington ternational Joint Commission in the late 1980s, addressing the impacts of ing depopulation and outmigration from city centres as the only causes corridor of light and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises. as an urban landscape with a decisively distributed, horizontal structure. discharges and diversions, floods and droughts and contamination and of economic decline during the second half of the 20th century is flawed. Echoing Ely’s approach to land economics, Williams’s urban decom- Those findings proved useful a decade later when the Greek architect cleaning. With its mandate to advise on the use and quality of bound- Nationally, population statistics show that while the population of the missioning strategy suggests a general process of de-densification where and urbanist Constantine Doxiadis attempted to map out the future of ary waters in Canada and the United States, the Commission addressed U.S. was increasing, the Great Lakes region remained nearly constant with the redistribution of land, industry and business can ultimately reduce the Great Lakes Region. Prefiguring centrally in his diagrams, the basin of three of the most pressing challenges in the Great Lakes: combined sew- just 1 percent growth. (Great Lakes Information Network 2009) What really tax burdens on citizens and maintenance burdens on the public works the Great Lakes could be understood as an urban megastructure. (Doxiadis er overflow, nutrient overloading and sediment contamination. Redress- occurred was regional population dispersion through inner city exodus. department. “Instead of capturing its industrial past, Youngstown hopes 1967-1970) (Fig. 12) Commissioned by private regional electrical utility De- ing the historical legacy of shoreline industries, the purpose is to reclaim Culturally and economically diverse metropolitan areas such as Chi- to capitalise on its high vacancy rates and underused public spaces to be- troit Edison Company, the project involved a three-year study of the pat- the “chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the waters of the Great cago and Toronto kept growing, but mostly on their peripheries. Access to come a thriving bedroom community serving Cleveland and Pittsburgh, tern of urbanisation of Great Lakes cities. Despite Doxiadis’s firm commit- Lakes Basin Ecosystem.” As the principal source of contamination in Great a multitude of urban, public and high-quality services –education, mass both of which are 70 miles away.” (Lanks 2006) Suburbanisation may be ment to ekistics, the study of human settlements, his exclusive focus on Lakes rivers and harbours, polluted sediment created by decades of in- transit and medical health care – supported by essential infrastructures Youngstown's imperative. the Detroit area overlooked the fate of the region. Based on double-digit dustrial and municipal discharges has historically limited remediation including waste management, water, food, transport and energy provi- growth from post-war projections, the study assumed a steady and exces- and redevelopment efforts by virtue of its geographic magnitude. (Ducks sion made big cities particularly attractive to a younger, knowledge-ori- Beyond the city sive growth for Detroit, the region and the continent. (Doxiadis 1967-1970, Unlimited Canada 2009) The IJC has since initiated a massive cleanup pro- ented generation. The transition from an industrial economy to an urban Paramount for understanding the process of decentralisation is a recon- Vol.1: 91) Exacerbated by a world view that characterised urbanisation as a gramme with remedial action plans for 43 priority sites throughout the economy also involved a shift from mass production and heavy equip- sideration of the Old World notion of the city as the locus of urban activ- universal crisis, the results of Doxiadis’s three-volume study were skewed: region. The bi-national programme uses multilateral funding and cross- ment to light manufacturing and lean inventories reliant on just-in-time ity. Whereas the historical concept of the city relied on theories of den- downward economic trends were overlooked, socio-political events such border legislation to accelerate cleanup and redevelopment of the most logistics. (Waldheim and Berger 2009) Large centralised industries of macro- sity and compactness, the North American logic of urbanisation relies as labour disputes and union riots were ignored and the Canadian side of contaminated sites, mostly harbours, in the downstream region. (Envi- production made way for a distributed pattern of micro-production re- on the exigencies of scale, distance, logistics, openness and horizontality. the Great Lakes was sometimes left blank. His plans overstated the im- ronment Canada 1999) Since bioremediation alone cannot solve the chal- quiring new land uses and public services. This counter-intuitive view was explored in greater depth by French ge- portance of inner cities in the face of the extensive decentralisation that lenge of brownfield redevelopment, the effect of new integrated regional The only logical course of action for nearby factory towns was to down- ographer Jean Gottmann in the late 1950s. Studying the logic of a rapidly was already occurring. For example, the 1965 plans projected populations economies offers a significant model for the reuse of land. At this scale, re- size. Regionalising their services, distributing densities, and tapping larg- spreading pattern of urbanisation across the Northeastern region, Gott- of 15 million for Detroit, 75 million for the Great Lakes area, and 400 mil- mediation costs can be offset by overall returns from productive land re- er urban economies became possible. Youngstown mayor Jay Williams has mann later collected his findings in Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeast- lion for North America by the year 2000. (Doxiadis 1967-1970, Vol.2: 75-81) development across multiple sites. For the first time in the history of the been testing the potential outcome of downsizing in Ohio. With plant ern Seaboard of the United States, in which he called for the rethinking of the Overestimates would have boded well for the electricity authority since Great Lakes, the collective objective of an economy based on clean fresh shutdowns by Republic Steel and Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company Old World notion of the city altogether: they fed the illusion of increasing demand for electrical energy and dis- water has become a public regional imperative. There is a contemporary over the past twenty years, the city is facing major fiscal deficits inher- “We must abandon the idea of the city as a tightly settled and organ- tribution infrastructure. urbanisation of waterfronts in the Great Lakes at the turn of the 21st cen- ited from oversized infrastructure, abandoned properties and countless ized unit in which people, activities, and riches are crowded into a very tury and cities such as Chicago, Toronto, Hamilton, Sudbury and Detroit miles of asphalt roads to maintain. Derelict buildings are being razed, un- small area clearly separated from its non urban surroundings. Every city Regional networks and the re-emergence of urban infrastructure are in the vanguard. Public works projects by Kathryn Gustafson and Piet derground utilities cut off, lands banked, and industrial districts rezoned, in this region spreads out far and wide around its original nucleus; it Numerous gains can be made by the collective characterisation of cities Oudolf in Chicago or by Field Operations, West 8 and MVVA in Toronto back taxes are exchanged for land stewardship and roads are ripped up grows amidst an irregularly colloidal mixture of rural and suburban land- as urban regions. (Florida 2007; Forman 1995; Leman Group 1976) Although can be seen as the inception of a systemic, regional reclamation project in or blocked out. Remaining lands are amalgamated for agrarian, parkland scapes; it melts on broad fronts with other mixtures, of somewhat simi- the urbanised region of the Great Lakes might appear today as a collec- its infancy. [4] Its economy is its ecology. or water uses. Former industrial land uses are overlaid with new produc- lar though different texture, belonging to the suburban neighborhoods tion of large, unplanned, generic cities sprawling haphazardly out of con- tive functions, bypassing the traditional re-zoning process. Counter strat- of other cities.” (Gottmann 1957: 5) trol, there is a prevailing logic to its morphology and development. Con-

14 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 15 Regionalisation: Probing the urban landscape of the Great Lakes Region Pierre Bélanger

Figure 13 Cash Crop: The Harvest Wind Farm in Bad Axe built by John Deere Renewables on land leased from cooperative sugar beet farmers, the first commer- cial scale public utility wind field in Michigan. Source: Don Coles, Great Lakes Aerial Photography, 2008.

ing permits and turbine construction, and townships receive annual tax- time bulbs and Christmas trees. Bio-industries are extremely competitive ditioned by a complex ecology, it is a landscape of urbanisation that is best model for land banking and of regional land reclamation across the U.S.. es. The anticipated long-term benefit is that the value of farmland will in comparison to conventional heavy industry. According to the U.S. De- understood as an unfinished region. (Bello 2005; Krugman 1997) Indicative (Nassauer and VanWieren 2008) increase steadily. Another 280 wind turbines are now planned across the partment of Agriculture, floriculture – including plants for bioremedia- of this nascent process are three notable structural transformations that county over the next two decades and, according to the National Oceanic tion and bioengineering – has been outpacing all other major commodity provide evidence of ongoing spatial change: land banking, energy harvest- Farming energy & Atmospheric Agency, the estimated potential of 100,000 wind turbines sectors in sales growth since the early 1990s. ing and greenhouse growing. Deregulation during the agricultural bubble in the 1980s led to an unu- on the shorelines of the Great Lakes state could meet one third of Ameri- sually high concentration of large agribusinesses in the region. Vertically­ ca’s power needs. (Adelaja and McKeown 2008) Urban-regional strategies Land banking integrated corporations took over the entire foodshed within 15 years, The concurrent development of land banks, wind farms and greenhous- There are between 30,000 and 50,000 brownfield sites across the Great ploughing half a million small independent farmers and ranchers under Greenhouse effect es demonstrate the potential of new strategies that engage the systemic Lakes states that pose obstacles to urban redevelopment and threats to and emptying rural communities. Destroying regional economies, the The single largest consumer of fresh water in the Great Lakes is agricul- integration of urban infrastructure with biophysical resources. As coun- groundwater resources. So far, local governments have been unable to predatory incorporation of the industry took over every aspect from seed- tural irrigation. (GLWI 2008) Followed by public water supply and indus- termeasures to the predominant challenges of the Great Lakes Region in- manage brownfield sites or prevent blight due to the accumulated effects lings to supermarkets. Corporate dominance, which relies on economies trial use, water usage is increasing by 3 to 5 percent year-on-year due to cluding water pollution, land abandonment and the farming slump, these of subsurface contamination, outdated fiscal legislation, inflexible zon- of scale, is now being put to the real test. The peaking of oil and gas pric- global warming. From an agricultural perspective however, the region is strategies usher in an era of regional economic regeneration where large ing policy and financial accountability. Michigan is an exception and an es in the 1970s, the aging of nuclear power plants and coal-fired power a winner in the climate change game and the Leamington-Kingsville area centralised mass production industries are being supplanted by a distrib- experiment. The state has recently enacted new legislation with revisions plants in the 1980s and the rising of commodity prices in the 1990s are is at the forefront. Located in Ontario, on the north shore of Lake Erie uted, networked patterns of production, cultivation and management. Al- to the 2004 Brownfield Redevelopment Financing Act and created the Gen- now calling into question the reliance on the importation of what used along the 42nd Parallel, the ‘Tomato Capital of Canada’ is now the leading though the long-term effects of this shift have yet to be understood, what esee County Land Bank Authority to address the erosion of property val- to be cheap oil resources from the Middle East or polluting coal from the greenhouse region in North America with the highest rate of start-ups remains clear is that the transition from a globally based carbon econo- ues throughout the watershed in Northern Michigan. Land Appalachian Range. From this shift, hybrid agrarian patterns of develop- in Canada, doubling between 2000 and 2005 in the Niagara region alone. my to a regionally based carbohydrate ecology is underway. Opening new banking involves the acquisition of abandoned and foreclosed proper- ment are capitalising on idle farmland to combine energy generation with Growers of the principal crops of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers are di- territories for renewal and new surfaces for occupation across the region, ties through a series of unique measures: vacant lot aggregations, surface crop cultivation. Sprouting from Michigan’s farmland are crops of wind versifying into tender fruits, vine-ripened vegetables and specialty flow- these developments demonstrate the capability of regional landscape strat- maintenance regimes, land management strategies, demolitions, recon- turbines in rural areas on the southern shoreline of Lake Huron with its ers cultivated in controlled hydroponic conditions which in turn limit egies to address several challenges of various complexities simultaneously. structions, sales, property transfers, foreclosure prevention and alterna- high winds and low densities. (Adelaja and McKeown 2008) Using a loop- pesticide inputs and runoff into nearby Lake Erie. Arable lands, increas- This is where design becomes instrumental, moving across varying scales tive zoning mechanisms. Land banking along the Flint River in North- hole in fiscal policy for implementation, John Deere Energy Renewables – ingly warm weather, abundance of fresh water and sunlight are further of intervention from planning to engineering, transcending convention- ern Michigan is achieving several objectives. First, it effectively reclaims the company that revolutionised farming in the late 19th century – is now contributing to the diversification of its cultures. With $1 billion in farm al boundaries of private and public interests. From this vantage point, the isolated watershed lands and forms a hydrological network. Second, it re- building the first utility-scale wind farm in Bad Axe, Michigan. (Goodman gate value, Leamington’s greenhouse acreage exceeds that of the entire new design imperatives are found in the basic processes and essential serv- duces loads on existing systems and builds up the capacity for self-suste- 2008) The 32-turbine, 52.8-megawatt commercial wind project spreads U.S. greenhouse industry. This emergent agro-economy follows the blos- ices that support urbanisation including the integrated ecologies of water, nance. Third, it elicits contemporary forms of development, stimulating across five square miles of agricultural fields and produces enough power soming of other bio-industries across the Great Lakes including viticul- energy, food, mobility and waste, which have traditionally been treated as emerging light industries such as mini-mills, mini-smelters, mini-farms to supply 15,000 homes. (Fig. 13) The project is the result of a unique pub- ture (wine-making and grapevine crops), silviculture (timberlands and di- separate components or separate districts in municipal planning. Through or micro-breweries. (Taylor 2002) In turn, fiscal benefits are passed down lic-private partnership between John Deere, the Detroit Edison Compa- mensional lumber) and floriculture (greenhouses and nurseries). In the the bundling of multiple ecological services, strategies can achieve great- from county, to municipality, to taxpayer. Today, the Land Bank Authori- ny and the County, but the beauty of the project lies in the co-operation past decade annual growth rates in these industries have varied between er economies and ecologies of scale. (Schneider 2001) Forming a geograph- ty manages over 4,000 properties and its flagship is the City of Flint, iron- across this new agro-energy shed: farmers lease land to the power utili- 5 and 10 percent, with retail turnover across North America topping $50 ic network, these urban-regional strategies can be considered synergistic, ically the graveyard of General Motors and United Auto Workers. As the ty for the erection of towers, leaving the crop land of beets, beans, cereals billion a year for products like cut roses, cultivated greens, potted flow- self-perpetuating and self-maintaining. It is at this precise moment that envy of real estate property management, Flint is becoming a prototypical and grains undisturbed. In turn, counties collect revenues from build- ering plants, bedding plants, turf, ground covers, nursery crops, spring- the region becomes infrastructural. (Bélanger 2009)

16 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 17 Regionalisation: Probing the urban landscape of the Great Lakes Region Pierre Bélanger

Figure 14 top The Great Lakes Commons: Map of the international­ Figure 16 Brave New Ecology: territorial waters and state-provincial jurisdictions overlapping A 42-kilogramme bighead carp with the watershed boundary of the Great Lakes Region. caught in the upper reaches of Source: Adapted from International Joint Commission – the Mississippi River. Intro- United States Geological Survey – Environment Canada. duced to fish farms in America during the 1830s and migrat- Figure 15 below Pipe Dreams: Great Lakes water diversions in the con- ing north to the Great Lakes, text of current and future inter-basin projects across North America,­ this vigorous species thrives in the source of looming cross-regional­ politics along the longest, heavily polluted waters and can least disputed border in the world. Source: 2005 Frédéric Lasserre jump up to 3 metres out of the and Philippe Rekacewicz, Major Water Transfers: Tools of Development water. Source: Darin Opel and or Instruments of Power (University of Québec, 2005). Illinois Bowfishers Club, 2008.

Region as landscape, region as infrastructure Emerging from a long, dark history as the sewer of North America, the support its ecology will be, as it always has been, an ongoing setting for AQUADUCT

CE

N Great Lakes Region may be understood as a macrocosm of change, a case conflict and contradiction. (Annin 2006) Its structure is paradoxical: hor- A WP TOPOGRAPHY Southampton study in the historic transformation of the continent. Land transforma- izontal yet deep, dynamic yet resilient, integrative yet synergistic. With GREAT 3 000m SLAVE LAKE 1 500m tions during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries present compelling evi- increased diversions and excess abstractions, reserves of fresh water will PLAN MAGNUM 1 000m dence that, as a large, complex, collective system of biophysical and hy- be under strain as consumption continues to exceed replenishment by a HUDSON BAY

WSWAC 500 m NAWAPA TAPPING drodynamic processes, the Great Lakes effectively precondition industrial factor of 6 to 9 (GLWI 2009); water politics will be at the epicentre of these TAPPING CHURCHILL 200 m CENAWP CHURCHILL-NELSON TAPPING FALLS LAFORGE LAKE W 0 m operations and sustain urban economies. challenges. (Fig. 15) ATHABASCA P TAPPING TAPPING KEMANO EOL Retroactively, the multiple characterisations of the Great Lakes as a Nevertheless, ideological debates regarding the future of the region Newfoundland region reveal an underlying landscape of persistent geo-economic and bi- will have to yield to a more pragmatic and intelligible discourse than in

N AW A i l l P h A C h u r c ophysical significance that warrants more depth and greater considera- the past. (Schmidt and Buehler 2007) Historical oppositions originating with Edmonton BAIE CANADA JAMES t n tion for the future. Economically, the region ranks second in the world the Old World industrial paradigm of the metropolis-hinterland [5] – city e r HOPE BAY u a DEVELOPMENT i TAPPING TAPPING a with a $4.6-trillion gross regional product. It represents two-thirds of vs. country, high-density vs. low-density, industry vs. agriculture, local vs. b LAKE L LAKE OGOKI - PACIFIC OCEAN m t u NAWAPA SAINT-JOSEPH n TAPPING i l g North America’s purchasing power, rivalled only by the United States as global, native vs. exotic – are quickly becoming obsolete in favour of new o LAC LONG a Seattle C Winnipeg S PLANKUPER GC a whole and larger than the economies of Japan, China, Germany and the complexities, new formulations and new synergies. Whether we refer to Portland GC Québec U.K. (Austin and Affolter-Caine 2006; World Business Chicago 2009, whose the spread of sea lampreys in the early 19th century or the annual restock- NAWAPA Montréal PLAN GC

PIRKEY WSWAC comparative data are based on national GDP figures issued by the World ing of 4 million fish in Lake Ontario or the more than 100 introduced spe- NAWAPA ° N CENTRAL VALLEY 40 Bank) Demographically, the 45 million people that live and work in the cies found across the Great Lakes today (Fig. 16), [6] the transmutation of PROJECT Boston M Toronto is region represent 30 percent of the combined Canadian-American popu- the ecology of the Great Lakes also requires us to move beyond the con- s GC ALASKAN i GC UNDERWATER WSWAC s CENAWP s i AQUADUCT GRAND DITCH p Buffalo DELAWARE lation. (Fig. 14) Geographically, the population is urban and decentral- ventions of conservation and preservation to focus on the expansion and Salt Lake p Detroit AQUADUCT CONTINENTAL i L City DIVIDE TRANSFERS New York Sacramento LOS ANGELES Chicago ised, bordering a coastline of over 15,000 kilometres. Politically, the region prolongation of living systems as prime objectives. [7] Whether by plan- AQUADUCT CENTRAL SUPPLY TAPPING UTAH THE OGLALA G C AQUIFER spans eight states and one province, including 447 counties located in two ning, policy or engineering, this is the contemporary regional design im- PROJECT i o WSWAC Denver h WASHINGTON City O ATLANTIC OCEAN CALIFORNIA STATE different countries sharing the longest, least disputed border in the world. perative. The formation of environmental protection agencies, watershed WATER PROJECT NAWAPA o 60 2 d M i s s (CSWP) a WSWAP o r u r i W Hydrologically, the population draws on a nearly 500,000-km watershed conservation authorities and remedial action plans at the close of the 20th C o l o e e s UNITED STATES s SAN JUAN e – ten times the size of the Netherlands or Belgium – as its sole source of century are some of the initial drivers of this greater paradigm shift, but Los Angeles CHAMA i n COLORADO RIVER p n CENAWP p e AQUADUCT i T 26,3 fresh water. The urban economy of the Great Lakes is thus inseparable considerable efforts are required to fully exploit this paradigm shift in Phoenix s NAWAPA s i R e d R s Atlanta i v e s from its Nearctic ecology. the present century. r i 8,5

ALL-AMERICAN AN T M CANAL Tucson 3,5 Notwithstanding the demand for staple resources of lumber, taconite The refocusing on regions relies on the robustness of their biophysical 1,3 CENTRAL ARIZONA 0,5 PROJECT and aggregates, the projected 3 to 5 percent population increase is an in- systems and is equivalent to their economic longevity. As dynamic con- New Orleans Amounts of water transferred in billions of cubic metres a year dicator that the region will continue to attract considerable domestic and figurations and operative morphologies, the boundary of surface waters, Rio Grande Houston MEXICO Main canals and aquaducts foreign interest in the form of immigration and investment. However, the network of biotopes, the bathymetry of lake bottoms, the contours of GULF OF MEXICO Routes for main continental transfer projects due to the scale of processes and range of operations that the region can cities and the flow of resources around Great Lakes are fundamental to

18 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 19 Regionalisation: Probing the urban landscape of the Great Lakes Region Pierre Bélanger

Duluth Superior

Gary Chicago Benton Harbor Racine Milwaukee Ludington Manitowoc Green Bay Escanaba

Sault Ste Marie

Alpena

Saginaw Goderich Figure 18 Interregional Urbanism: Geospatial context of the Great Lakes and the distribution of urban patterns across North America. Sarnia Source: NASA – United States Geological Survey, 2008. Detroit Windsor Toledo Sandusky this shift. (Fig. 17) As measures of intelligence, the mapping of inter-re- Cleveland gional flows and reciprocities provides a base to register and effect change over time. Instead of a single, bounded, closed, homogeneous environ- Erie ment, the regionalisation of the Great Lakes can open a wider and richer Buffalo horizon on a systemic network of endogenous and exogenous processes at Niagara work. When viewed telescopically at different resolutions and scales, the Hamilton region can then be understood as a system of systems. [8] Toronto In this expanded field, the regionalisation of design practice can tran- Rochester scend conventional spatial boundaries, disciplinary territories and po- Kingston litical ideologies. Design can be liberated from the straitjacket of short- sighted bureaucratic time scales and the confinement of jurisdictional

200.0 site boundaries. Capitalising on geopolitical cleavages, design can unearth 183.00m asl 176.00m asl 176.00m asl 173.00m asl 180.0 St. Clair River Lake St. Clair Niagara Falls 160.0 and propose mutual, cooperative, interdependent and synergistic strat- Lake Superior St. Mary's River (406m deep) Lake Huron 140.0 Lake Michigan (229m deep) Lake Erie 120.0 egies at large scales that spin off inter-regionally. Consequently, design (282m deep) (64m deep) Canal 100.0 74.00m asl St. Lawrence River 80.0 can be informed by continental geography and global ecologies while be- 60.0 40.0 ing elevated to the superintendence of time. The physiographic and polit- Lake Ontario 20.0 ical regionalisation of urban areas thus moves beyond that of mere back- (244m deep) 0.0 (Sea Level) -20.0 ground for planning or mere unit of development. As planning tactic and - 40.0 -60.0 design strategy, regionalisation becomes instrumental and infrastructur- -80.0 -100.0 al, setting the precedent for landscape reclamation and landscape urbani- -120.0 m 783.53 sation across the continent and other industrialised regions of the world, 42.47 39.70 548.41 71.94 413.36 60.87 32.97 40.89 473.31 335.77 km from the Americas to Asia to Africa. (Fig. 18) From the 40 million acres of Cutover land to the management of over Figure 17 Urban-Regional Infrastructure: A cross-sectional view of dependent on the 20 quadrillion litres of water flowing from Lake the Great Lakes underlying the urban agglomeration of cities from Superior to Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence. Source: Adapted from 20 quadrillion litres of fresh water in the watershed, the engagement of Duluth to Kingston, home to approximately 40 million people NASA – United States Geological Survey – – Geode, 2009. the Great Lakes as a complex regional landscape is therefore pressing. If fresh water is the oil of the 21st century, than the agency of urban regions is of critical and contemporary significance, globally.

20 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2010 21 Regionalisation: Probing the urban landscape of the Great Lakes Region Pierre Bélanger

Acknowledgements For graphic imaging, I would like to thank Aisling O'Carroll, Hoda Matar, waukee Department of City Development), Frédéric Laserre (Université Values: Linking The Environment To The Economy. International Joint Commission (IJC) Canada & United States. Rand, A. 1967. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New York: Signet. www.ducks.ca/conserve/wetland_values/conserve.html. 2008. Treaties & Agreements. www.ijc.org/rel/agree/water.html. Michelle Dobbie and David Christensen. For image permissions, Darin Laval), Patrick Martin and Don Durfee (Society of Industrial Archaeology), Robinson, S.K. 2005. Does Frank Lloyd Wright Belong in Chica- [accessed 14 February 2009] [accessed 5 November 2008] Opel and Christine Appleberg (Illinois Bowfishers Club), Sandra Rusch Don Coles (Great Lakes Aerial Photography) and Whitney French (Farns- go's Architectural History? In Chicago Architecture: Histories, Re- Walton (Milwaukee Public Library), Gary Petersen and Terri Grote (Mil- worth House, Landmarks Illinois). Ely, R.T. and Wehrwein, G. 1940. Land Economics. Jacobs, J. 1970. The Economy of Cities. New York: Vintage Books. visions, Alternatives, C. Waldheim, C. and R. K. Rüedi, eds. Chica- New York: The MacMillan Company. go: Press: 53-60. Jones, R. 2004. As Detroit falters, Asian makers pick up speed: Environment Canada. 1999. The State of Municipal Wastewater Toyota likely to surpass GM as world’s top carmaker; Sandin, J. 2001. 30 years later, cleanup still fighting current. Effluents in Canada. Ottawa, ON: Queen’s Printer. China lurks in wings. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10532121/. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 9 September. [accessed 24 July, 2008] Notes References Florida, R., Gulden, T. and Mellander, C. 2007. The Rise of the Sassen, S. 2007. Megaregions: Benefits beyond Sharing Trains Mega Region. Toronto, ON: The Martin Prosperity Institute. 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New York Times, American Public Works Association (APWA). 2000. frastructure in the fields of planning, design and engineering. gation by lake, river, and ocean to Europe.” (Innis 1950: 23) As 13 February. Sassen, S. 1998. Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on The Top Ten Public Works Projects of the Century 1900-2000. Ford, H. and Crowther, S. 1922. My Life and Work. Garden City, This essay is also informed by two earlier texts: Redefining In- one of the most overlooked public intellectuals of 20th-centu- New Mobility of People and Money. New York: The New Press. www.apwa.net/About/Awards/TopTenCentury. NY: Doubleday, Page & Company. Lanks, B. 2006. The incredible shrinking city – Facing steep frastructure in Ecological Urbanism edited by Mostafavi and ry North America, Innis demystified complex subjects such as [accessed 21 June 2009] population decline, Youngstown, Ohio, is repositioning itself. Schaper, D. 2006. Asian Carp: Can't Beat Them? Eat Them. 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The failure of colonial-style eradication to subdue more Austin, J. and Affolter-Caine, B. 2006. The Vital Center: A Federal- Friedman, T.L. 2005. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 18-19. ning Studies 12(1): 55-75. Benton Mackaye almost a century ago in The New Exploration. than 100 species of exotic plants, fish and algae in the Great State Compact to Renew the Great Lakes Region. Washington, DC: Twenty-first Century. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. (Mackaye 1928). Lakes testifies to the persistence and sustainability of global The Metropolitan Policy Program. LeDuff, C. 2009. To Urban Hunter, Next Meal is Scampering By. Schneider, D.C. 2001. The rise of the concept of scale in ecology. Garreau, J. 1981. The Nine Nations of North America. trans-regional ecological flows. (Del Tredici 2006; Schaper 2006; www.detnews.com/article/20090402/METRO08/904020395. BioScience 51(7): 545-553. 2. On the significance of the economies of disassembly and Bélanger, P. 2009. Landscape as infrastructure. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Smith 1996) [accessed 30 July 2008] demanufacturing to urban restructuring, see Bélanger (2007), Landscape Journal 28 (1): 79-95. Smith, D. 1996. European tastes could help solve decades - Geddes, P. 1915. Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the deFever (2008) and Peck (2009). 7. Regionalism should not and cannot be based solely on envi- Leman Group, ed. 1976. Great Lakes Megalopolis: From Civili- old Great Lakes problem; Sea lamprey might become dinner. Bélanger, P. 2007. Landscapes of disassembly. Town Planning Movement and to the Study of Civics. ronmental determinism or on conventional conservatism. The zation to Ecumenization. Ottawa, ON: Canada Ministry of Star Tribune, 11 May. 3. Through independent investigative efforts, three events Topos 60 (October): 83-91. 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Systemic Design Can Change the World. Goodman, P.S. 2008. A Splash of Green for the Rust Belt. monwealth (Hardin 1968). On another more controversial lev- Mackaye, B. 1928. The New Exploration. Taylor, B. 2002. On the rise: signs of a healthier manufacturing Lakes in urban history, the Act sought to bridge administra- Amsterdam:SUN Publishers. New York Times, 1 November. el, conservation and management of resources was called into New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. sector are being seen in increased demand and pricing for fer- tive, technocratic and disciplinary gaps between national, pro- question by Henry Ford who claimed that “conserving our Changnon, S. A. and Harper, M. E. 1994. History of the Chicago Gottmann, J. 1990. Megapolitan systems around the world. rous scrap. www.recyclingtoday.com/articles/article.asp?MagI vincial and municipal infrastructure authorities and conserva- McGrath, K.A. 1999. World of Invention: History's Most natural resources by withdrawing them from use is not a serv- Diversion and Future Implications. In The Lake Michigan Diver- In Since Megalopolis: The Urban Writings of Jean Gottmann, D=1&ID=4369&IssueID=144. [accessed 15 February 2009] tion agencies. Regional conservation authorities were granted Significant Inventions and the People Behind Them. ice to the community. That is holding to the old theory that sion at Chicago and Urban Drought, Stanley A. Changnon, J. Gottmann and R.A. Harper, eds. Baltimore: The Johns special powers for the re-zoning and re-planning of privately­ Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Research Group Time. 1952. Taconite Boom, 28 April. a thing is more important than a man. Our natural resources ed. Mahomet, IL: NOAA Contract 50WCNR306047. Hopkins University Press: 162-171. owned land in floodplains as riparian infrastructure. The sec- are ample for all our present needs. We do not have to bother Meyer, D.R. 1983. Emergence of the American Waldheim, C. and Berger, A. 2009. Logistics landscape. ond development involved a staff of five at the Milwaukee Chicago Department of Health. 1919. General and Chronological Gottmann, J. 1957. Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Sea- about them as resources. What we have to bother about is the manufacturing belt: An interpretation. Landscape Journal 27(2): 219-246. Sentinel Journal who won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.­ Summary of Vital Statistics, Annual Report 1911-1918. Reprint Se- board of the United States. New York: Twentieth Century Fund. waste of human labour” (Ford and Crowther 1926: 90) On another Journal of Historical Geography 9(2): 145-174. They championed a national effort for the conservation of nat- ries No.16. Chicago, IL: The Department of Health: 1424. World Business Chicago. 2009. Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Re- more extreme level, Ayn Rand argued: “Contrary to the ‘argu- Great Lakes Information Network. 2009. Demographics in the ural resources through the control of industrial discharges, Mohl, R. 1997. The Making of Urban America. gion. www.glslcities.org/documents/GreatLakesandStLawren- ment from scarcity’, if you want to make a ‘limited’ resource Choate, P. and Walter, S. 1983. America in Ruins: The Decaying Great Lakes Region. www.great-lakes.net/econ/refs/demog. namely by the treatment of waste fluids at source before en- Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing. ceEconomy2008extended.pdf. [accessed 19 December 2009] available to the whole people, make it private property and Infrastructure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. html. [accessed 7 March 2009] tering the watershed. The third development involves the dis- throw it on a free, open market.” (Rand 1967: 134) Mumford, L. 1938. The Culture of the Cities. Wright, F.L. 1958. The Living City. New York: Horizon Press: 162. covery of buried chemicals below the Love Canal by Lois Marie Collins, D.R. 1990. Pioneer Plowmaker: A Story about John Deere. Great Lakes Water Institute (GLWI). 2009. Great Lakes Water New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Gibbs, leading to the birth of the United States Environmen- 8. Ecologist Howard T. Odum and his father Howard W. Minneapolis, MN; Carolrhoda Books. Balance. www.glwi.uwm.edu/ourwaters/documents/Great- Wright, F.L. 1941. Chicago 1918. In Frank Lloyd Wright On Archi- tal Protection Agency (USEPA) in 1971. The toxic ecology of Odum were pioneers of 20th-century regionalism in America: LakesWaterBalanceBWeb.pdf [accessed 26 March 2009] Nassauer, J. and VanWieren, R. 2008. Vacant Property Now & tecture: Selected Writings 1894-1940, Frederick Gutheim, ed. Cucci, G. 1979. The City in Agrarian Ideology and Frank Lloyd the Love Canal became the first Superfund site in the U.S., one “The significance of regionalism as the key to equilibrium is re- Tomorrow: Building Enduring Values with Natural Assets. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce: 85-97. Wright. In: The American City: From the Civil War and the New Great Lakes Water Institute (GLWI). 2008. of the most important legislative programmes in the U.S. Al- flected in an extraordinary range of situations, such as the con- Ann Arbor, MI: Sea Grant, Michigan, Genesee Institute, Deal, Giorgio Cucci, Francesco Dal Co, Mario Manieri-Elia Our Waters: Diversions of Great Lakes Water. Fact Sheet 03. most a decade later, combined efforts in the states of Wiscon- flict between nationalism and internationalism, between sec- Genesee County Land Bank, School of Natural Resources and Manfredo Tafuri, eds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. sin and New York led to the Federal Clean Water Act in 1977 tionalism and federalism, and the imbalance between agrarian Hall, C.G.L. 1997. Steel Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of the U.S. Steel and the Environment, . Biographical Notes introduced ­by Jimmy Carter to eliminate all wastewater dis- and urban life, between agriculture and industry, between in- Dandaneau, S.P. 1996. A Town Abandoned: Flint, Michigan, Industry. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. New York Times. 1897. Chicago’s Canal and the Lakes, Pierre Bélanger is a landscape architect, urban planner and charges into the nation’s waters. dividuation and socialisation in governmental trends, between Confronts Deindustrialization. Albany, NY: State University Hardin, G. 1968. Tragedy of the commons. Science 162:1243-1248. 3 January: 12. Associate Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School a quantity of civilisation of standardising forces and a quality of New York Press. 4. This systems-based strategy involves the more substantive, of Design, teaching graduate courses on landscape, infrastruc- world, between machines and men”. (Odum and Moore 1938: 5) Harvey, D. 1996. Globalization and deindustrialization: A city Odum, H. T. 1983. Ecological and General Systems: An Introduction complex and proactive engagement of the natural and built deFever, D. 2008. Increasing demand for metal means big ture and urbanism in the interrelated fields of planning, abandoned. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society to Systems Ecology. Rev. ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons. systems, eventually leading to the formulation of more intelli- profits for Genesee County residents who collect, sell scrap. design and engineering. He is editor of the Landscape Infrastruc- 10(1): 175-191. gent design scenarios at larger scales. (Berger 2009) The Flint Journal, June 6. Odum, H.W. and Moore, H.E. 1938. American Regionalism. tures DVD published by the National Research Council Canada­ Hoornbeek, J.A. 2005. The promises and pitfalls of devolution: New York: Henry Holt and Company. and recipient of the Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture 5. The city, as an industrial concept, implies a spatial distinc- Del Tredici, P. 2006. Brave new ecology. Water pollution policies in the American states. awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts. tion between the civilised metropolis and the hostile hinter- Landscape Architecture Magazine 96: 46-52. Peck, D. 2009. Disassembly line: The unbuilding of an auto Publius: The Journal of Federalism 35(1): 87-114. land. Canadian economist and public historian Harold A. Innis plant. The Atlantic, March-April. Doxiadis, C.A. 1967-1970. Emergence and Growth of an Urban established views on the indivisibility of geography and indus- Hough, M. 1983. The urban landscape - The next frontier. Region: The Developing Urban Detroit Area, Vols. 1-3. Detroit, Quinn, F. 1988. Interbasin Water diversions: A Canadian per- Contact trialisation as lead triggers of New World regionalism: “North Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology 15(4): 9-14. MI: Detroit Edison Company. spective. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 42(6): 389-393. America is deeply penetrated by three vast inlets from the At- Pierre Bélanger Innis. H. 1950. Empire and Communications. lantic – the Mississippi, the St. Lawrence, and the Hudson Bay, Ducks Unlimited Canada. 2009. Natural Capital and Ecological Rabinowitz, A. 2004. Urban Economics and Land Use in America: [email protected] Cambridge: U.K.: Oxford University Press. and the rivers of its drainage basin. In the northern part of Goods and Services. In: Ducks Unlimited Canada Natural The Transformation of Cities in the Twentieth Century. www.gsd.harvard.edu/people/faculty/belanger/index.html the continent or in Canada extensive waterway and the domi- New York: M.E. Sharpe.

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