Reddit reviews Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

Northwestern Territory, yes. But Illinois has a greater claim on Wisconsin rather then the other way around.

If it makes you feel better, Wisconsin was basically deforested to build Chicago (pre-fire, 1871. Source: William Cronon's "Nature's Metropolis")

And the Green Bay-Chicago rivalry transcends football. After the revolution, Chicago, St. Louis, Green Bay, and Cincinnati all competed to be the nexus for trade and goods moving from the western frontier to the East Coast and on to Europe. Chicago actually lagged for several reasons: Shipping would include an annoying portage from the Illinois to Chicago Rivers, and Chicago was an ice or mud locked malarial swamp for much of its early history.

But while the other cities invested heavily into their water passages, Chicago gambled and came up big on the newer technology of railroads. After most of Chicago burned to the ground in 1871, Green Bay began to attract significant investment from New York and Boston betting Chicago would take decades to recover. (Source: Donald Miller's "City of the Century")

You'd have to be obtuse to think that the people of the UK voted in the EU referendum based on the merits of the EU and the relationship the UK had in it. The previous UK PM fucked up tremendously in allowing that referendum to be put forth knowing how politics would warp it.

Venice isn't a principality. Neither is Hong Kong which is on borrowed time. Hong Kong became a major city because it was the British trading post to China for a century. That was its edge and it doesn't have that anymore and China is puffing up native Shanghai as its business center instead.

Singapore exists because of the current international system with treaties and the UN makes it way too inconvenient to invade and also it has two weak neighbors. Singapore's edge is that it's next to the Straights of Malacca so it's like an an Asian Panama Canal--shipping is focused there. Thailand and China are working on a canal to the north of it which will drink its milkshake.

Monaco exists because France allows it. Monaco is some luxury apartments and a couple of casinos in less than 640 acres on the side of a mountain on the French Riviera, that's pretty meaningless economically and politically. Monaco defaults back to France as soon as there isn't an heir to inherit the princedom.

Some city-states were tried in the late 1800's and after WWI but they didn't last.

You're probably thinking NYC is the model of a principality. NYC is one of the top 2 or 3 cities in the world not because of some special New York City-ness to it but because it New York City is the economically central city in a massive country. NYC would be greatly diminished if NY State or even New England were separated from the rest of the country.

New York City exists as it does because of the rest of the US. NYC got its edge when the Erie Canal was built that connected (funneled) the Great Lakes to the Hudson River. In the early 1800's Baltimore and New York City were rivals and neck and neck. Unfortunately for Baltimore it was much harder to build a canal from the Ohio River to the Potomac so all of the bounty of the Midwest went by boat across the Great Lakes to the Erie Canal then to the Hudson River and down to NYC. This is the same reason Chicago was the #2 city for a century. Chicago was the start of the funnel of all the agriculture and industry of the Midwest. Everything got sent to Chicago and then shipped by boat and later rail off to NYC. If this is interesting to you, you can read more about this in Nature's Metropolis.

Cities are not on islands where everything more than 20 or 30 miles away doesn't matter or is interchangeable. Cities exist where they do because there's a reason for a city to be there and the reason usually involves stuff more than a few miles beyond the edge of the city. There's a large city where New Orleans is because there is a good spot for a port to interface between barges on the Mississippi River system, railroads, and international shipping right there and then there's a feedback loop that having those facilities attracts additional industry. If New Orleans were part of a different political/economic unit than the rest of the Mississippi River basin, or the Mississippi River decided to flow somewhere else, then there wouldn't be much use of a port there which means there wouldn't be much of a city there in the long-run.

For comparison look at the Danube River in Europe! It's a big-ass river but there are only dinky cities along it because the river runs through like 9 different countries. It's hard or expensive and complicated to trade on that river so there aren't any large port cities there in that part of Europe. In comparison the Rhine River isn't particularly deep, wide, or long but it flows through two countries: Germany and the Netherlands. (It borders France and Switzerland too but that's upstream.) It's easy to do trade on there and subsequently it's a massive river in economic terms, running right through the heart of German industry and the largest port in Europe is at the mouth of that river in the Netherlands.

Cities and the regions around them are chicken-and-egg situations economically and geographically. You can't separate the city from the region and country around it.

A professor is not a government official. Republicans are idiots. Bill Cronon is also one of the BEST historians the U.S. has right now, by the way. Read Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West to have mind blown by a brilliant writer and educator. This is one of the best books on U.S. history ever written!

Natures Metropolis by William Cronon

" Cronon's history of 19th-century Chicago is in fact the history of the widespread effects of a single city on millions of square miles of ecological, cultural, and economic frontier. Cronon combines archival accuracy, ecological evaluation, and a sweeping understanding of the impact of railroads, stockyards, catalog companies, and patterns of property on the design of development of the entire inland United States to this date. Although focused on Chicago and the U.S., the general lessons it teaches are of global significance, and a rich source of metaphors for the ways in which colonization of physical space operates differently from, and similarly to, colonization of cyberspace. This is a compelling, wise, thorough--and thoroughly accessible--masterpiece of history writ large. Very Highest Recommendation. "

I picked up a book called Nature's Metropolis:Chicago and the Great West the other day to read over spring break. I've only been to Chicago once in my life a few years back but there is something about that city that intrigues me.

Midwestern cities are especially fascinating because they were all founded fairly recently so you have a full recorded history of the people, why they decided to build there, and the decisions they made that sealed the fate of their city.

Many of them have economically collapsed or been destroyed, often more than once! Sometimes to recover, sometimes not.

I would recommend the documentary series about the early history of Chicago. Mostly because the Chicago of that era was essentially an unlivable city - anarchic, polluted, uneducated -- that somehow managed to survive and thrive no matter what kind of natural, social, and/or economic disaster the city encountered.
It's a good way to understand, not what is enjoyable about a successful city, -- but rather, what is essential.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sXPBDWNYZbA&t=682s

https://www.amazon.com/Natures-Metropolis-Chicago-Great-West/dp/0393308731

https://patricktreardon.com/book-review-natures-metropolis-chicago-and-the-great-west-by-william-cronon/

Nature's Metropolis by Bill Cronon - fascinating story about how Chicago developed into the urban powerhouse it is today

The Name of War by Jill Lepore - a history of King Philip's War of the 17th century, a profoundly bloody conflict between colonists + Indians

This Republic of Suffering, by Drew Gilpin Faust - history of death and suffering in the Civil War (LOVE this book)

The Circus Age, by Janet Davis - a political and cultural history of the circus during the 19th century

Segregating Sound by Karl Hagstrom Miller - how pop music developed from racial categorization

I read Nature's Metropolis. It's about Chicago becoming a large city. Like Railroads and I believe it was a huge lumber depot. It was interesting.

Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West is another one I'll throw in with your list, if I may.

Nature's Metropolis: Chicago & the Great West is a wonderful read that doesn't pop up on here that much. It analyzes the environmental and economic background of the city from it's foundation until just past the worlds fair IIRC. It posits the straightforward argument that the success and growth of Chicago was an organic and interdependent inevitability based on the vast amounts of natural resources spread throughout the plains and upper midwest. It's basically Third Coast, but focused a hundred years earlier. It is a very dry read for most of the book, but it delves deeply into almost every industry that fed into early Chicago. If you've ever wondered why the Board of Trade is such a figure in the cities history, or why Chicago had the largest meatpacking industry in North America, or why all the grain from the upper midwest ended up here, why the bulk of the timber from the North Woods came through the city, this is your book.