For the first time in decades, people in Los Angeles this month were able to paddle along the much-maligned and concrete-encased Los Angeles River without breaking the law. It was, if you’ll pardon the pun, a watershed moment — both for the river, which is making a comeback in the eyes of the general public as well as elected officials; and for the greater Los Angeles community, which is slowly coming to grips with the fact that it has a potentially dynamic natural resource threading its way through neighborhoods that are starved for high quality green space.
The LA River in 2010 (photo by Mark Boster of the LA Times)
Even the U.S. Corps of Engineers, the same outfit that tamed the flood-prone river in the 1930s by building levees and a concrete channel for the formerly wild LA river, is coming on board. This past month’s float down the Sepulveda Basin section of the river included civic officials as well as Mark Toy, District Commander of the Corps of Engineers. As reported by the LA Timeson 9 August 2011,
Los Angeles is urban territory, and this 1.5-mile trip is arrow-straight, flanked by the San Diego and Ventura freeways and strewn with discarded bicycles, shopping carts, trash and, occasionally, the carcasses of rodents.
It is also home for 212 species of birds, including yellow warblers, hooded orioles and the federally endangered least Bell’s vireo.
In July, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers District Commander Col. Mark Toy issued the license allowing the Los Angeles Conservation Corps to operate the program along a soft-bottom stretch of the river between Balboa and Burbank boulevards, about 17 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
On Monday, his participation in the program’s inaugural “ceremonial paddle” was viewed by environmentalists as an important juncture in the history of the river that was tamed and polluted in the 1930s by the corps’ concrete walls and 12,000 storm drains.
“For more than a century, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has built walls between people and their rivers here in Los Angeles and nationwide,” said David Beckman of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “So to have the corps’ district commander metaphorically jumping over that wall and into a boat is symbolic and potentially very important.”
Toy shrugged off such accolades, saying, “This is a team effort, and I’m proud to be a part of it. What we learn from the program this year will help shape the future of the river.”
The recent resurgence of interest in the LA River, spurred by river enthusiasts and environmental advocates, exemplifies an important axiom in relation to urban streams. If people start using them for recreation, they suddenly become more important, no matter their state of abuse or degradation. And such usage, in turn, spurs efforts to clean up the rivers in order to benefit from their important functions as green corridors.
This has long been the case with the Chicago River, which has experienced a remarkable resurgence in recent decades since the formation of the non-profit river advocacy group Friends of the Chicago River in the 1970s. Now canoe races are held along various stretches of the river, schoolchildren and adults come to the water to learn about aquatic ecology and urban conservation, and the city has poured millions of dollars into building attractive riverwalks and improving water quality — all testament to the fact that the river is a cultural amenity and economic resource.
Yet even Chicago has a long, long way to go before its channelized, reversed, and polluted waterways regain their ecological health and biodiversity. The mere name of the transformed south branch of the river — the Sanitary and Ship Canal — indicates its primary identity as a transportation conduit and sewage conveyance channel, rather than as a living river. But the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s recent decision to plan for disinfecting the treated wastewater it releases into the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS) is a landmark step in working toward the river’s ecological improvement and reshaping that identity which dates from the late 19th century.
It looks like LA, with the Corps of Engineers’ recent foray on the river and the building public interest in exploring its hidden reaches, is taking initial steps down a similar path. The ultimate goal: to treat urban rivers like living ecosystems, which they are, instead of mere tools for flood control, shipping, and wastewater management.
Environmental reporter Michael Hawthorne of the Chicago Tribune has published a series of excellent articles this month about the state of water quality in Chicago and the suburbs. These detail the detected presence of lead, chromium, hormones, vinyl chloride, herbicides, antibiotics, and other contaminants — some of which are regulated by the EPA, others of which are not. He also reports on the latest developments in the Crestwood IL water scandal in which village officials knowingly laced their Lake Michigan municipal water supply with vinyl chloride-polluted well water for over 20 years.
This past Saturday, June 11th, students in my PLS 392 Seminar in Humanities online summer course at Roosevelt University took an “urban landscapes” field trip to Chicago’s near Southwest Side, where we visited two city parklands: Canal Origins Park on South Ashland Avenue, and Stearns Quarry (aka Palmisano) Park on Halsted Street. This afternoon field trip was a chance for us to discuss the history and ecology of these locations and their relation to Chicago’s urban landscape, as well as think about the visual aesthetics of these areas, the integration of nature and culture in urban environments, the importance of parks to city communities, and how such areas can serve as windows into the rich history of Chicago.
PLS 392 students help clean up Canal Origins Park before our walking tour of this urban parkland along the Chicago River, June 2011 (photo by M. Bryson)
We began our afternoon by meeting at Canal Origins and, before starting our walking tour of this 2002 riverfront parkland, picking up several bags’ worth of litter along Ashland Avenue near the park’s entrance. (Thanks to my students for pitching in like troopers!) Canal Origins provides impressive views of the present-day juncture of the Chicago River’s South Branch and Bubbly Creek, and commemorates the origin of the I&M Canal, which was constructed from 1836 to 1848. Use of the canal peaked in 1882 (when over a million tons of cargo were transported), but construction of Sanitary & Ship Canal in the late 19th century spelled the eventual demise of the I&M, as did the advent of railroad transport in the latter third of the 1800s.
The old canal, though, has made a comeback the during the last 30 years though the establishment of the I&M Canal Heritage Corridor by Congress in 1984 by Congress, which celebrates and promotes the Canal as natural resource, wildlife corridor, recreation destination, and source of cultural memory and historical preservation. Here at this area of Chicago, the canal is filled in and is covered by Interstate 55. Visitors to the park can see it only in their imaginations.
This walkway from the entrance of Canal Origins Park leading to the river symbolizes the canal’s walls, and features artwork by Chicago high school students. Unfortunately, now the displays are heavily tagged with graffiti (photo by M. Bryson)
To the west, the South Branch soon morphs into the Sanitary and Ship Canal, begun in 1892 and completed in 1900. This canal marked the permanent reversal of the Chicago River for improved sanitation (via dilution) and navigation, and continues to be used heavily to this day for commercial transportation. North of the S&S Canal is the filled-in waterway formerly known as the West Fork of the South Branch, which flowed southwestward until it ended at the Continental Divide separating the two watersheds that meet here in the Chicago region (those of the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes). Here was located Mud Lake, between Kedzie (to the east) and Harlem (to the west), which earlier voyageurs could paddle across in wet years to travel between the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers. The Chicago Portage National Historic Site is at Harlem Avenue, north of the canal, and it commemorates the history of the portage made via Mud Lake. The Stickney Wastewater Treatment plant, the world’s largest, now sits where the fickle waters of Mud Lake once were.
After touring Canal Origins Park, we walked a few blocks south to the Ashland stop of the CTA Orange Line, where suburban students enjoyed the novelty of an L ride one stop to the north to Halsted Street, where we disembarked and walked a couple of blocks south to Stearns Quarry Park.
RU students walk the trails at Stearns Quarry Park in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, June 2011 (photo by M. Bryson)
This extraordinary urban greenspace finished in 2009 is a cutting-edge example of city park design with nature in mind. Its meandering walking trails provide a different kind of view as one walks along, from the terraced wetlands that filter water circulated between the park’s fishing pond to its entrance fountain; to the old walls of the limestone quarry, which operated here from the late 1830s to 1970, when the site became a landfill; to the neighboring churches and houses of the Bridgeport neighborhood; to the dramatic scene of the Loop’s skyline, as viewed from the grassy-topped mound of the park. Throughout the park, native vegetation provides natural beauty, efficient water retention, and ample wildlife habitat — and many other sustainable design features make this truly a 21st century parkland.
A view of the terraced wetlands in Stearns Quarry (photo by M. Bryson)A closer view of the one of the wetland’s terraces; red-winged blackbirds and barn swallows were in abundance here (photo by M. Bryson)A view of the stocked fishing pond at the bottom of the quarry, as well as the its limestone walls — a most unusual sight within the city of Chicago (photo by M. Bryson)
Those seeking an off-the-beaten-path Chicago experience should consider visiting Stearns Quarry Park, which is easily accessible via the CTA (Orange Line and #8 bus) as well as car, with free street parking available next to the park. An excellent audio tour is provided by the Chicago Park District, as well.
The mound at Stearns Quarry Park affords impressive views of Chicago’s downtown skyline, only a few miles to the northeast (photo by M. Bryson)
This past spring, the Sustainability Studies program offered its inaugural section of SUST 330 Biodiversity as a hands-on learning and research experience at the famed Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. One of the students in the class, Amanda Zeigler, offers these reflections on her experiences here:
SUST major Amanda Zeigler working at the Field Museum of Natural History
As a Sustainability Studies major, every course I have taken in the program has been meaningful and rewarding, but none has matched the experiential aspect of SUST 330, better known as Biodiversity. This class met once a week at the Field Museum, and was taught by Julian Kerbis Peterhans, Professor of Natural Science at Roosevelt University and an Adjunct Curator in the museum’s Zoology Department. A typical class consisted of a lecture by a member of the museum’s renowned staff, followed by internship duties. These internships included work in invertebrate fossils, vertebrate paleontology, botany, small mammals, geology, insects, botany and lichens.
Prof. Julian Kerbis Peterhans at work in his lab at the Field Museum
I had the pleasure of working in the small mammals division, along with three other students, and it was a blast. Getting the opportunity to work “back stage” at a world-class institution was informative and just plain cool. Our duties ranged from data entry, to manually cleaning various bones and skulls, cleaning, sexing and organizing specimens, and providing assistance in any way we could, to further the success of the department. Getting to spend a semester as part of the museum team was an exciting way to witness biodiversity firsthand, and learn how it relates to sustainability on a global level. I can honestly say that SUST 330 has changed the way I view the natural world around me, and has made me more conscious of the ecologically fragile world that both we, and all other living creatures, inhabit.
Through this course, I got plugged into an internship in the Botany Department of the Field Museum, where I will be working this summer. I’m looking forward to returning to the museum, and helping in any way that I can, while all the while advancing the cause of sustainability.
Congratulations to Amanda on her upcoming summer internship at the Field Museum. She is one of many talented SUST majors in our program, which began in the spring of 2010 and is now in its fourth semester this summer. Next fall, Professor Kerbis Peterhans will again offer SUST 330 Biodiversity at the Field Museum on Friday mornings. If this kind of learning experience appeals to you, check out this listing of our upcoming Fall 2011 course offerings, or contact Profs. Mike Bryson or Carl Zimring to learn more.
Nature within the urban landscape is simultaneously close at hand and hidden from view — a paradox of proximal obscurity. Yet its myriad forms and manifestations are as diverse in kind as their human denizens. City parks, community gardens, nature centers, green rooftops, restoration sites, golf courses, back yards, alleys, vacant lots, landscaped public spaces, plus the resident non-human biota in all its riotous diversity and plenitude — all these and more comprise urban nature.
Photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee
Despite the ubiquity and fascinating heterogeneity of urban nature, it remains largely invisible to and thus unappreciated by many city dwellers. We are much more likely to assume nature exists “out there,” away from our cities and suburbs — especially in remote depopulated places characterized by the well worn but still compelling aesthetics of the beautiful or the sublime. Our culture assumes that city, country, and wilderness are distinct landscape types with clear regional boundaries, and an implicit corollary to that is that the city is unnatural. The fact that urban green spaces are often compromised and degraded by pollution, development, or overuse only underscores that point. Yet the recent coinage of the seemingly oxymoronic phrase “urban wilderness” signals that ecologists, artists, environmental advocates, and citizens have begun to re-envision the role of nature within metropolitan landscapes.
Just about any American city could serve as a fruitful setting for analyzing the character and significance of urban nature; indeed, such analyses are best done with the specificity of a particular locale in mind. Consider, then, Chicago. The Windy City’s natural and cultural histories are not only long-studied and well-documented, but also inextricably linked with how we’ve thought about, confronted, transformed, abused, and (of late) restored the natural environment of urban areas. From its beginnings as a marshy trading post on the banks of the Chicago River, to its amazing expansion as an industrial power during the 19th and 20th centuries, to its profound reshaping of the physical landscape in that process, to its ascension as a global city in the 21st century that strives to be environmentally progressive — Chicago is an ideal laboratory in which to study the diverse manifestations of nature in urban spaces.
The Chicago River (photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee)
This nature is almost always hybrid in character, a product of human action (whether deliberate or not) even when appearing “natural” in outward form. Chicago, the self-proclaimed City in a Garden, has spent the better part of its brief existence unapologetically bending nature to its will, from the audacious engineering feat of raising the grade level of its streets and buildings in the mid-19th century in order to install a proper sewer system, to the subsequent development of lakefront parklands atop countless tons of landfill, to the famous reversal of the Chicago River’s current.
This interconnection of the made and the natural can be read in the landscape . . . if one observes carefully and knows where to look. Such is the ongoing quest of photographer and urban explorer Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee, who investigates and documents the Chicago cityscape on foot, by bicycle, and aboard a kayak. Hodgson-Rigsbee’s growing body of photographs are a stunning visual echo of the urban nature writings of Leonard Dubkin (1905-1972), a journalist and self-taught naturalist who chronicled his explorations of and observations about Chicago’s urban landscape in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and who found a surprising biotic diversity within otherwise unremarkable settings such as vacant lots, railroad buffer zones, or residential yards. Even more importantly, Dubkin advocated the need for human connection to the wildlife — and patchwork of wild lands — that remained close at hand, within the city’s borders, an implicit theme of some of Hodgson-Rigsbee’s landscapes.
The splendid diversity of nature in Chicago can be categorized in many ways, one of which consists of a simple binary: official and unofficial. The former includes the green spaces purposefully designed and designated for human use (parklands of all kinds) as well as the conservation of natural resources (forest preserves, wetland conservation sites, prairie restoration areas). These areas comprise the official version of Chicago’s urban nature — the sort that is featured on the city’s website and which collectively is an incredibly important and irreplaceable resource for the interaction of people with the natural world. The “unofficial countryside” of Chicago, though — to use a phrase from the English naturalist-writer Richard Mabey — is the hardscrabble, unexpected, and often uncared-for everything else. It is this which drew the eye of Dubkin in the last century, and which is now framed by the camera of Hodgson-Rigsbee.
Chicago Loop, as seen from the southwest within The Brownlands (photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee)
Incredibly, part of this land was once water. The South Branch of the Chicago River wound its way through the area, bending eastward toward Lake Michigan before meandering back west and resuming its southerly course. This D-shaped curve of the river’s channel proved inconvenient for shipping and an impediment to street transportation improvements; so the river here was straightened and channelized in the late 1920s, a water infrastructure project of great scale, expense, legal complexity, and civic ballyhoo, for the reordered urban landscape was supposed to usher in an era of unprecedented economic development for this industrialized area of the city.
These plans never quite materialized, for the through streets on this “reclaimed” land were never completed. The Brownlands thus remain mostly vacant and part of Chicago’s unofficial countryside. Long owned by a railroad well into the late twentieth century, the land was sold to speculative developers in the late 1990s and has changed hands a few times since, though the goal of these recent landowners has not changed. They envision, predictably but unimaginatively, an ambitious riverfront development project of fashionable residences and upscale retail establishments. Fortunately, the mammoth expense of such a project has kept it in limbo, and the Brownlands persist in 2011 as a wide-open space of non-native brush and invasive weeds, patches of prairie grasses which hint at the land’s pre-settlement ecological legacy, informal pathways and abandoned gravel roads, discarded vehicles and miscellaneous machinery, and furtive human visitors who brave the fenced barriers and No Trespassing signs to explore, camp, photograph, bird, even live in the Brownlands.
An example of a contemporary frontier-like space in the middle of America’s third-largest city, the Brownlands simultaneously evoke the past technological transformation of Chicago’s landscape and the present human yearnings for off-the-grid experiences with an unmediated nature. They also hearken to an uncertain future in which yet another large-scale development project may dramatically alter what is now an open space in the shadow of Chicago’s Loop with remarkable restoration and recreation potential.
Another significant hybrid place where nature and the built environment converge is the Bloomingdale Trail, an abandoned elevated train line that runs for nearly three miles on the city’s near-North Side. A grassroots non-profit organization, Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail, is in the process of raising funds to convert the defunct railway into an elevated greenway/trail, citing the recently developed High Line linear park in Manhattan as model and inspiration. Currently the project enjoys the backing of some influential politicians (including the outgoing mayor, Richard M. Daley, a noted environmental progressive), but needs to raise upwards of $60 million to finance construction in hopes of completing the Trail by 2016.
Bloomingdale Trail, on Chicago's North Side (photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee)
Beyond the politics and economics of its development, this proposed parkland is notable for the ways in which it will perform multiple functions and tie together the built and natural landscapes with the city’s diverse human denizens in mind. Part greenway, part commuter route, part public art tableau, part recreational space, the Bloomingdale Trail illustrates how urban space can be re-imagined to embody sustainable transportation alternatives for everyone from children walking to their neighborhood schools to cyclists commuting from their homes to nearby elevated train stations on the CTA Blue Line. Besides these immediate practical benefits, though, the Trail exemplifies the many nature/culture hybrid spaces in Chicago that are in various stages of transition from an old “brown” urban infrastructure of steel and asphalt to a new “green” infrastructure of recreational trails, native plant communities, and ecology-minded landscapes. What is common to this and similar projects in Chicago and other cities is that they do not simply happen because they are good ideas; they require immense amounts of human and financial capital to conceptualize and bring to fruition, even when the political winds are favorable.
The Brownlands and the Bloomingdale Trail are but two examples of Chicago’s unofficial countryside that exists apart from the formally designated parklands, forest preserves, and other green spaces of the city. These and other hybrid spaces are amalgams of nature and culture, places that dramatize the earth’s vulnerability to human alteration even as they show us the resilience and adaptability of plant and animal life within the constraints imposed by brick, steel, and concrete. For the artist, they present a nearly inexhaustible subject for representing the complexities and paradoxes of nature in the city.
An excerpt from this essay was published as the introductory text to While Wandering: Chicago, a book a photographs by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee (Urban Nature Media, 2011).
RU’s Department of History and Philosophy and the Gage Gallery, in partnership with the Illinois Labor History Society, are hosting a reception and lecture with Mark Rogovin, editor of The Day Will Come: Honoring Our Working Class Heroes, Stories of the Haymarket Martyrs.
Time/place: Friday, April 29 at 5:30 p.m. in the Gage Gallery, 18 S. Michigan Avenue.
Guest speakers are international trade unionists. The music will be by the Chicago Federation of Musicians. Drinks are donated by Haymarket Brewery.
Address replies to: Erik S. Gellman, Assistant Professor of History (egellman@roosevelt.edu)
The fourth biennial Wild Things conference will take place all day tomorrow at the University of Illinois at Chicago. This day-long conference brings together the region’s best experts, hardest working professionals, most dedicated volunteers and anyone interested in nature. Technical presentations and interactive workshops explore the latest in natural areas conservation, wildlife protection and monitoring, and sustainability. The conference is organized in “tracks” designed for everyone from newcomers to experts. There is special focus on empowering citizen scientists, stewards and advocates with information, networking and good ideas. Among the speakers scheduled are Roosevelt Professors Mike Bryson and Carl Zimring, as well as a keynote address by Aldo Leopold expert Curt Meine.
Keynote Presentation Curt Meine
Green Fire: The Legacy of Aldo Leopold in the Chicago Region (includes a preview of a new film about Leopold)
Curt Meine will discuss the powerful role of famed conservationist Aldo Leopold in the birth and evolution of ecosystem conservation. Meine will highlight Leopold’s legacy as seen in the people, ecosystems, and history-making conservation initiatives of the Chicago area. He will also present a selection from the first full documentary film about Leopold, which is premiering this spring. Curt is a conservation biologist and writer based in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin. A new edition of his 1988 book Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work has just been published by the University of Wisconsin Press. Curt currently serves director for conservation biology and history with the Center for Humans and Nature; senior fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation; and research associate with the International Crane Foundation.
As a literary critic, one recognizes the rare privilege in discovering an obscure yet talented writer — whether someone living or from the distant past — and reintroducing that person to a contemporary readership. Such was my opportunity a few years ago when I came across a book by Leonard Dubkin (1905–72) in a used bookstore in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. That serendipitous finding was the seed of a research project on Dubkin, a self-taught naturalist and longtime Chicago journalist, which culminated this month in the publication of my essay, “Empty Lots and Secret Places,” in the Winter 2011 issue of Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature and the Environment. As I write in the article’s introduction:
Dubkin [was] an urban naturalist and Chicago writer who immersed himself in Chicago’s natural history long before the recent rediscovery of urban environments by literary critics and nature writers. Like the [small city] park that commemorates him, Dubkin has been easy to overlook. Although he penned several books on nature in the city, wrote a widely read nature column for Lerner Newspapers in Chicago for many years, and published frequently in major national newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and New York Times, Dubkin today is a virtual unknown.
Yet the recent resurgence of interest in the environmental issues and history of urban areas in general and the Chicago region in particular makes Dubkin’s work important. His writings are a rich historical document of urban nature as well as a detailed exploration of one person’s engagement with the “wild” elements of the city: plants, birds, insects, mammals, and various representatives of the human population. Dubkin has much to say not just to Chicagoans interested in their city’s environment or to aficionados of nature writing, but to all who are engaged in the conservation, preservation, restoration, and representation of urban nature. He speaks, as well, to city and suburban dwellers who feel alienated from an idealized nature they imagine exists only “out there,” away from urban sprawl and congestion.
Dubkin’s essays and books extol the value of the commonplace and mundane for exploring biological adaptation and ecological complexity, illustrate the rewards of patient observation of and direct experience with natural phenomena, and explore the inescapable interconnection of humanity and nature in the urban landscape.
I frequently teach selections from Dubkin’s books in my humanities seminar at Roosevelt University, and students respond enthusiastically to his work. While my essay is the first scholarly treatment of Dubkin’s work, short excerpts from his books have been included in two recent literary anthologies: Terrell Dixon’s City Wilds: Essays and Stories about Urban Nature (2002) and Joel Greenberg’s Of Prairie, Woods, and Water: Two Centuries of Chicago Nature Writing (2008). These books not only signal the growing interest in the genre of urban environmental writing, but also illustrate the significance of Dubkin’s work within national literary contexts as well as the environmental history of the Chicago region.
Appreciations and thanks go to Terrell Dixon, professor of English at the University of Houston and colleague in the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, who back in 2005 strongly encouraged me to follow my interest in Dubkin’s writings. Roosevelt University supported my work with a faculty research and professional development leave in the spring of 2007. Last but far from least, Chicago Jewish News journalist and editor Pauline Dubkin Yearwood granted me two interviews and access to a treasure trove of her father’s documents and letters that greatly informed and inspired my research.
Join the Roosevelt University community for a discussion with writer, speaker, and activist Eli Clare, author of Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation. In his presentation “Stolen Bodies, Stolen Lands,” Clare will offer a fresh take on how environmental justice issues are connected to ableism, heterosexism, racism, and classism.
When/Where:
Tuesday, February 8th, 4:30 – 6:00pm
Congress Lounge (2nd floor), Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago
For more information please e-mail Prof. Ellen O’Brien at eobrien@roosevelt.edu
This event is co-sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, the Social Justice Studies Program, the Department of Economics, Feminist United, RU Proud, the Delta Gamma Pi Multicultural Sorority, and the Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation.
