Product Description

Strategically situated at the gateway to the Mississippi River yet standing atop a former swamp, New Orleans was from the first what geographer Peirce Lewis called an "impossible but inevitable city." How New Orleans came to be, taking shape between the mutual and often contradictory forces of nature and urban development, is the subject of An Unnatural Metropolis. Craig E. Colten traces engineered modifications to New Orleans's natural environment from 1800 to 2000 and demonstrates that, though all cities must contend with their physical settings, New Orleans may be the city most dependent on human-induced transformations of its precarious site. In a new preface, Colten shows how Hurricane Katrina exemplifies the inability of human artifice to exclude nature from cities and he urges city planners to keep the environment in mind as they contemplate New Orleans's future. Urban geographers frequently have portrayed cities as the antithesis of nature, but in An Unnatural Metropolis, Colten introduces a critical environmental perspective to the history of urban areas. His amply illustrated work offers an in-depth look at a city and society uniquely shaped by the natural forces it has sought to harness. AUTHOR BIO: Craig E. Colten is the Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography at Louisiana State University. Before returning to academe in 1996, he worked with state government in Illinois and as a private consultant in Washington, D.C. His previous books include The American Environment; The Road to Love Canal; Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs; and Louisiana Geography.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #269910 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author
Craig E. Colten is the Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography at Louisiana State University. Before returning to academe in 1996, he worked with state government in Illinois and as a private consultant in Washington, D.C. His previous books include The American Environment, The Road to Love Canal, Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs, and Louisiana Geography.

Customer Reviews

the past [and future] costs of New Orleans?
Colten wrote this book in 2004. Or perhaps even earlier. Now, in October 2005, going through its pages, one is struck by how prescient are so much of his musings. Even the title takes on deeper meaning after the recent hurricanes.

In all the current to-do about rebuilding New Orleans, many people could do far worse than to read his history of the town. Colten shows the decades (or centuries) of effort that went into protecting it from nature. Perhaps it is a tribute to those efforts that indeed, they did protect New Orleans for so long. Until 2005.

The book also gives valuable perspective on whether we should indeed rebuild much of New Orleans. The early, emotive response by many evacuees has been to completely rebuild. Yet at what cost? After some $200 billion or more, are we just recreating a target-rich environment for future storms? Colten's narrative points out the key need for a port in that location. But, culture aside, that need is not the same as a need for 500 000 inhabitants, many of whom might service the tourist sector.

Wresting New Orleans From Nature

"Wresting New Orleans From Nature" pretty much sums it up. Colten's book explains the reasons why and how New Orleans grew in what was essentially an impossible spot for a city. It's a bit dry at times - I find it hard to care about the exact wording of laws regulating sewage in the eighteenth century - as well as outdated, like any pre-Katrina book. It is, however, nicely thorough, covering enviornmental problems such as waste disposal as well as the more unique challenges New Orleans faces due to geography. The best chapters, I found, were those that focus on the systematic inequalities that went into the building and maintaining of neighborhoods.