Product Description

"An Unnatural Metropolis" offers an in-depth look at a city and society uniquely shaped by the natural forces it has sought to harness. 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." Though all cities must contend with their physical settings, Craig E. Colten demonstrates that New Orleans may be the city most dependent on human-induced transformations of its precarious site. Colten traces engineered modifications to New Orleans's natural environment from 1800 to 2000. Before the city could swell in size and commercial importance as its nineteenth-century boosters envisioned, builders had to wrest it from its waterlogged site, protect it from floods, expel disease, and supply basic services using local resources. Colten shows how every manipulation of the environment made an impact on the city's social geography as well-often with unequal, adverse consequences for minorities-and how each still requires maintenance and improvement today. For example, while the massive levee system has controlled the unpredictable Mississippi, it also captures heavy downpours, creating a new set of internal flood problems. Recent federal regulations and environmental activism have converted the river from a sewage carrier to a protected water supply, reclassified garbage dumps as hazardous waste sites, and attempted to restore some of the city's swamps-but with difficult social and political adjustments.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #316478 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-13
• 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.