Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

“The nineteenth century saw the creation of an integrated economy in the United States, an economy that bound city and country into a powerful national and international market that forever altered human relationships to the American land.”

This passage is at the core of Cronon’s purpose in writing this book. The idea of an integrated economy challenges earlier theories that cities in the American West developed in isolation, independent of the natural landscape of the rural countryside. Cronon’s argument illustrates how the natural resources of the country merge with the material products produced in the city to create one market economy. This market economy dictates the American landscape, and vice versa.

“And therein lies our dilemma: however we may feel about the urban world which is the most visible symbol of our human power—whether we celebrate the city or revile it, whether we wish to ‘control’ nature or ‘preserve’ it—we unconsciously affirm our belief that we ourselves are unnatural. Nature is the place where we are not.”

This quotation asserts that human beings and all human-made creations are separate from nature. The passage raises one of the most significant ecological and philosophical questions of the present era. It asks whether human beings are part of or uniquely separate from nature.

“Just as our own lives continue to be embedded in a web of natural relationships, nothing in nature remains untouched by the web of human relationships that constitute our common history.”

This quotation underscores one of the central messages that Cronon articulates in each section of his book. Nature and humans and city and country are all interrelated, and individuals’ histories are interconnected narratives that rely on one another.