Sinking Chicago: Climate Change and the Remaking of a Flood-Prone Environment Contributor(s): Platt, Harold L. (Author) |
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ISBN: 1439915482 ISBN-13: 9781439915486 Publisher: Temple University Press OUR PRICE: $94.53 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: March 2018 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - History | United States - State & Local - Midwest(ia,il,in,ks,mi,mn,mo,nd,ne,oh,sd,wi - Social Science | Sociology - Urban - Political Science | Public Policy - Environmental Policy |
Dewey: 363.610 |
LCCN: 2017050476 |
Series: Urban Life, Landscape and Policy |
Physical Information: 1" H x 6.1" W x 9.1" (1.35 lbs) 342 pages |
Themes: - Demographic Orientation - Urban |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: In Sinking Chicago, Harold Platt shows how people responded to climate change in one American city over a hundred-and-fifty-year period. During a long dry spell before 1945, city residents lost sight of the connections between land use, flood control, and water quality. Then, a combination of suburban sprawl and a wet period of extreme weather events created damaging runoff surges that sank Chicago and contaminated drinking supplies with raw sewage. Chicagoans had to learn how to remake a city built on a prairie wetland. They organized a grassroots movement to protect the six river watersheds in the semi-sacred forest preserves from being turned into open sewers, like the Chicago River. The politics of outdoor recreation clashed with the politics of water management. Platt charts a growing constituency of citizens who fought a corrupt political machine to reclaim the region's waterways and Lake Michigan as a single eco-system. Environmentalists contested policymakers' heroic, big-technology approaches with small-scale solutions for a flood-prone environment. Sinking Chicago lays out a roadmap to future planning outcomes. |