Interplace

Hello Interactors,

This week’s post is coming to you from Avon, Connecticut as we’re about to head north to Maine. We’ve experienced some unseasonably humid days (and nights), a waiter serving bug spray in Cape Cod, and a hot and sticky college campus visit in Rhode Island. I can hear the locals now, “Welcome to New England.”

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

WHATA WET SUMMA

I’ve become a weather wimp. Or, maybe I always have been. Summers in my native Iowa were hot and humid. I remember nights when the temperature would actually increase as I lay in bed, spread eagle, staring at the ceiling waiting for just a single puff of air to waft through my window. I’m not sure I was ever dry during those Iowa summer months.

Humidity makes me sweat more than most. I’m sweating just thinking about it. Perspiring makes me perspire. So you can imagine what I was thinking this week as I, with my family, were descending a long hill downtown Providence, Rhode Island, with air so thick and a sun so hot that it felt like I was walking on a treadmill in a steam bath with a heat lamp over my head. As we approached the banks of the Providence River, we read a sign on one of the buildings that that visitors of the Rhode Island School of Design should check-in at the admissions building. You guessed it, it was at the top of the hill we had just descended.

Just two steps up the hill and I had sweat gushing from my head. Part way we encounter a fountain. I soaked the cooling towel I tucked in my backpack and draped if over my skull and was rewarded with a cool tingling sensation down my neck. The bliss was short lived as we trudged up the final steps of the admissions building featuring a sweeping view of Providence and a sign on the door that read, “Closed”.

The Northeastern region of the United States is known for its humidity, but July has been unseasonably wet. This is good news for the one thing that everyone agrees is more dreaded during summer than humidity. Mosquitoes. Cape Cod has been hit hard, especially the small town of Wellfleet. The fleet of white vans marked with the name “Mosquito Squad” parked in a lot on the way in to town should be the first clue this area is prone to these ‘Swamp Angels’. The word mosquito is Spanish for ‘little gnat’. I prefer ‘mini-beast’. Bart Morris of the Cape Cod Mosquito Control Project said, while spraying larvicide amidst clouds of mosquitoes, “This is about as bad as I've seen it…biblical in size.” Gabrielle Sakolsky has been with this organization since 1993 and she’s never seen a population boom like this. Dry air usually controls mosquito populations, but not this summer. It’s been a wild July in the Northeast. And it’s not over.

Cornell University’s Northeast Regional Climate Center reports all but two days of the first half of July included a flashflood somewhere in the region. July kicked off with a tornado in Delaware and a week later New York subways were flooded. Then came two days of Tropical Storm Elsa with severe thunderstorms and torrents of rain. Connecticut, where we are now, and Maine, where we’re headed next, were hit with five inches of rain and flash flooding. The coasts were slammed with 67 mile per hour winds while New Jersey whipped up another two tornados as winds howled over 100 miles per hour. Then, on July 12th, 10 inches of rain dowsed southeastern Pennsylvania and parts of New Jersey causing major flash flooding.  That’s a lot of extreme weather in less than two weeks. And a lot of moisture.

In the first 15 days of July, portions of the Northeast have seen rainfall that is 300% above normal. The Cornell climate center tracks 35 weather sites that stretch from West Virginia to the south to northern tip of Maine in Caribou, which actually was only at 57% of their normal rainfall. Boston was another story. They were 574% above normal. You can see why the mosquitoes were doing a happy dance in Cape Cod.

“Eight major climate sites experienced their wettest first half of July on record and another 17 of the sites ranked this July 1-15 period among their 20 wettest on record. In fact, for 12 of the major climate sites, it is already one of the 20 wettest Julys on record.”  

ABNORMAL MEMORIES OF NORMAL

It’s hard to know what normal is anymore. But the climate change explainers at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) remind us their analysis includes previous normal weather patterns. They adjust for the effects of climate change periodically and the last time they adjusted was 2011. That’s when the baseline for normal had shifted from the period starting in 1971 and ended in 2000. They created a handy map that demonstrates what plants and animals already knew – the planting zones across the United States had shifted north in latitude and up in elevation as normal temperatures warmed over that 30 year period.

The point of analyzing and reporting on weather normals is to reflect what is normal today, and not how the values have changed over time. So NOAA updates their models every decade or so to reflect the “new normal”. It turns out reporting and understanding temperature normals is easier than precipitation normals.

NOAA has collected 10 sets of these U.S Climate Normals dating back to 1901. The map below shows how the United States has warmed over the course of these ten segments of time. The blue zones are areas where the temperature was cooler than the 20th century average and the red zones are those areas warmer than average.

Looking at these maps tells the story anybody born between 1901-1940 will tell you – generally speaking, it used to be cooler. Though, unfortunately, they can’t really. It’s called generational amnesia and it inflicts all of us. As climate and energy writer David Roberts writes, reflecting the research from two researchers at Columbia: “”extremely hot summers” are 200 times more likely than 50 years ago. Did you know that? Can you feel it?” It’s also part of what is called shifting baseline syndrome. We can’t relate to the baselines of the past. That’s true for temperatures, plant and animal populations, and the more fickle baselines of precipitation.

NOAA’s same 10 time segments for U.S. Climate Normals for precipitation don’t show the same gradual nation-wide pattern temperatures do. Even before climate change, precipitation patterns varied greatly across different regions of the U.S. Unlike temperature normals, where we can say its generally getting warmer, we can’t say it’s generally getting wetter or dryer over time. We’re stuck with the more unsatisfactory answer, “It depends.”

Take the Southwest as an example. It’s easy to think it’s just been getting gradually drier, but it’s a mixed bag. For the first two sets, 1901-1930 and 1911-1940 it was wetter than the 20th Century average. And then the next four segments were dryer until the 1961-90 segment which shows a mix of wetter and dryer across a mix of zones. The two most recent periods, including 1981-2010, have been wetter than average. This regional precipitation variation is evident even in the Northeast precipitation numbers Cornell provided for the first half of July. Caribou, Maine was drier than usual while Boston blew the normal out of the proverbial water.

Given how dry and hot the Southwest has been, recency bias – the tendency to favor recent events over historic ones – will probably will keep people from believing that is true; before, that is, generational amnesia and baseline syndrome take over. But some weather events leave a lasting impression. As it did for my father-in-law, John Pappalardo, who grew up in Winsted, Connecticut.

In August of 1955, John’s sophomore year at the University of Connecticut on his way to becoming a dentist, the Mad River running through Winsted flooded. “There’s a reason we called it the Mad River”, John told me, as he recalled the images of the flood:

“Our two story house was flooded with water as high as the thermostat on the wall. We stayed up all night on the second floor as water ran down our street. It took a full day before someone came by in a boat, rowed in our front door, and rescued us from the staircase. But we were lucky, my friend’s house was split in half. You could see the dishes sitting in the cupboard from the street, just as they had left it.”

Two hurricanes in as many weeks had ripped through Southern New England. First came Hurricane Connie between August 11th to the 14th which dumped four to six inches in two days saturating the land with water. Then, three days later, on August 17th, came Hurricane Diane dumping nearly 20 inches of rain in two days. Both exceeded New England records. With the land already saturated with water from the first hurricane, the banks of the Mad River couldn’t contain the onslaught of water from the second. Thus began a cascade of flooding through Winsted, down the Mad River, and into the Farmington River – Connecticut’s largest tributary feeding into the Northeast’s largest river, the Connecticut River.

EVAPORATION NATION

Stretching 410 miles long, the Connecticut River Basin stretches through four New England states; it forms the border of Vermont and New Hampshire and divides Massachusetts and Connecticut. The river provides 70% of the water to New England; 41% of which comes from Vermont, 30% from New Hampshire and Connecticut, and the remainder from another six New England states. It collects water as far north as the Canadian border and spills it into the Atlantic Ocean to the south at Long Island, New York. Like much of the Northeast, a lush tree canopy covers 80% of the basin. It’s health is vital to the Northeast Region making it a target of study for the effects of climate change on the region.

Laying awake at night here in Avon, Connecticut, tucked under a canopy of trees, saturated soil, and a mosquito dive-bombing my ears, the still presence of humidity surrounds my body and engulfs my mind. I contemplate animals like me sweating – perspiration; plants sweating – transpiration; and the soil sweating – evaporation. Just then, the rush of rustling leaves permeates the stagnant calm as buckets of rain come pouring down. Precipitation – the source of perspiration, transpiration, and evaporation.

The trees, like me, struggle to transpire amidst the invisible gaseous vapors of humidity – the most abundant greenhouse gas there is. Humidity is the measure of the amount of water vapor in the air and is a primary player in the water cycle – and in cooling the planet. Just as sweat pulls heat from our body to be transported to the air, humid water vapors suck water and heat from animals, plants, soil, lakes, streams, and puddles and ferries it around the globe.

Humidity is also invisible to the sun as radiation dances through the vapors and is absorbed by the earth. The soil in Avon is pregnant with fifteen days of record July rainfall and the sun’s stored energy radiates back into the atmosphere long after the sun has set; steaming me on the mattress like a plump white sticky bun. This nighttime reheating process explains why those hot Iowa nights would grow warmer as the night progressed. As the rich Iowa soil emanated stored heat, I wasn’t the only one sweating. So was the abundant Iowa corn. One acre of corn will transpire 3,000-4,000 gallons (11,400-15,100 liters) of water a day making significant contributions to the state’s humidity. Back here in Avon, the oak trees above me will contribute 40,000 gallons (151,000 liters) of water a year to the atmosphere. And I thought I sweat a lot.

Scientists will sometimes combine the measures, and the letters, of evaporation and transpiration to form the term: evapotranspiration. Global climate models tell us evapotranspiration increases 2% for every degree of warming. Given global precipitation amounts must be balanced by evapotranspiration under a warming planet, it follows that the world should be seeing less frequent and shorter durations of precipitation. That is, we should also be seeing more and longer periods of dry days so that the atmosphere can be replenished with water vapors from evapotranspiration.

But this is why it’s important to not just study the whole with aggregated data, but the highly variable parts as well with contextual data. Measures of specific regions can deviate significantly from a global mean. A 2014 study, quotes researchers from 2008 who “noted that over the period of 1895–1999, annual precipitation averaged over New England increased by 3.7% while the change of annual precipitation for individual states in New England varied between −12% and 29.5%.”

This same study compared various sections of the Connecticut River Basin for each season. They analyzed the evapotranspiration, surface runoff, baseflow (stream flow between precipitation events), and soil moisture and found data to “support the theory that extreme precipitation events are becoming more common in a warming world.” Their “results show a clear increase in precipitation intensity for the Connecticut River Basin in the latter half of the 20th Century and early 21st Century.” While being careful to note it’s not always the case, they also find it “interesting to note” that “as precipitation intensity increases, frequency of precipitation is likely to decrease.”

Another thing that kept me awake on that humid night in Connecticut was smoke. A good example of the nuanced and variable climate conditions regions can bring. Smoke from fires in drier areas of the Midwest United States, and parts of Canada and Pennsylvania drifted over the Northeast in a toxic smog that created an atmospheric red filter to the moon. A grim reminder of what may greet us in our return west to Seattle next week, through August, and well into October. Meanwhile, sorry Northeast, NOAA predicts “above normal precipitation is likely for the central and eastern Gulf Coast region and from the Appalachians to the Atlantic Coast” for August through October. Sounds like those mosquitoes will continue to do their happy dance.

But before we head home, we stop in Maine to visit my sister and a couple more schools. Then back to water logged Boston to board a giant jet-fueled mosquito headed back against the prevailing easterly winds to the dry west coast. I’ll be ready to dry out in the mosquito-free air of Kirkland, Washington. Minus the smoke, of course. I also need to water the soil around the baby native ferns, firs, and vine maples I’m nursing to health in my nearby Kirkland park. Water that will start a cycle of evapotranspiration that, when combined with my perspiration, will form water vapors headed for the sky joining clouds drifting in from the Pacific Ocean headed east for more record setting precipitation in New England. Perhaps next year, they’ll be joined by my kids too.

Hello Interactors,

This week I’m coming to you from Cape Cod. Yesterday we saw “red tide” algal plumes stretching a quarter of a mile along a flat sandy beach against a receding tide. This is a common occurrence in Massachusetts, but the frequency of occurrences of “red tide” are increasing worldwide. The last couple weeks have seen extreme weather events in unsuspecting places worrying even the most conservative climate scientists. Perhaps it’s time we put less attention on the drama of the consequences of climate change and more on educating the public on the science behind it.

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

CSU AND TENNEESEE TOO

Our family is on a trip visiting family on the east coast – and also few colleges for two rising seniors. I never visited my first college, Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins, Colorado. I was mostly following a friend who, like I, wanted to study graphic design. CSU had a notable program, but it was mostly known as an agricultural school. It’s closer to the state of Wyoming than it is Denver and is flat with rolling plains of grassland that spread out below the foothills of the Rocky Mountains – cow country. A fact that becomes obvious when the wind blows from the east carrying the stench of livestock fields in neighboring Greely, Colorado.

I had no idea Colorado State was also home to an international ecosystem research center, the National Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL). Ecology was not a new thing, but most ecological research was conducted by researchers in isolation of one another. This program, however, aimed to bring different disciplines together – like ecology, soil science, and climatology – to study their mutual effects on each other. This program was nearly as old as I was when I showed up there as a wide-eyed eighteen year old Iowa boy.

Initial plans for this lab were formed in 1966 with initial seed funding coming from the Ford Foundation and then the National Science Foundation (NSF) soon after. It was run by one of the most influential and gregarious pioneers in the field of systems ecology, George Van Dyne. Systems ecology is a quantitative approach to studying, integrating, and synthesizing entire ecosystems made of living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) components. And Fort Collins was the first U.S. site of a larger International Biological Program dedicated to exploring and combining big science and ecosystem ecology.

Van Dyne grew up in south eastern Colorado as a true cowboy working the ranch by horseback. He satisfied his love and curiosity of western land and animals by studying animal science at CSU as an undergrad and range science for his masters degree from South Dakota State University. Continuing his focus on total ecological systems, he went on to earn a PhD at the University of California, Davis developing mathematical models of ecological data.

After completing his PhD in 1963 there were few places in the world with the necessary computing power to crunch George’s differential equations that weaved a varied matrix of ecological variables. So he headed to Oak Ridge Tennessee to join the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL); home to one of the country’s largest mainframe computer centers at the time.

Van Dyne joined two professors at nearby University of Tennessee, Knoxville who had created the first systems ecology course in the United States. He would go on to author four papers a month, double the expected rate of a research scientist, all while enthusiastically teaching. In one noontime course he could be seen

“writing on the chalkboard with his right hand, eating a sandwich with the left, and talking in his soft, intense baritone voice about many exciting developments in ecosystem modeling.”

Many of Van Dyne’s over 120 refereed papers were written during his eighteen months in Tennessee.

MAINFRAME MATHEMATICAL MODELLING

Van Dyne’s work at Oak Ridge was on a nearby grassland, and the expertise he garnered analyzing the data led him to edit a seminal 1969 book entitled The Ecosystem Concept in Natural Resource Management. It was his love of the grasslands and his knowledge of the quantitative study of systems ecology that led him to run the National Resource Ecology Lab in Fort Collins focused on the west’s Grassland Biome – lands dominated by grasses. There he would assemble and analyze data coming in from grassland sites strewn across a rectangular block west from Oklahoma to California north to Washington and back east to South Dakota.

Each site had researchers in the field estimating plant biomass from pre-determined and equivalent plot sizes. They all used the same statistical methods in attempts to maintain similar sample sizes across sites. The IBP program goals were to collect and estimate averages within 20 percent with 80 percent accuracy by leveraging models created by mathematicians and teams of postdoc researchers from a variety of backgrounds.

Van Dyne and team were interested in the role abiotic factors play in the ecological health of grasslands. The model included over 180 internal state variables. For example, the number of herbivores or amount of organic minerals found in the sample sites. The model also included abiotic driving variables like rainfall or processes stemming from photosynthesis like radiation. Their work culminated in 4400 lines of computer code that included 500 parameters. It took seven minutes to compile and run a program that simulated two years of effects of grassland under the modelled conditions on a state of the art mainframe computer from the Computer Data Corporation, the CDC 6400. The follow-on to this model was the CDC 6500 which cost $8 million in 1967 – or over $63 billion in 2021 dollars – and weighed over 10,000 pounds. This same mathematical model would run almost instantaneously on a ordinary laptop today.

In hindsight, the model is considered overly complex but it did satisfy the goals Van Dyne set out to achieve;

“to create a model that would serve as a communications device and organizer of information, be useful as a research tool, and yield results that could help in elucidating biological phenomena in grassland ecosystems.”

There were four basic questions the model was intended to address:

* What is the effect on net or gross primary production as the result of various abiotic disturbances?  

* How is the carrying capacity of a grassland affected by these disturbances?

* Are the results of a simulation model like this consistent with field data taken in the Grassland Biome Program, and if not, why?

* What are the changes in the composition of the producers as a result of these disturbances?

The model didn’t prove to be robust enough to be a reliable predictor of the future, but it did succeed in demonstrating a systems approach to modelling an ecosystem.

This was a highly controversial endeavor that was seen by many conservative practicing biologists and ecologists as obtusely abstract, misguided, expensive – and competitive. They witnessed large amounts of NSF money going toward Van Dyne’s ‘grand experiment’ and they began to worry their own individual research would dry up.

Traditional ecological research had been a solitary endeavor and many of the older practicing scientists preferred the more conservative individualistic approach to science. Meanwhile, the younger liberal scientists were encouraged by the more open and collaborative approach of systems ecology Van Dyne encouraged. They preferred the teamwork required in collecting, analyzing, and publishing what was shared among a diverse array of contributors. It was a split in belief and approach that mimicked the cultural attitudes of the sixties and seventies.

As a result, established scientists began speaking out and became critical of the big science approach to ecological systems research – and Van Dyne’s program in particular. They questioned the quality of data collected across so many sites by a variety of scientists of differing backgrounds and were dubious of the aggregation of data needed to conform to the models Van Dyne and his team of mathematicians had devised.

Van Dyne did not give in easily, however, and by 1972 he had hired teams of ‘integrators’ to work with site directors and scientists to synthesize the large amounts of data in preparation for analysis. One of the original integrators and organizers was Jim Ellis. He was second only to Van Dyne in his understanding of the interaction of ecological processes with human societies. By encouraging standard methods of defining variables and measuring outcomes, the work these people did is considered by some to be some of the first examples of organized software quality assurance.

By 1974, Van Dyne had amassed a team of over fifty researchers and integrators. By then, however, the NSF had been swayed by the critics and they seized funding the Grassland Biome Program. But some of this undoing was Van Dyne’s own making. While he was a dedicated scientist who gave much of his time to young scientists, he also created a confrontational work environment inviting competing opinions and relished in fostering heated debates. He also had a notorious top-down management style and many of the younger scientists chose to move to other projects than continue working in such an environment.(1)

A MAN OF ACTION AND A CALL TO ACTION

The roughly seven years of the IBP Grassland Biome Program was fast, inventive, and impactful producing mounds of scientific papers. The computer model the team devised was never able to answer the grassland questions they had hoped, but it marked a special point in ecological systems research and sparked the development of future ecological simulation modeling and research programs. Including centers at the University of Georgia, Colorado State University, Utah State University, San Diego State University, and Oregon State University. Ecological simulation models, and research programs, have improved over time and are now considered an essential part of ecological science. Any multi-variate questions being asked through today’s planetary ecological simulation models would likely not be possible without George Van Dyne and the IBP.

Large scale, heavily funded ecological programs like the one Van Dyne choreographed do not exist today. Big science attention and dollars tend toward the human genome project, astronomy, interplanetary exploration, and biochemistry. And members of the mainstream media don’t help. They’d rather report on Bezos, Branson, and Musk comparing the size of their rockets and how far they can reach into the stillness of space. Not to take anything away from the innovations that have stemmed from the infusion of private money into the amazing advancements in modern-day rocket wizardry, but all three seem to have given up on planet earth. Perhaps the advertising industry and the mass media consuming public have too.

But ecological systems scientists have not given up. Programs like the Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER) employ nearly 2000 scientists across 28 U.S. sites and includes an international component. Started in 1980, this program is funded by the NSF and data from their research can be found through the Environmental Data Initiative and DataONE. There’s also a program operated by Battelle called the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). Also funded by the NSF, this program was conceived in 1999 and has been fully operational since 2019. Their mission is to “advance the ability of scientists to examine and understand the interactions between life and the environment at the scale of an entire continent.” Just like George Van Dyne, they seek to quantify ecological processes over time across large spatial extents through complex sampling across space and time.

And the National Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL) continues to function today out of Colorado State University in Fort Collins; as does the Fort Collins Science Center (FORT) as part of the United States Geological Society (USGS). They “develop and disseminate research-based information and tools needed to understand the nation’s biological resources in support of effective decision making.” My friend and former college roommate, Pat Shafroth, is a Research Ecologist there and was instrumental in studying the impact on riverside vegetation upon the destruction of the Elwha Dam, the opening of the Elwha River, and the return of spawning salmon.

George Van Dyne was ahead of his time. His intuition to first study abiotic factors like rising water temperatures come into focus in light of this summer’s climate catastrophes. We no longer need simulations to tell us the Sacramento River is “facing a “near-complete loss” of young salmon, which cannot grow beyond their egg stage in waters heated by extended temperatures of over 100 degrees.” Abiotic perturbances from a warming planet have clearly effected the life of the living.

Flooding is another abiotic perturbance that impacts the lives of living creatures across a large geographic area over a short period of time. The grieving families of the 122 Belgian and German lives that were lost in the flooding this week no longer need a mathematical model to warn them of the dire consequences of human-induced climate catastrophes. And that says nothing of the nonhuman lives taken by the insufferable rushing water.

But dwelling on despair only breeds despair. If there’s one thing ecological systems scientists like George, and even my friend Pat, have taught us is that making one small change in a network of interdependent ecological variables can have a large scale impact. We just need to know where to make the change.

Scientists know where to focus, but we need big government to act on the big investments they’ve made in big science and big ecology to enable big changes. Collective individual behavioral at the tips of fractal like ecosystem networks helps, but even if everyone on the planet did their part to reduce CO2 emissions, it’s still only four percent of total emissions. We need governments to enact legislation that gets us to clean energy policies quickly – small changes, further up the fractal chain that have big cascading impact through the network of life.

So if you want to do your part to help, go to call4climate.com or dial 202-318-1885. Just punch in your zip code and you’ll be presented with the necessary talking points and then connected to your representative Senate offices. Do like George Van Dyne and take action.

Hello Interactors,

After enduring a few days of record heat that burnt my drought tolerant plants to a crisp and likely claimed the lives of two of our favorite wild birds that would frequent my daughter’s window feeder, my new pair of shoes arrived I had ordered from Canada. As did a new monitor and other odd consumer goods. And soon I will be boarding a plane that will spew another chunk of the estimated 22 tons of CO2 our family will contribute to the atmosphere this year. That’s four and a half hot air balloons full. I know I’m heating up the planet with my shoes and trips. You probably do to. It seems we not only need to protect the environment, we need protection from ourselves.

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

THE RIVER’S ON FIRE

As an early teenager in the 1970s, just entering middle school, I remember getting a pair of “Earth Shoes” as part of my back-to-school get up. They featured a tread that read, “GASS”, which stood for Great American Shoe Store. Most, if not all, of our shoes back then came from the Great American Shoe Store – Kinneys.  I felt pretty cool in my new kicks; especially when that first snow fell and I could see the GASS imprint in my foot tracks. Gas was on the minds of many in the 70s, as it was becoming increasingly hard to come by. It was also increasing pollution.

Kinneys was capitalizing on a burgeoning environmentalist trend that had been growing since the publishing of Rachel Carlson’s, Silent Spring in 1962. By 1970, water and air pollution was prevalent, the federal government was forced to intervene. On January 1st, 1970 the Council on Environmental Quality was created with the signing of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This requires Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) of all federal agencies who are planning projects with major environmental ramifications.

Either recognizing they may be a target of the government or perhaps seeing consumers being drawn to environmentalism, the American auto makers also got in on the environmental action. A January 15th New York Times article read, “Detroit has discovered a word: “Environment.”” The General Motors (GM) CEO, Edward Cole, promised an “essentially pollution free car could be built by 1980.” Engineers from GM, Ford, and Chrysler attending the 1970 convention of the Society of Automotive Engineers were all pitching anti-pollution technologies. GM’s CEO was probably influenced by his son, David Cole, who was an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. He co-authored a paper for that convention entitled, “Reduction of emissions from the Curtiss Wright rotating combustion engine with an exhaust reactor.”

There was growing concern entrusting those very institutions responsible for the destruction of the environment with devising schemes to save it. The country’s air, water, and land was being smothered in waste. Something needed to be done. So on July 9th, 1970, 51 years ago today, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was proposed by Republican President Richard Nixon.

This agency was intended to focus on short-term fixes targeting violators of the law, so Nixon appointed Assistant Attorney General, Bill Ruckelshaus, to the post. Ruckelshaus promptly ordered a steel company to stop dumping cyanide into Cleveland, Ohio’s Cuyahoga River. It was so polluted that it had caught fire at least thirteen times. Ruckelshaus also banned the use of DDT.

After being jostled around in various appointments and governmental positions, including the head of the FBI, he was reappointed to head the EPA in 1983 by Republican President Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration grew concerned over the faltering reputation of the EPA after Ruckelshaus’ replacement, Anne Gorsuch Burford, (Neil Gorsuch’s mom) cut the EPA’s budget, eliminated jobs, and neutered enforcement policies. The EPA and the environment was slipping backwards, so once again it was Ruckelshaus to the rescue. He promptly fired most of her leadership team and got back to work protecting the environment running the EPA until 1985.

Upon leaving government, Ruckelshaus moved to Seattle and was a practicing attorney and continued to prosecute environmental crimes. In 1993, Democrat President Bill Clinton appointed him to the Council for Sustainable Development and throughout the 90s he worked as a special envoy in the Pacific Salmon Treaty between the United States and Canada and was chair of the Salmon Recovery Funding Board. Republican President George W. Bush then appointed him to the United States Commission on Ocean Policy in 2004. The commission was terminated that same year but in 2010 became part of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative which Ruckelshaus co-chaired. Ruckelshaus endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama in 2015. Nearly fifty years after being appointed by a Republican president to become the country’s first EPA administrator in 1970, fighting for environmental justice at the international, federal, state, local levels – and in the private sector – Ruckelshaus passed away at his home in my neighboring town, Medina, Washington in 2019.

FROM DUST TO THE SEA WITH WALLY AND ERMALEE

When the Nixon administration created the EPA, they decided to put it under the Department of the Interior. This executive department’s mission is to, “protect and manage the Nation’s natural resources and cultural heritage; provide scientific and other information about those resources; and honor its trust responsibilities or special commitments to American Indians, Alaska Natives, and affiliated Island Communities.” For the first time in our nation’s history, it is headed by a person indigenous to these natural resources and cultural heritage; native American, Deb Haaland.  The department dictates how the United States “stewards its public lands, increases environmental protections, pursues environmental justice, and honors our nation-to-nation relationship with Tribes.”

When the EPA was created in 1970, the Secretary of the Interior was Alaskan land developer and politician, Wally Hickel. Instead of creating a separate administration for the EPA, Hickel urged Nixon to fold the designated 15 offices under the Department of Interior and rename it the Department of the Environment. It’s hard to know if Hickel’s suggestion was genuinely thoughtful or an egoist attempt to gain power. After all, Hickel was a controversial pick for the post of Secretary of the Interior in the first place. Many activists, journalists, and even the Sierra Club, mounted campaigns to thwart his appointment.

Walter Joseph “Wally” Hickel was born in Kansas in 1919 where he and his family endured both the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Given the heat waves this summer, we’d be wise to reflect more on the Dust Bowl. It’s was the era’s most devastating man-made environmental disaster. Stripped of their native grasses by cattle and sheep or farmers making room for wheat, White settler farmers ignored Indigenous dryland farming methods that used the grasses to anchor, moisten, and nurture the fervent soil – even during droughts. When a record drought swept across the country and the wheat dried up, farmers tilled it under. Void of organic matter the land became susceptible to the winds sweeping across the plains.

The term “Dust Bowl” came from Denver based Associated Press writer, Robert Geiger, reporting on his own personal account of a particularly pernicious dust storm. On April 15th, 1935 he wrote,

"Three little words achingly familiar on a Western farmer's tongue, rule life in the dust bowl of the continent—'if it rains.'"

He was reporting on a severe dust storm that occurred the day prior – “Black Sunday”. “Black blizzards” of dirt and dust hurled themselves across Oklahoma south to Texas lifting and mislaying an estimated 300 million tons of topsoil. Dust storms such as this went on from 1935 to 1941 sucking soil particulates from the ground darkening the skies in clouds of dust that blew as far east as Maine. It also scattered people in all directions across the country in a climate migration crisis of their its own making. Wally Hickel was one of the displaced.

Wally was an athlete in High School and taught himself how to box by watching newsreels of Joe Louis. He became the Class B Golden Gloves champion in 1938 at age 29. Two years later he found himself in California fighting the welter weight champion, Jackie Brandon. Brandon broke his nose in the first round, but Hickel knocked him out three rounds later. Evidently struck by wanderlust, Hickel wanted to then hop a ship headed for Australia but lacked a passport, so instead he boarded the S. S. Yukon headed for Alaska.

He returned to Kansas and married, but lost his first wife to illness. He worked as an airplane inspector that included occasional trips to Alaska to inspect privately owned planes – including Russian planes. It was in an airplane hangar that he met his second wife, Ermalee Strutz, and moved to Alaska. Hickel described her as “beautiful as a butterfly, but as tough as boots.” Her father was a United States Army Sergeant stationed in Anchorage and her family had ties to Alaska’s largest financial institution – National Bank of Alaska. She pushed Wally to enter the race to become Alaska’s second Governor.

Hickel struggled with dyslexia, so Ermalee was tasked with doing most of his writing, including his campaign speeches. She remained a powerful influence on his career, including pushing Hickel to support the Alaska Permanent Fund. This is a state-owned corporation that invests at least 25% of the money flowing through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in a fund that sends dividend checks to each resident of Alaska. In 2019, this yielded an annual check in the sum of $1600. This government run basic income guarantee was devised, implemented, and executed by a string of conservative Republican Governors starting with Wally in 1966 and continues today with the Republican far-right Christian conservative, Mike Dunleavy. Maybe this is where liberal socialist-leaning politicians like Bernie Sanders got the idea for a nationwide Universal Basic Income.

In 1968, Hickel was told by Nixon that he would have to leave his post as Governor of Alaska to become the Secretary of the Interior. Wally cried. He probably cried again two years later when Nixon fired him for his “increasingly militant defense of the environment.”

Hickel led a string of pro-environment policies in his short two years as Secretary:

Preserved some of the Florida Everglades: He established the Biscayne National Monument preserving the ecological development of 4,000 acres of keys and more than 90,000 acres of water in the bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

Delayed the Alaska oil pipeline to study its effects on permafrost: Heat generated from the pipeline would melt the permafrost leading to unknown damage to the ecosystem and the piping system.

Halted the drilling of oil in the Santa Barbara channel: After a 1969 oil spill, Hickel removed 53 square miles of federal tracts from oil and gas leasing. (Later Reagan hoped for more platforms to be built in the channel because he liked how they reminded him of Christmas trees flickering in the dark. Locals call the oil rigs Reagan’s Christmas Trees)

Cracked down on oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico: After this oil spill in the gulf, also in 1969, Hickel asked the Attorney General John Mitchell (the man who recommended Ruckelshaus for the EPA position) to convene a grand jury to investigate violations by Chevron and 49 other companies in nearly 7,000 oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

Stopped imports of commercial whaling products: After placing eight species of whales on the Department's Endangered Species List, Hickel halted imports of oil, meat and any other products from these species. In 1969, roughly 30% of the nation’s soap, margarine, beauty cream, machine oil, and pet food came from whale oil.

The final straw for Nixon was Hickel’s public opposition of the administration’s policies on the Viet Nam war and their fatal handling of the Kent State student protests. Hickel wrote,

“I believe this administration finds itself today embracing a philosophy which appears to lack appropriate concern for the attitude of a great mass of Americans – our young people."

Hickel was promptly let go. With him went the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Dr. Leslie Glasgow, who was in charge of Fish, Wildlife, Parks, and Marine Resources. Glasgow took a leave of absence from Louisiana State University, where he taught marsh wildlife, to assume his post under Hickel in Washington, D.C.

He exceled at educating, convincing, and cajoling corporations, companies, and governmental agencies into environmental conservation practices. He was loved by both hippies and hunters and represented widespread hope that the nation could finally begin to heal the land it had wrongly wounded. But those hopes were dashed when it became clear Nixon would rather appease corporations than heal the environment.

In a December 12th, 1970 New York Times article Glasgow said he was

“pushed out of the Department of the Interior by political and business interests in a shake up that represented a “definite step backwards for environment.””

In anticipation of running for a second term in 1972, Glasgow supposed Nixon thought “the changes and dismissals had been made early in hopes that the people would forget them before the Presidential campaign.” What everyone remembers, is not what Hickel and Glasgow did for the environment but what Nixon did to himself and the country as the first evidence of the Watergate Scandal started the summer after their firing.

AMERIGNIGMA

Glasgow went back to teaching and Hickel went back to real estate. He was not about to make the same mistake his dad made in not owning property, so he bought as much as he could. He started Hickel Investment Company that is now run by this son, Wally Jr. They own and operate hotel rooms, food and beverage outlets, office and retail spaces, and residential lots around Alaska. They, like all residents of Alaska – including poverty stricken Indigenous tribal members – benefit from increasing profits from extractions of natural resources like oil and fish.

It makes me question Hickel’s sterling environmental track record as Secretary of Interior – a post that demands a lot of reading and writing.  Perhaps he relied heavily on, and was influenced by, his environmentalist and academic assistant secretary, Dr. Glasgow. Maybe he diddled a dyslexic Hickel into an environmental clinician the same way his wife shaped him into a politician. Especially if Glasgow was known for his ability to convince corporations that doing good for the environment was also good for business. After all, conservation and conservative are just two letters apart.

The United States is an enigma when it comes to mixing environmental stewardship with commercial profits. The EPA and the National Park Service sit under the Department of Interior which “manages public lands and minerals, national parks, and wildlife refuges and upholds Federal trust responsibilities to Indian tribes and Native Alaskans. Additionally, Interior is responsible for endangered species conservation and other environmental conservation efforts.” But the Forest Service sits under the Department of Agriculture which “provides leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, and related issues.” Meanwhile, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sits under the Department of Commerce which “works with businesses, universities, communities, and the Nation’s workers to promote job creation, economic growth, sustainable development, and improved standards of living for Americans.”

Like all slaves to fashion, I likely ditched my eco-kicks in favor of the next cool shoe. Probably a new pair of 1978 Nike Tailwinds, the first to feature an air pocket. They too had a cool tread first made from a waffle iron. I don’t recall what kind of imprint they left in the first fallen snow, but I know now the imprint my habitual consumerism has on the environment. And I need help.

Environmental protection, conservation, and restoration are necessary to limit the greed that seems to overcome both producers and consumers of limitless goods made from limited resources. Over zealous consumerism will not be quelled by collective action on the part of consumers. Leaders need to lead and act on behalf of future generations of both humans and non-humans. That’s what it means to lead.

The dirt from “Black Sunday” filled ponds and potholes across the plains decimating duck and other wildlife populations. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a fervent Democrat, hired a Republican to remedy the calamity. He appointed the famous, well loved Iowa cartoonist and conservationist “Ding” Darling to head the U. S. Biological Survey – what then became the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Department of the Interior. He created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) putting 2.5 million young people to work restoring natural wetlands and habitats along the nation’s four major flyways. More than 63 national wildlife refuges were established during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. That’s what leadership looks like, America, in the face of a man-made climate crisis.

Hello Interactors,

Today’s post happens to land on my last day at Microsoft. After twenty-nine years of incredible good fortune – that has given me much – it is time I give back. I’ll be spending more time and energy on Interplace and advocating for sustainable transportation and land use policies that enable better interactions between people and place. I’ll also be helping nurse some local native plants and trees back into our parks. Nature has given me much, it is time I give back.

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

HCI AND ORGANIC NUCLEI

I had a long and successful career in the realm of human-computer interaction design. When I first started in the late 80s and early 90s, the design problems were comparatively simple. Most computers, especially in the home, were isolated appliances with little or no connection to each other or the nascent internet. For the most part, they were isolated and closed systems. The interaction and exchange of information occurred between people and the hardware and software they were using. The only real output was an occasional piece of paper emerging from a printer.

But as I wrote back in March, in A Computer on Every Desk and a Car in Every Garage, this all changed as computers became increasingly connected in the mid to late 90s. The proliferation of personal computers coincided with the birth of the World Wide Web and before long email became pervasive and people with access to a PC and a dial-up internet connection were surfing the web. Human-computer interaction was still happening mostly on a PC – often within closed, proprietary software systems like Windows and Office. But the exchange of information was happening between people around the world and increasingly between software as well. An emergent flow of energy and ideas streamed from sole producers of information sitting behind a screen typing, clicking, and altering letters, numbers, and symbols. In addition to isolated and disconnected systems, it also became an open system connecting people around the world. Absent the people, and the system grows feeble.

Ecological ecosystems are also open systems that include isolated and closed systems as well. Unlike human-computer systems where the exchange is with information, ecological ecosystems exchange energy and biochemical processes. Energy is input into the system from the sun and its energy is first exchanged with plants through photosynthesis. These plants in turn provide energy for herbivores who then provide energy for carnivores. The waste and remains of both plants and animals then provide energy for little critters called detritivores. Mice, flies, and worms are well known examples of detritivores that make most people squirm at the thought of consuming, but crabs and lobsters are detritivores too and many people can’t wait to eat them. As an evolved omnivore, that has earned and learned the power of free will, I choose to mostly avoid consuming carcass and poop eating creatures for my energy.

This food chain is thus composed of plants as the primary producer of energy, herbivores as the primary consumer, and carnivores as secondary consumers. Detritivores take care of our waste along the way leaving microbes to finish the job of decomposition. This basic food chain is taught to us at a young age and it’s easy to grasp. But it oversimplifies the ecosystem and gives the illusion of a singular closed system in a sequenced chain of events. It’s like the closed system of the early PC; information is exchanged through human-computer interaction, a document is pooped out of a printer, and then consumed by hungry knowledge seekers then left to decompose or be recycled.

Ecological ecosystems are open because energy flows through the structure with solar energy as its sole input. Absent the sun, the system is done. Light energy becomes heat energy through cellular processes like photosynthesis and respiration and is turned into heat energy. Once heat is generated it dissipates; gone forever, never to be recycled.

Growing plants then absorb and capture elements like carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus from the atmosphere, soil, and water. Animals also acquire some of those same elements, but they obtain even more by gobbling up plants and animals. These elements are then decomposed creating carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen, and minerals. These components are all then endlessly cycled and recycled within a closed system. We have all the water we have, for example, we can’t make more. We give these lowly restricted natural components and bi-products of a closed system a powerful and lofty name – nutrients.

DESIGNING THE SYSTEM THAT DESIGNS YOU

Throughout my career designing software there have been debates on who and what controls personal computing systems; the people who buy and use these systems or the people who make them. As a human centered design and research manager, I was biased toward – and empathetic of – people using these systems. I was committed to getting out in the world, observing general behavior in the wild, collecting data through qualitative and quantitative field research in search of patterns and clues. These clues could then be studied in a laboratory setting gathering qualitative insights. My intention was to yield a bottoms-up approach to the control of the design of software; observe, gather, analyze, understand, communicate, prototype, and iterate. This is the hallmark of human-centered design; assess the needs and necessity becomes the mother of invention.

But there was a competing notion that was controlled from the top down. Blending novel ideas with familiar constructs, creative individuals could invent solutions that solved problems people didn’t even knew they had. This would sometimes yield entire products, but also failed solutions in search of problems. Microsoft hired a lot of smart and creative people; many of whom were also aggressive and predatory; preying on the ideas of others and consuming competitors. But by thinning the herd of competing ideas, and sometimes colleagues fleeing whomever he or she is, the fittest ideas, and people, were left to survive. This allowed new ideas and individuals to emerge and even thrive.

These ideas came together in the form of the dominant information producing products of the information age – Office and Windows. And information from the human brain is the sole producer of the personal computing ecosystem. Absent the user, and the system’s a loser.

As much as we all like to take sides and declare clear winners, be it top-down or bottoms-up, it’s a like air and water – you need a little bit of both to survive. The same debate around control of systems exists in ecological ecosystems as well. Advocates of the bottoms-up approach will claim it’s the availability of nutrients to plants that controls abundance. As the primary producer, the more plants there are the more primary consumers emerge. With more primary consumers (herbivores) come more secondary consumers (carnivores). The more food that is added to the food chain, the more energy and natural elements will flow through the system.

But top-down advocates say control of the system is dictated by predators. As the number of carnivores increase, the number of herbivores decrease. This allows primary producing plant populations to grow. Another mechanism that has been observed isn’t top-down or bottoms-up but subsidized across ecosystems. For example, wild predators feeding on controlled populations of livestock or animals in protected rain forests sneaking over to palm plantations to gather more food. In both cases, the interaction between wild and controlled ecosystems increases energy and material production.

Again, a food “chain” is an misleading metaphor. It’s less of a chain made of sequential links and more like the internet – a worldwide web of nodes connected by links. Everything is connected to everything else. But not everything has equal influence. As my cartography professor, and geography legend, Waldo Tobler states in what became Tobler’s First Law of Geography, “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." He was referring the cost of interactions between two places that increase with distance, but there are costs to ecological interactions too. If I were a monkey expending energy swinging between trees in a lush Amazon canopy and happened upon a palm plantation three swings into my journey, I’d be stalking up on fruit too. And maybe in an act of reciprocity, I might also gobble up a pesky protein rich rat sneaking their own nibbles of picked or fallen fruit.

BIG COMPANY, BIG INDUSTRY, BIG SCIENCE, BIG CHANGE

Through the course of my nearly thirty years of humble contributions to the shaping of the world’s most used information and knowledge creation tools – in a vast web of a worldwide personal computing ecosystem –  a critical examination of the field of ecosystem ecology was emerging. One of the first seminal books on the history of this earth science was written in 1993, just one year after I started at Microsoft: A history of the ecosystem concept in ecology by University of Georgia professor, and Washington State University alumni, Frank Golley.

He reveals just how young the roots of ecological science are, noting the term ecosystem didn’t even emerged until 1935 when the famous British botanist Sir Arthur George Tansley coined it. Emerging out of the science of ecology and biology, the discipline of ecosystem ecology – like so many things in the world – was shaped by world wars, competition, and international politics.

And then in 2010, also at University of Georgia’s esteemed Odum School of Ecology, professor David Coleman published another influential book called Big Ecology: The Emergence of Ecosystem Science. This book is a deep dive into the development of ecosystem science and the role Big Science played in its formation from an insider’s point of view. As big budgets from big nations were filled with big money to fund big wars, big governments had a big influence over science by funding big labs running big computers crunching big numbers.

Those in control and in power were the primary producers of information and they held it close. Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things. And as the Dutch-American preacher, reformer, writer, and editor Reverend Dr. Thomas DeWitt Talmage once said, “the pen is the lever that moves the world.”

To start my new chapter in life, I have heeded the good reverend’s advice by wielding a pen to move the world. Perhaps it’s hubris to believe such a thing, after all, Microsoft can breed its fair share of arrogance. But as I stroll down the aisle of airplanes – having gifted the detritivores with my waste – I look over the shoulders of passengers busily typing words and numbers, poking symbols and buttons, and dragging clumps of knowledge across the screen. Most all of them are using products I’ve touched in one way or another.

Settling into my seat, I can feel the energy dissipating from the brains of humans filling the cabin with heat as they turn information into knowledge. I close my eyes and imagine countless others around the world doing just the same and am humbled that my little Microsoft pen moved a small piece of their world. I take a deep breath and think to myself; the world has given me much, it is time I give back.

Hello Interactors,

Today we begin the summer series on the environment. I didn’t seek learning about the physical world intentionally; I was more interested in maps. But as a geography major it’s unavoidable. Now I’m glad I was exposed to the workings of the natural world as we’re confronted with its wrath on a daily basis. Which begs the question, When did this calamity all start and what should we call it?

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

ENVIRONMENTAL DISCLOSURE FROM SNOWY JEFF DOZIER

I typically didn’t sit in the front of the class, but I was running late and the seats in the circular shaped domed Campbell Hall were full. It was a required class, Physical Geography 101, taught by geography legend, Jeff Dozier. By this point, Jeff had already earned a reputation for being a snow expert. Students would clamber to join him as a research assistance climbing up and skiing down Mt. Shasta studying snow hydrology. Nobody knows snow like Jeff. Who did Disney call to explain the dynamical elements of snow crystals to animators of the popular movie, Frozen? Dozier.

I ended up sitting in the front row from that point forward; not so much because I was interested in the topic, but because I wanted to see if I could hear what he was mumbling before the start of every class. He would pace back and forth on stage talking to himself as if nobody was there. Occasionally our eyes would lock, he’d blink a couple times staring at me, and then unexpectedly snap out of it. I think he clued on to me later in the term as the blank catatonic stare morphed into a sly grin and a gentle nod. Maybe I was more interested in observing this star-studded snow expert than I was physical geography.

His research over the last 40 years has been groundbreaking. In addition to dangerous and difficult field work in the nooks and crannies of mountainous cliffs and creeks revealing marvels of the molecular structure of snow, Jeff was equally comfortable behind a screen as a pioneering pixel prognosticator. As high quality digital imagery of the earth started flowing from satellites circling the globe, he realized much could be gleaned from the array of tiny white dots of varying intensity shining back at him through zoomed-in pictures of snow covered mountains; much of which inaccessible by foot or by ski – even by the most motivated graduate student.

With the radiance of a single pixel at one end and the physics of the silicon imaging sensor at the other, Jeff could determine mathematically how the atmosphere effected the radiation of light reflecting off the microscopic ice crystals that make up a snowflake. Later, with the help of a colleague, he also discovered this technique could be used for the opposite of snow – fire. Examining pixelated satellite imagery from the Persian Gulf, they detected anomalous glowing spots that dotted the landscape. These dots turned out to be small methane burn-off flames used in oil refineries. It was 1980 and for the first time a tiny fire could be detected from space. Soon he was able to determine land surface temperatures just by analyzing a satellite image. Remote sensing, spectroscopy, and biogeochemisty have come a long way in 40 years; so have fires – as dire global warming melts precious snow away like teardrops rolling down the creeks on the face of mother earth.

DIRTY SNOW AND ALLUVION FLOW

While Dozier was looking at the earth’s surface for climatic clues, other researchers were digging deep. Since the late 60s scientists have been extracting two-mile long ice cores out of snowpack in Greenland and Antarctica. More cores around the globe have been plucked out of glaciers before they all recede. Stacked in these cylindrical cores are stratified lines representing a geological timeline. Toward the top are layers of white loosely granulated snow crystals with barely discernable lines of annual layers of snowfall, then come darker compressed layers of rock, silt, and sand, with the bottom layers typified by dense dirty-brown ice. Some of these cores contain 750,000 year old natural elements.

These layers of ice allow scientists to travel back in time revealing snow fall levels, the direction the wind was blowing as the snow drifted, and the air temperature. By looking at the ratio of ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ atoms found in oxygen trapped in the ice, scientists can’t discern exact daily temperatures, but they determine average air temperatures or identify trends over select periods of time.

Other clues can be found as well; like elements in the atmosphere. As snow piles miles deep they compress lower layers ice pockets of atmospheric gas that become securely enshrouded. These gassy envelopes reveal to scientists the amount of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the time of the snow fall. As water turns to snow the process captures other atmospheric particles like dust, smoke, pollen, or ash from volcanic plumes as they crystalize and fall to the earth.

Taken together scientists can correlate volcanic ash concentrations, for example, with rising carbon dioxide levels. By carbon dating the ash particles, they can determine when the volcano occurred. These can then be cross-referenced with other sediment layers found in past oceans and land forms to create a more complete picture of the earth’s physical history.

Imagine what future paleontologist and paleoclimatologists will discover in future layers of snow and rock. Sure there will be the usual fossilized remains of the disappearing and evolving species of plants and animals; biomass that took what was given from the earth and then gave it back in a natural symbiosis of reciprocity; and then is all blended together in piles of swirling dust, decomposed carcasses, sticks, and leaves in compressed layers of time. But what will stand apart from the medley of bio-miscellany will be the detritus of an animal that has taken more from the world than it was given. Humans.

LET’S PLAY THE NAME GAME

There’s a proposed term that describes this geological period of profound human impact; a marker for future generations denoting an impression on the world that is different from any other in the history of time. The proposed term is Anthropocene. But there’s a problem. Scientists can’t agree on the term. They can’t even agree on the motivations to name such a period, when it began, or if it has even begun. As recently as March 2021 the two biggest stakeholders on the topic, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), both refused to approve and adopt the term as submitted by the Anthropocene Working Group, a subcommittee of the ICS.

One of the most contentious issues is determining exactly when the outsized human impact on the world’s systems began. The more scientists uncover and learn, the earlier the proposed starting date becomes. Other questions remain around the scale of impact, exact start dates, and the period of time over which the impact occurred.

Some argue that it began with the discovery of fire coupled with the cooking of meat. This combination increased caloric protein for developing brains which led to fires used to manipulate local living conditions.  Or maybe it was the period of mammalian extinction when the world lost over half of its large animals; a time when Homo sapiens emerged out of Africa to spread throughout the world. Or was it just ten thousand years ago when farming emerged independently and coincidently in Africa, Eurasia, the Americas, and New Guinea? Perhaps it was two thousand years ago and the organization and formation of societies like the Roman’s in Europe, the Han dynasty in China, and others in India, Mexico, and Peru. After all, these societies, like ours today, clear-cut land and mined for minerals at large, albeit isolated, scales.

This leads to the period I wrote about in my spring series on cartography – the sixteenth century’s European colonization around the world. This facilitated interactions between people and place across oceans resulting in a global exchange of regional fruits, vegetables, and animals; evidence of which is visible in our sedimentary strata. It also created a world economy that America and Europe relished as they exploited land, radically diminished Indigenous populations through disease, slaughter and war, and stole humans from their homes in Africa and beyond for free slave labor. All of which gradually intensified energy consumption with the dawn of the industrial age.

But most seem to be focusing in on the Great Acceleration that began around the 1950s. This time marks obvious shifts in social and earth systems – all resulting from the interaction of people and place. It’s the point on exponential behavioral, economic, and physical geography curves that feature steady linear growth throughout human history and then sudden sharp climbs up dangerously steep slopes.

Complex interdependent systems exhibiting exponential growth become unpredictable on their way to a tipping point. We are sitting on a slope made of the outcomes of unprecedented and unpredictable global inputs and outputs from interdependent social and environmental systems too complicated to describe or fully understand. Which leads some scientists to contend perhaps we have yet to even begin a true Anthropocene given we don’t really know what we’re dealing with.

TAKE A CUE FROM A SNOWFLAKE

It’s worth mentioning that much of this hang wringing, research, discussion, and debate is dominated by the very societies that induced this monstrous blow to our existence. This has led to the emergence of satirical derivative names like:

“Capitalocene, highlighting the dominant role of the capitalist economy;

Plantationocene, highlighting the important seminal role of colonialism capitalism, slavery, and the plantation economy;

Technocene, emphasizing the role of technological systems;

Anthrobscene and Manthropocene, highlighting a male logic of resource exploitation and the largely male composition of expert panels deciding on the Anthropocene;

“Anthropo-not-seen”, highlighting indigenous perspectives and role of colonialism;

Anglocene, noting the dominant role of the English-speaking world in producing the earliest industrial greenhouse gas emissions and also dominating the contemporary debate about the definition of the Anthropocene…”

I’ll add a couple more —

Anthropomorphicene, the attribution of human traits to earthly processes. Perhaps our nurturing mother earth isn’t a mother figure at all, but a fierce planetary tempest exacting indiscriminate damage on all it encounters.

Egocentricene, the obsession with our own well-being at the expense of other humans and non-humans. Perhaps we are getting what we deserve as we continually amuse ourselves to death. Sorry other plants and animals. Is it possible the human race, along with many more species, will expire before our greedy capitalistic consumerist ways do?

Maybe there is more uncertainty than there are species on the planet. It’s as complicated as the earth we inhabit. Perhaps more explanations exist than the ones we are handed.

I did learn one thing in Jeff Dozier’s Physical Geography 101 class; while snowflakes all have six arms, no one snowflake is ever like another. They all have a common symmetrical beauty that typifies the order molecules can produce as they take their rightful place in crystalline formations. But they are all unique.

As we seek to better understand the role human interaction has on this place, or even how we name it, let’s all acknowledge what we have in common while celebrating what makes us different. Nobody wants the human race to end, but no single answer will ever emerge for how to avoid it. So as you grumble to yourself in contemplation of your own existence, don’t forget to occasionally look up, make eye contact, nod, and smile at those around you.

Hello Interactors,

This is the last post of the Spring 2021 cartographic portion of Interplace. My recent trip to Kansas City got me thinking about the role land use mapping and planning played in the formation of select surrounding suburbs.

It’s also a bit of a teaser for the Summer season as Interplace moves toward the environment, physical geography, and its role in urban planning and design.

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

LIFE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SACK

One glance out the window as you fly into the Kansas City airport and the gridding of American land becomes apparent. A array of crops, fields, and irrigation circles all stitched in and bordered by hard edged polygons but also gently meandering rivers and streams. It’s all part of the grand plan to divide the organically occurring hills and valleys of America into artificial two dimensional polygons. A tapestry of maps for settling colonists that doubles as a ledger for settling government’s finances.

The patterns are apparent at the street level too. The main arterials are uniformly distributed and connected at intersections; east-west and north-south thoroughfares that reach far beyond the core of the city. But just off these axes of expansion are sweeping tree lined curvilinear roads featuring large deciduous trees with canopies of leaves floating over a pool of manicured Kentucky bluegrass. And nestled within are the beloved single family homes. A community planned from above on a map that sells an illusion of a naturally occurring pastoral ideal. A residential product planned, designed, and manufactured for settling White suburban colonists. Like me.

I grew up on a cul-de-sac in a planned community in Norwalk, Iowa. It doesn’t get anymore suburban than a cul-de-sac. I admit, it was nice. The center of the street featured a domed grassy circle that the neighborhood kids would all use to play kick-the-can. We’d place the can atop the center of the mound and then run and hide behind the surrounding houses and bushes. Cul-de-sacs are great for families because they’re dead ends. The literal French translation is ‘bottom of the sack’. The only cars, which was rare, were driven by the parents of the kids playing in the street. Parents of this generation knew the benefits of playing in the road because it was a lawful thing to do when they were kids. But with the rise of the automobile came laws that made it illegal to play in the street. Sadly, it still is.

Our little cul-de-sac was part of Norwalk’s first annexation; just four years after I was born. After we had all grown, my parents moved to Overland Park, Kansas to retire. Overland Park was founded around the same time Norwalk was incorporated in 1905. And like Norwalk, its founding was driven by the railroad, but its expansion was driven by the automobile. The growth of roads in suburban America correlates with the annexation of land throughout the 50s and 60s. Favorable home loans from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) helped too. As did redlining – the discriminatory delineation of red lines on ‘residential security maps’ where home loans were denied due to the area resident’s racial and ethnic origins.

Overland Park annexed developments for decades making it the second most populous city in Kansas (behind Wichita). This area of Johnson Country was developed primarily by the Kroh Brothers Development Company after World War II. They, like the more famous area developer J. C. Nichols, were deemed “community builders” and benefited from building subsidies flowing from the FHA. But the communities they were building were strictly White. Using harsh racist covenants and deeds, they controlled who could buy homes in these suburbs.

Here’s how the deed read for Leawood Estates, a community that shares the eastern border of Overland Park.

“None of said lots or portions of lots shall ever be sold, conveyed, transferred, devised, leased or rented to or used, owned or occupied by any person of Negro blood or by any person who is more than one-fourth of the Semitic race, blood, origin, or extraction, including without limitation in said designation, Armenians, Jews, Hebrews, Turks, Persians, Syrians, and Arabians, excluding, however, from the application of this paragraph partial occupancy by bona fide domestic servants employed thereon.”

EBENEZER’S POLAR PLUNGE

These satellite cities just beyond the reach of the city are associated with the post war rise of wealth and the automobile. But this method of mapping and planning had been around much longer. Ebenezer Howard introduced the concept of a ‘Garden City’ in 1895 in England in response to the overcrowding, congestion, and pollution that came with the industrial age. It’s a method of city planning that was cross-referenced by the City Beautiful Movement found in Chicago’s Burnham Plan.

Howard himself had lived in Chicago working as a reporter before returning to England. He was a writer, not an urban planner or architect. His Garden City vision was inspired by a science fiction utopian novel called, Looking Backward: 2000–1887 by American Edward Bellamy. It’s a story that starts in the year 2000 in an America that had morphed into a socialist utopia. It was in response to the rising wealth, power, and control of overreaching monopolists and oligarchs that had been taking hold in America in the late 1800s. It may be a good time for us all to be looking backward to Bellamy. Just this week Lina Khan was confirmed as the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission — a bi-partisan appointment to an agency that enforces antitrust law by a woman with a reputation for going after oligopolies. Read more about the significance of the appointment of this progressive woman in Matt Stoller’s piece here.

Howard’s vision for Garden Cities was amplified by his diagrammatic conceptual maps that accompanied his utopian ideas in his 1898 book Garden Cities of To-morrow. In keeping with the European cartographic tradition of fixed, top-down, graphical and mathematical overlays atop a morphing organic landscape, he advocated not for a gridded Cartesian plan, but a circular arrangement along polar axes. His idea was to plan self-contained smaller circles of cities around a larger central city all connected by rail creating what he called a “Group of Slumless, Smokeless Cities.”

Like his contemporaries, and many today, his view was that the earth is here to be exploited and controlled. In keeping with industrialist and neo-liberal capitalist traditions, he believed the earth to be an endless well of resources and the duty of the White man was to coerce or seize control of the ‘savages’ that had tended to it in reciprocity for millennia. Here’s Howard in his book Garden Cities of To-morrow,

“The planet on which we live has lasted for millions of years, and the race is just emerging from its savagery. Those of us who believe that there is a grand purpose behind nature cannot believe that the career of this planet is likely to be speedily cut short now that better hopes are rising in the hearts of men, and that, having learned a few of its less obscure secrets, they are finding their way, through much toil and pain, to a more noble use of its infinite treasures. The earth for all practical purposes may be regarded as abiding for ever.”

The countryside, with “land laying idle”, was one of the attractions Howard envisioned for his satellite cities. He created a diagram illustrating what he believed were three magnets influencing people’s decisions on where to live and work. The three magnets were Town, Country, and Town-Country. Each magnet included words that described the benefits and detractors of each. Town’s were rich in attractions, but was also full of ‘Slums’ and “Gin Palaces”.  The Country “Lacked Amusement” and “Long hours and low wages” but was home to “Wood, meadow, and forest” that was in “Need of reform”. The Town-Country provided the best of both worlds:

“Beauty of Nature, Social opportunity. Fields and Parks of Easy Access. Low rents, High wages. Low prices, no sweating. Field of enterprise, Flow of capital. Pure air and water, Good drainage. Bright homes and gardens, No smoke, No slums. Freedom. Co-operation.”

Sounds pretty good. Utopian, almost. No such utopia has ever been accomplished, but Howard’s ideas continue to inspire designers today. In 2014, British urban design firm, URBED, won the Wolfson Economics Prize for their envisioning of a modern-day garden city, Uxcester.

FEDERAL FINANCING FIX

Howard was intent on making the Town-country attractive to lure people who abandoned the countryside for jobs in the city.

“Town and country must be married, and out of this joyous union will spring a new hope, a new life, a new civilisation. It is the purpose of this work to show how a first step can be taken in this direction by the construction of a Town-country magnet; and I hope to convince the reader that this is practicable, here and now, and that on principles which are the very soundest, whether viewed from the ethical or the economic standpoint.”

The Kroh brothers were convinced and saw country “land laying idle” just outside the an increasingly over-crowded Kansas City. They also had visions of a “new civilization” for White residents. But ethical? I don’t think so. Economic opportunity? Absolutely. Long before they set out to plan and build their White suburbs, Kansas City and the U.S. Federal government were already fashioning their own magnets.

As Tulane University’s Director of Urban Studies, Kevin Fox Gotham, writes in his paper, Missed Opportunities, Enduring Legacies: School Segregation and Desegregation in Kansas City, Missouri,

“From the 1920s through the 1950s, the Kansas City Real Estate Board (formed in 1900) subscribed to a national code of real estate ethics that endorsed the view that all-black and racially mixed neighborhoods were inferior to all-white homogenous neighborhoods.”

“During this time, the FHA's Underwriting Manuals referred to the "infiltration of inharmonious racial or nationality groups" as "adverse" to neighborhood stability and advised appraisers to lower the rating of properties in racially mixed or all-black neighborhoods. Although the FHA removed explicitly racist language from its manuals in the 1950s, later manuals continued to refer to the necessity of maintaining "homogenous" neighborhoods and warned of the risk of "dissimilar" groups as "unstable" and "inharmonious".”

Between 1934 and 1962 the FHA insured more than seventy-seven thousand homes in the Kansas City area, but just one percent of them went to Black families. In another paper entitled, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development, Gotham quotes a mortgage company president who was Chairman of the board from 1934 to 1965,

“The FHA and VA wouldn’t insure any guarantee loans [in the Kansas City area] unless there was a [racial] restriction involved, and most lenders on residential property were relying heavily upon the FHA and VA for their protection. So that as long as that remained their position, the lender really had no choice but to observe the restriction.”

With local and Federal Government on their side, the Kroh brothers could confidently conjure and craft curvaceous cartographic corridors and cul-de-sacs atop a topographic map of the Kansas countryside. A green garden suburb made up of White people. Their plan also coincided with federal laws dictating the geometry of street design. Streets wide enough to accommodate free parking and a fast flow of traffic, connected curb-cut driveways leading to a garage connected to a cookie-cutter home who’s design was pre-approved by the FHA to streamline bulk lending processes. The Kroh brothers may have been called “community builders”, but it wasn’t so much a community that was being built, but a pre-packaged residential product that was being sold to White people seeking a “new civilization.”

The Kansas City area remains highly segregated to this day. Mostly down the north-south racist dividing line of Troost Avenue. But it wasn’t always that way. In 1950 seventy five percent of the population east of Troost was White. By 1970 that area dwindled to 25 percent. Over ninety-two thousand White people fled to the west side of Troost while nearly sixty-two thousand Black residents moved to the east side. There were, and are, many contributing factors to these facts like skewed school segregation schemes, self-segregation, job availability, and, of course, generations of lucrative loans guarantees to White people.

It’s not clear where race and ethnic origin fit in Ebenezer Howard’s ideas for a garden city utopia. But he did envision idealized democratic communities that were planned and structured in a way as to eliminate social divisions. There is no question people of all races and ethnic origins would like opportunities to live in a idyllic garden suburb. Maybe even on a cul-de-sac featuring a grassy domed circle where children of mixed heritage could race to kick the can.

Given America’s founding fathers believed the United States to be an ongoing democratic experiment for humanity at large — a country that has long beckoned the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free — perhaps we should all take a piece of Ebenezer Howard’s idealism to heart as we seek equitable access to housing in towns of all sizes and locations:

“Besides, as those persons who migrate to the town are among its most energetic and resourceful members, it is but just and right that their more helpless brethren should be able to enjoy the benefits of an experiment which is designed for humanity at large.”

Hello Interactors,

This week I’m coming to you from Kansas City. My plan was to avoid the hot and humid Midwest summer to visit family, but instead I’m battling a heat wave and soon a thunderstorm. It made me wish I’d done a post on weather maps.

As a result, this week’s installment is a review of my spring posts on cartography as we approach the last week of the season. Next up is summer and the role the physical environment plays in the interaction of people and place.

This spring I’ve chronicled the role various elements of map-making have played in the formation of the United States. Starting with an ancient history of cadastral mapping and how Thomas Jefferson took a page from the Egyptians and the Roman empire, then the progression of organized surveying for land capture across the country, and finally how maps serve as forms of persuasion, manipulation, and control.

I’ll be back next week with the final post of the season.

Now let’s go…back to April.

01 : A Groma from Rome Finds a New Home

How large scale precision cartography rose and fell with the Roman Empire, disappeared for centuries, and then re-emerged in the rise of a new empire.

This post looks behind the origins of the neatly organized geometry that chop most of America into a Cartesian grid. Mapmaking’s history dates back to ancient times – as do the motivations behind them. While maps help us to better understand and interact with the world, they also help establish authority and control.

https://interplace.io/p/a-groma-from-rome-finds-a-new-home

02 : A Nation Squared

How Thomas Jefferson's vision of a gridded nation squared with his desire for an interracial slave-free 'Continental America'.

Jefferson had appointed Thomas Hutchins to be Geographer of the United States in 1781. In 1784 Jefferson was preparing for expansion west and was combing over Hutchins’ descriptions of what lie west of his beloved Virginia. Jefferson was dubious of Hutchins’ mapping facts and took it up with him in a personal correspondence. What follows is the unfolding of a cartography project of Roman scale. And the birth of an empire.

https://interplace.io/p/a-nation-squared

03 : Miami Priced, Ohio Diced

From war veteran cronies scheming a land grab at a bar in Boston to the banks of the Ohio River with the threat of angry native resistors breathing down your neck.

Thomas Jefferson had a vision of a neatly portioned empire, just as the globe was neatly partitioned into a grid of latitude and longitude lines. Sure he wanted land for farmers, but he also needed to extract property tax revenue to fill the newly formed government’s coffers that had been emptied by the Revolutionary war. The task of surveying and mapping fell on the shoulders of America’s first and only chief Geographer, Thomas Hutchins. Like most things in colonial America, it wasn’t easy.

https://interplace.io/p/miami-priced-ohio-diced

04 : Guns, God, and Gold

A quest for wealth leads to pain through the crafting of a cartesian plane as war breaks out across the Ohio plains.

This is the third in a series on the role surveying and cartography played in the establishment of the United States. It continues further west into Ohio in the lead up to the 1800s. The U.S. government needed money to fulfill their dreams of being a global superpower. And it all hinged on Jefferson’s plan to extract money from neatly surveyed squares of land occupied by sovereign Indigenous nations who had been here for thousands of years. They were not going to give in easily and they never will.

https://interplace.io/p/guns-god-and-gold

05 : Make Your Own Survey in Under a Day

How Thomas Jefferson’s vision of mapped agrarian squares was realized by farmers dividing their own shares.

This wraps up the April series on the role large scale surveying played in determining how people of the United States of America interact with each other and the government. Jefferson had a vision for the country that combined his desire for agrarian expansion west and building an empire. It turned out to be easier for farmers to claim land than he could have imagined.

https://interplace.io/p/make-your-own-survey-in-under-a-day

06 : You Are What You Map

How triangles, topology, quadrangles, and cartography yield maps that can skew both messages and time.

This branches into topography and the role western colonial expansion plays in the creation and articulation of our naturally occurring geography. Most of us are not very skilled at critiquing the role maps have played in shaping how we see the globe and the people on it. However, I’m optimistic that when we do we can better confront the boundaries that maps have created between people and place.

https://interplace.io/p/you-are-what-you-map

07 : The U.S. Census: Mapping a Sense of Us

How a Swedish Zoologist and the birth of census 'big data' led to American racism at the hands of statisticians and geographers.

We’re learning every day just how embedded racism is in the workings of the American polity. This post is critical of America’s cadastral and topographic cartography past. It weaves together European scientific determinism, early ‘big data’ authoritarianism, and White supremist cartography.

https://interplace.io/p/the-us-census-mapping-a-sense-of

08 : Boomtown Maps

A tip on a canoe leads to the rise of a Midwest metropolis as mapping goes social.

Most of spring chronicled the spread of cadastral mapping across America. It was all part of Jefferson’s gridded agrarian vision. But by the middle of the 1800s immigrants started flooding in, the industrial age was taking hold, and cities became the thing to map.

https://interplace.io/p/boomtown-maps

09 : Winning Over the Windy City with Watercolors

Shaping a crowded city of crime and pollution with a water soluble solution.

Chicago was bursting at the seams at the turn of the century. People were stressed, companies were panicking, and something had to be done. They needed a plan; a map of a 20th century city. They needed someone to draw a picture, ease their minds, and persuade Chicago’s industrial elite.

https://interplace.io/p/winning-over-the-windy-city-with

10 : Maps as Logos; Atlases that Impose

Countries are branded with maps as their logos while national atlases sell their brand.

The shape of national maps are no accident. They’re not even natural. They’ve been created with intent. Yes, they represent political boundaries, but they also sell a brand. Politics is where the brand of a country begins. And maps, like flags, can serve as logos.

https://interplace.io/p/maps-as-logos-atlases-that-impose

If you enjoy Interplace, please tell your friends! And don’t be shy about liking and commenting on my posts or podcasts. If you don’t like what you’re reading or would rather not comment publicly, please drop me a note. I’d love your feedback!

Thanks to all of you that have supported me this far. It’s really exciting seeing the number of subscribers grow and the encouragement from many of you. Keep it up, spread the word, and thanks again for the love!

Now, let’s check on that thunderstorm.

Brad

Hello Interactors,

The shape of national maps are no accident. They’re not even natural. They’ve been created with intent. Yes, they represent political boundaries, but they also sell a brand.

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

LOCO FOR LOGOS

Close your eyes and imagine the shape of the country in which you were born. Now imagine the shape of the Nike swoosh. One we call a map, the other we call a logo. But maps can be logos too.   

Logo is a 1937 word most likely derived from an 1840 word, logogram; a sign or character that represents a word – Logo (words) and gram (that which is drawn). Shapes and letters, points and lines  paired with assigned names have been inscribed in our brains throughout our lifetime. Years of repetitive exposure through teachers, textbooks, TV, newspapers, books, magazines, movies, social media, and the internet have bombarded our senses burning images and perceptions into our memory. Companies and governments have spent billions of dollars tp pair particular words with that which is drawn.

There’s a reason it’s called branding. These images are emblazoned in your brain, just as a cattle rancher burns an image into the hide of their livestock with a red-hot branding iron. But there’s more to a brand than just the image. Brands are both a symbol, like a word and/or image, that possess a set of associated perceptions. And they are much more difficult to create than a branding iron.

I played a small role in building the Microsoft Office brand. You may be more familiar with another set of images I was more closely associated with – icons for Office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Because people use, or used, Word, Excel, and/or PowerPoint repeatedly, the image of that icon became increasingly imprinted in their memory. The repeated experience of using those applications gradually formed perceptions associated with the icon. Those perceptions were articulated through the media influencing even those people who never used these applications.

Microsoft made more money selling applications as a bundle than individually. So instead of building iconic brands around each product, they created the Office brand. The first Office logo, was a square puzzle of four interlocking pieces filled with red, green, blue, and yellow. It suggested Office was a collection of interlocking pieces.  Four independent territories that shared a common border, purpose, and ideal.

But getting that Office name and associated puzzle image to become recognized and recalled as readily as say, the Word icon, proved, and still proves, to be a monumental task. Many elements are factored in the forming of perceptions. Some elements the company can control, like the design of the product, marketing materials, and advertising. But others are out of their control like individual needs and desires, societal views, media impressions, and even politics.  

Politics is where the brand of a country begins. And maps, like flags, can serve as logos. The earliest examples of maps as logos can be found in the imperial maps England produced. They too were puzzle pieces. As Cornell political scientist, Benedict Anderson, wrote in his influential book on nationalism, Imagined Communities:

“Its origins were reasonably innocent - the practice of the imperial states of colouring their colonies on maps with an imperial dye. In London's imperial maps, British colonies were usually pink-red, French purple-blue, Dutch yellow-brown, and so on. Dyed this way, each colony. appeared like a detachable piece of a jigsaw puzzle. As this 'jigsaw' effect became normal, each 'piece' could be wholly detached from its geographic context. In its final form all explanatory glosses could be summarily removed: lines of longitude and latitude, place names, signs for rivers, seas, and mountains, neighbours. Pure sign, no longer compass to the world. In this shape, the map entered an infinitely reproducible series, available for transfer to posters, official seals, letterheads, magazine and textbook covers, tablecloths, and hotel walls.”

Territory maps have been created for centuries as a way to demarcate territory for the purpose of ownership and dominion. That was as true for monarchies, as it is for nation-states. Over the last couple months I’ve chronicled the evolution and execution of cadastral and topographic maps across America just as Jefferson had envisioned. Around this time, regions around the world were doing the same. Including Thailand.

IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ‘EM, JOIN ‘EM

It wasn’t until the middle of the 1800s that Siam, now called Thailand, had a top-down Cartesian style representation of the country and census of its people. Sure they had maps, but they were mostly drawn at eye-level with invented perspectives. Many were dominated by textual descriptions that matched stone markers in the landscape.

But having escaped the colonial invasion that neighboring Southeast Asian territories endured, the ruling King knew it was a matter of time before the French or English invaded. This tiny region had a history of kicking Christian missionaries out of their country for fervently converting Buddhists to Christianity. So they took matters into their own hands and hired a British cartographer to begin surveying and mapping territories – mostly for military and census purposes. It gained them a seat at the proverbial international table, staved off colonial invasion, but also aggregated diverse sets of cultures, identities, and languages under a single name affixed within imaginary lines for the purpose of administration, military control, and quasi-legal representation as a Westernized nation-state. As Thai historian Thongchai writes in Anderson’s book, Imagined Communities,

“a map was a model for, rather than a model of, what it purported to represent. . . . It had become a real instrument to concretize projections on the earth's surface. A map was now necessary for the new administrative mechanisms and for the troops to back up their claims. . . . The discourse of mapping was the paradigm which both administrative and military operations worked within and served.”

Soon, like Jefferson and Hamilton a century before, a Department of Interior was created and with it a map-making division. From that point forward, not only could the country defend themselves from European colonizers, they could enter legitimate territorial negotiations with other nation-states. And they could also control the historical narrative of the country, the names of places, and the people that occupied them. In 1892 Thailand’s Minister of Education made geography mandatory.

What were once loose collections of Indigenous tribes and bands with their own languages, cultures, and methods of relating to people and place, were bundled together and sold to the world under a new brand by a King who adopted westernized approaches to place making, land disputes, and military defense. Over time, this reinvention included changing the name of the country from Siam, a name attributed to this region in European maps dating back to the 1600s, to Thailand in 1942 – a seventy year old rebranding project. The only thing left of Siam in western language and culture, that I know of, is the informal name for conjoining siblings - Siamese Twins.

One of the forces that accelerated, amplified, and solidified country brands were advances in printing technologies. Territorial names, maps, and their corresponding historical and cultural narratives became the words and symbols that comprised branding elements. Having a tidy, identifiable polygon made of a thick defining line, a perimeter that both divides and unites, offers governments a distinct image – a logo. A symbol that is used, like all logos, to represent a particular system of values, cultures, political structure, and economic systems, all based on a particular historical perspective and narrative as defined by the dominant ruling party. An image so simple, yet powerful, that it need only exist as a single color. Which, in turn, makes it easy and cheap to print in mass quantities and disseminate through mass media. The more the image is exposed, the more recognizable it becomes, and the more easily it is recalled at the mention of it’s name. Just like a logo.

Given the efficiency of a logo, they’re easily incorporated into many forms of advertising, propaganda, and education. But it takes more than a single image to communicate the complicated doctrines and causes that stand behind a simple shape. That’s what national atlases are for.

ATLAS PLUGGED

Along with the advances in printing technologies came the proliferation of national atlases. In the History of Cartography, Volume Six, Karen Culcasi positions atlases like this,

“…atlases have several roles, but their classic function is as a symbol of nationhood, national unity, and national pride. While the defining criteria are ambiguous, most national atlases are collections of thematic maps of an independent country. In addition to historical maps that narrate the nation-state’s past, they typically include statistical and physical maps as well as general reference maps covering the country section by section at a somewhat larger scale—all of which enhance their power as pedagogical and reference tools for use in homes and classrooms.”

The first national atlases most likely emerged out of England in 1579; Christopher Saxton’s Atlas of England and Wales. It’s a colorful book of maps gilded in gold and commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I to demonstrate British cartography and engraving prowess. It served as the base map for future national atlases of England and an inspiration for others to follow. Soon Scotland, Finland, Canada, and the United States had their own. In the centuries to follow, nation states around the world who gained their independence were quick to follow up with a national atlas. But they aren’t without conflict. One of the most recent notable territorial conflicts is also one of the oldest. Israel and Palestine.

The boundary mapping of Israel and Palestine, like other boundaries in the region, continues to be contentious with no apparent conclusion through traditional means. Steeped in thousands of years of ebbing and flowing of ethnic, religious, refugee and natural resource boundaries and interactions its complex reality exceeds the limitations of traditional cartographic conventions.

The first internationally recognized boundary in the Middle East was created in 1906 by Great Britain who were governing Egypt at the time. Again, for military purposes, they wanted to control the Suez Canal so the surveyed a border that awarded them the Sinai Peninsula. Then in 1916 the English and French met in secret to create a dividing line between Egypt and Turkey. Egypt went to England and Turkey went to France.

That worked so well, that in 1920 they met again to divvy up more land in the middle east. Lebanon and Syria would go to France, and Palestine and Mesopotamia to England. In 1923 the League of Nations declared Palestine a state, an England mandate, and the line originally drawn in 1906 between Palestine and Egypt remained.

In 1947, the United Nations recommended a plan to divide Palestine into two “independent Jewish and Arab states.” The Jewish organization that had long been helping resettle the area begrudgingly accepted the proposal, but most of the Arab contingent did not. In 1948 the British mandate expired, hundreds of Palestinians were expelled, 78% of the land was handed to Israel and before the year was up the region had their first Arab-Israeli war.

In 1949 a temporary ‘Green Line’ was agreed upon by the Israeli’s and neighboring Arab countries. Its name comes from the green ink used to draw the line. But what I recall is the green line of pine trees that stop at the border between East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem. These trees have mostly been purchased and planted throughout Israel by the Jewish National Fund – a nonprofit started in 1901 to buy up land in Palestine for Jewish settlement.  

The Green Line lasted until 1967 and the Six-Day War. Israel captured territories that we all know by name, but most couldn’t place on a map: East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula (which went back to Egypt in 1979). Contentious struggles continue to this day. The latest 11-day deadly skirmish was over territorial disputes in the Gaza Strip.

In 1996 Haifa University Geography professor, Yoram Bar-Gal researched the maps Israeli schools were using to teach kids the area’s geography. He also looked at how the media, Zionist organizations, like the Jewish National Fund, and the Israeli government used maps to ‘assert territorial socialization’. He also looked at textbooks published in Arab countries to educate their kids and citizens. No surprise. What he found is each side uses maps and names that reflect their cultural identity. Maps from the Arab countries called the region Palestine and the Jewish maps called the region Israel. In 2004, the American Jewish Community created a pamphlet targeting textbooks created in Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia asking,

“How can there be peace in the Middle East if Israel isn’t even on the map?”

These maps that each side have created can be construed as propaganda pieces. They each deliberately use names, labels, and language to systematically shape opinions, beliefs, and perceptions. That also sounds like the building of a brand using a map as a logo. Go search for a Palestine necklace with a map and see what you find. Then search for an Israeli necklace with a map. A logo with the same shape, but different meaning.

FLEXIBLE, FUZZY, AND FLUID

When I was working in Excel on the built-in mapping feature, we had contemplative discussions about how to one day solve this sticky dilemma. Imagine you’re at a conference in Hong Kong presenting to an audience of mixed Asian descent – including Taiwanese. One of your slides includes a map you made in Excel of the population of Taiwan that includes that name on the map. Given China has not recognized Taiwan as a nation, many Chinese in the audience would take offense with how you labeled the map. But if at the last second you decided you should call it China, the Taiwanese in the audience would take offense. Given the presentation is happening in Hong Kong, should the map automatically select the name their government prefers? And what about you? What do you believe? Given this is your work, shouldn’t it reflect your personal belief? Or should it reflect the company you work for. It’s their laptop, their license of the software, and you were paid to make it. There’s no easy answer.

In 2016 two geography researchers, Garrett Dash Nelson and Alasdair Rae, explored an alternative. They looked at commuting patterns across the United States and with the help of a computer determined regions based on human activity and not historical cadastral demarcations. It revealed familiar and logical grouping and names that anyone familiar with America could understand. But the shapes are counter to what Jefferson could ever have imagined. Still, the resulting shapes, while based on dynamic human patterns, are still fixed regions based on both man and machine interpretation. The authors conclude,

“The detection of recognizable communities through this computational analysis suggests that human geography does in fact display statistically-significant patterns of structured regionalization…Such empirical analyses provide a scaffolding on which policymakers can evaluate the appropriate territorial shape and size of districts…Given the massive complexity of the connections inherent in national-scale commuter geography, these analyses should be understood as” providing only a sketchy foreshadowing of possibilities and “must then be subject to functional and practical scrutiny.”

This all puts in to question the legitimacy of a nation-state in the first place. Inventing connected lines that make a recognizable shape, giving it a name, deciding who can live within its imaginary border neglects the reality on the ground. Nature doesn’t care about our maps. And, after all, we are part of nature. It is true that every complex system in nature has some organizing mechanism that creates and coordinates order. Just look at our DNA.

But territory maps, like logos, have strict guidelines, rules, and laws that defy the fluidity of human behavior, culture, and civilization. Humanity is a puzzle made of pieces that continually change shape and interlock and reject each other in unexpected and surprising ways. It may be impossible to map such a thing. Perhaps traditional cartography, as we know it, is ill-fitted to the task. A convention seeking adaptation. Or maybe collective greed, hatred, delusion, and hubris on the part of some have led us to believe a map can be a logo and that a nation can be a brand.   

Hello Interactors,

Chicago was bursting at the seams at the turn of the century. People were stressed, companies were panicking, and something had to be done. They needed a plan; a map of a 20th century city. They needed someone to draw a picture, ease their minds, and persuade Chicago’s industrial elite.

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

THE POWER OF THE PEN

It wasn’t going to end well. The mechanical engineering class was split in their opinions over elements of a design for a handle bar bracket they were designing. It was getting tense. There was yelling, pointing, and gesturing among the aggressive ones while distracted, despondent doodlers were dawdling in the margins. The instructor, clearly rattled, was vainly refereeing the melee. Then, from the back of the class, came a calm but firm interjection. “Can I make a suggestion?”, a man’s voice said. The class whirled around in their seats. There was another professor seated in the back, but who was he?

Last week we left Chicago at the turn of the century. The flood of immigrants from the 1830s to 1900 had led to exponential population growth.  There were nearly 4,000 people living in Chicago in the 1830s and over two million by 1900. It made a lot of people rich, but left many more poor. It was also causing congestion, pollution, and, yes, disillusion. Chicago was not becoming what the city’s elite had imagined. Those who could, escaped to the suburbs proffered. Those who couldn’t, scraped by on whatever was offered.

But everyone was frustrated, confused, anxious, and scared. Infamous Chicago organized crime had been building for decades with crooks named Michael ”Hinkey Dink” Kenna, George “Bugs” Moran, and the “Bloody Gennas” – six Sicilian brothers “Bloody” Angelo, Mike “The Devil”, and Pat, Sam, Jim, and Tony – “The Gentlemen.” Railroads were stringing rail lines into the city, boats were crowding the harbors, and the glimmer of automobiles was on the horizon. Companies were booming and competing for rights to increasingly limited public land. The government did their best to mediate and keep the town running, but it was getting heated. Then somebody in the periphery was asked to make a suggestion.

As that engineering class was staring down the mysterious man in the back, he continued, “I’m not a mechanical engineer so I’m having trouble understanding what you’re talking about. Would someone kindly draw a picture of this bracket on the whiteboard so I can see what it is you’re arguing about?”

All of the students look at each other and then one sheepishly admitted what they were all thinking, “I don’t really know how to draw.” Eventually somebody was delegated to draw a rough sketch of the part. They then circled and labeled the elements they were discussing. The room erupted again in debate. “That’s not what we’re talking about!”, said a boisterous one as they charged the whiteboard. They grabbed another marker and circled and labeled another element. “What are you talking about?”, said another as they leapt from their seat for the board. Soon, all of the students were gathered around the whiteboard, pens in hand, visually negotiating a resolution.  With the power of the pen, and the emergence of an image, comes the persuasion of people. To visualize is to compromise.

THE WINDY WHITE CITY

Seven years before the 20th century arrived, Chicago hosted the 1892 World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition. Otherwise known as the Chicago World’s Fair. But most people ended up calling it ‘White City’ due to the white neoclassical architecture it featured, but in today’s social context it was ‘White’ for other reasons. For one, it was celebrating the 400 year anniversary of Christopher Columbus “discovering” America. For another, the organizing committee refused to appoint any Black or African-American members. There were Black and African-American exhibits accepted as a consolation, but even though these Americans comprised one tenth of the population at the time, it seemed the organizing committee would rather not hear from them.

Ida B. Wells, a Chicago resident at the time, Frederick Douglass, and Irvine Garland Penn didn’t sit idly by. They produced a pamphlet entitled, The Reason Why: The Colored American is not in the World's Columbian Exposition. It was printed in English, French, and German. The preface reads like this:

“TO THE SEEKER AFTER TRUTH:

Columbia has bidden the civilized world to join with her in celebrating the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, and the invitation has been accepted. At Jackson Park are displayed exhibits of her natural resources, and her progress in the arts and sciences, but that which would best illustrate her moral grandeur has been ignored.

The exhibit of the progress made by a race in 25 years of freedom as against 250 years of slavery, would have been the greatest tribute to the greatness and progressiveness of American institutions which could have been shown the world. The colored people of this great Republic number eight millions – more than one-tenth the whole population of the United States. They were among the earliest settlers of this continent, landing at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 in a slave ship, before the Puritans, who landed at Plymouth in 1620. They have contributed a large share to American prosperity and civilization. The labor of one-half of this country has always been, and is still being done by them. The first credit this country had in its commerce with foreign nations was created by productions resulting from their labor. The wealth created by their industry has afforded to the white people of this country the leisure essential to their great progress in education, art, science, industry and invention.

Those visitors to the World's Columbian Exposition who know these facts, especially foreigners will naturally ask: Why are not the colored people, who constitute so large an element of the American population, and who have contributed so large a share to American greatness, more visibly present and better represented in this World's Exposition? Why are they not taking part in this glorious celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of their country? Are they so dull and stupid as to feel no interest in this great event? It is to answer these questions and supply as far as possible our lack of representation at the Exposition that the Afro-American has published this volume.”

The lead architect of the neoclassical “White City” was Daniel Burnham. He was lauded by the White organizing committee for capturing the essence of the American exceptionalism they intended the fair to evangelize. It was the largest exposition to date and drew over 750,000 people on its opening day. So in 1906 when Chicago was fuming in its own waste, clogged with congestion, and stuck with an unclear path forward, a group of industrialists, called the Commercial Club of Chicago (which is still around today), called Burnham to the front of the room to draw them a picture. The project was called the Burnham Plan.

WAR OF WORDS AND WATERCOLORS

Burnham had already sketched some ideas of how to improve the city’s waterfront after the World’s Fair had concluded. He also helped other cities like Washington D.C., Cleveland, and San Francisco with their own plans. Some regard him as the father of American city planning. Burnham signed on a partner, Edward H. Bennett who ended up doing much of the coordination. But they also hired a prominent muralist and watercolorist, Jules Guérin. Burnham knew his ideas, along with the ideas of the Commercial Club members, would take some selling to the public, other prominent businessmen, and the city government. He needed more than a sketch, a plan, or even a map. He needed people to be both inspired and consoled. But also persuaded.

What led to the contention and confusion in that mechanical engineering class wasn’t just differing opinions. That’s what came out in their actions, but what compelled these people to react as they did was more likely anxiety, frustration, confusion, and maybe even fear of being wrong. It’s that same feeling we have when we’re disoriented or lost. There’s a unique image in our head, if we can access it, that will orient us when we’re lost. Every student in that classroom had their own individual image of that bracket in their head. They just needed to access it.

But manifesting that image through words can be inadequate and frustrating. Words only get us so far. That’s why images are worth a thousand words. So in our struggle to reason with that feeling inside us we can sometimes lash out, point fingers, blame the environment — and sometimes each other. What an image provides, be it a drawing or a map, is clarity. Certainty. It makes the invisible visible, the impossible possible, and persuadable persuaded. And, yes, it can also be consoling.

Jules Guérin was a good choice on the part of Burnham. His serene cityscape watercolors not only represented the rational, orderly, and systematic plan of Burnham, Bennett, and others, but they made Chicago look calm, peaceful, and serene. Maybe even egalitarian. These artistic maps drew inspiration from Europe — especially the Beaux Arts movement of Paris. Georges Eugène Haussmann had executed a similar city plan of Paris fifty years earlier. It was good timing in the lead up to their 1889 World’s Fair and the construction of the Eifel Tower in 1887. Paris was a medieval mess until Napoléon III hired Haussmann to redesign and renovate the city. His work is now synonymous with the allure of Paris.

Guérin ended up painting over 150 images that Burnham used for presentations or to be hung in the halls of buildings housing influential commercial and governmental decision makers. His work wasn’t only pleasant to look at, but featured elements that appealed to a wide variety of constituencies. Some paintings included pastoral forests, farms, and open space contrasted with railroad tracks bordering or dividing the natural landscape. Many included high contrast lightly rendered rivers and lakes that featured both boating for pleasure and commerce. There was something for everyone.

But one of the most distinctive elements, is the aerial bird’s eye view. This unique perspective allowed the paintings to be seen as traditional works of art, but also allowed Burnham to sell his vision of an orderly, well structured, architectonic city. Just like the ones in Europe. This style of painting, mapping, and planning of cities came to be known as the City Beautiful movement of urban design and planning that spread across the country.

Burnham was a master at leveraging the power of these illusory, artistic, and fanciful maps to persuade. But he wasn’t doing it alone. He had the full backing of the Commercial Club who came with their own ideas. But they weren’t alone either. There were competing visions for the city. One contentious element was the refactoring of Michigan Avenue. Burnham’s plan called for both widening and elevating a portion of the street and connecting the two roads with a double decker bridge. Another group called the Michigan Avenue Improvement Association had a simpler idea. They wanted to widen the street, but keep it at one level connected by a single level bridge. Both groups spent two years drawing pictures, making pamphlets, and arguing.

NOTHING NEW SINCE THE GREEKS

Just like those students all standing around the whiteboard, with pen in hand, they were debating, negotiating, and persuading with pictures. It’s what that guy in the back of class was looking for. The mysterious observer was the head of the Design Department at Carnegie-Mellon at the time, Dick Buchanan. He’s now at Case Western Reserve. He was curious how the engineering department was teaching their students, so he asked to sit in on a class. Drawing is a part of the foundational curriculum in design schools, but he learned maybe that wasn’t the case in engineering. Mr. Buchanan also knows the power of persuasion. He studied rhetoric in college and understands the power of carefully crafted words and images to persuade.

The Burnham plan wasn’t the first to take the approach of top-down patriarchal style city planning. Idealized fantasy cities dot the history of western civilization. In Ancient times, the Greek city of Miletus grew from a planned city map dating back to 450 BCE. Milesian settlers used plans like these throughout present day Turkey. Their grid formations became the basis for the gridded Roman cities that I mentioned in my first post of this spring series on Roman cadastral surveying and mapping. These methods continue to be the dominant form of urban planning today.

The grid went dormant in mapping and city structure when the Roman empire fell and throughout medieval times. Just like large scale cadastral mapping, it didn’t reappear until the Renaissance. This time the cartesian arrangement included elements of protection to guard against organized military attacks on monarchies. They were optimized for the interaction of people and place and monetary exchange within their borders and thus took on radial and symmetrical arrangements. Architects and designers like Leonardo da Vinci reached back to 80 BCE and the books Vitruvius wrote on structured, practical, architecture to draw these schemes.  

Another influential, though less famous, craftsman, artist, architect, and writer of the Renaissance was a man named Filarete. He wrote a highly influential book on architecture in 1464 called Libro architettonico or “Architectonic book.” Even da Vinci was pulling ideas from his work.

His book featured a fictional storyline that included an idealize city called Sforzinda. Including a star shaped diagram of the city plan. Humanism was at the center of Renaissance philosophy so art and design often echoed the proportion and function of humans. This trope is also a nod to Vitruvius and his Vitruvian Man that was popularized by Leonardo da Vinci’s famous 1490 illustration of the man with outstretch arms.

Newcastle University Urban Design Professor, Ali Madanipour writes,

“The desired order was to be achieved by a single design for an entire city, anticipating Machiavelli and Descartes who also looked for a single source of order, which politically became manifest in absolute monarchies.”

The idealized city Burnham had devised 500 years later drew from these ideas. It had been occurring around Europe throughout the Renaissance and into the Industrial Age. The orderly, industrialized, and mechanized designs of factories, tools, and products were now being applied to cities. Just as monarchies in Europe looked to artists, designers, and craftsman to bring order to the design of their cities and societies, so were industrialists looking to Burnham and others to bring order to Chicago and its people. A plan that was modelled from ancient European history, and the recent history of the Chicago World’s Fair and American exceptionalism.

For both the fair and the Burnham plan, it was White men who held dominant roles in public politics and private enterprise that were in charge. They wielded a moral authority that leaned on America’s founding claims of ‘Manifest Destiny’. A moral code summarized in six words, “Is this yours? It’s mine now.” These men also had privileged social status and felt entitled to their benefits, wealth, and rewards even at the detriment of the lives of Black Americans, Indigenous nations, disadvantaged immigrants, and poor White Americans.

Fearful that their privilege, status, or wealth may be challenged by growing populations of people different from them, they turned to power, order, and domination. They sought control over the situation. All they needed was someone to draw a picture. A map. A drawing. Something that would ease their mind. So Burnham stood at the head of the class, grabbed some chalk, and before he knew it he had Chicago’s most powerful men drawing pictures of their idealized future.

Hello Interactors,

So far this spring I’ve chronicled the spread of cadastral mapping across America. It was all part of Jefferson’s gridded agrarian vision. But by the middle of the 1800s immigrants started flooding in, the industrial age was taking hold, and cities were the thing to map.

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

THE PREACH AND THE LEECH

"This lake was well named; it was but a scum of liquid mud, a foot or more deep, over which our boats were slid, not floated over, men wading each side without firm footing, but often sinking deep into this filthy mire, filled with bloodsuckers, which attached themselves in quantities to their legs. Three days were consumed in passing through this sinkhole of only one or two miles in length."

Those are the words of Gurdon S. Hubbard, a fur trader from Vermont. In 1816, at age 18, he begged his parents to leave his job at a local hardware store to join a buddy on a fur trading expedition to Mackinac Island, Michigan. Two years later, in 1818, he found himself on a boat being drug through leech infested mud next the aptly named, Mud Lake – a terminating branch of the Des Plaines river. He was traversing a well known shortcut to Lake Michigan. As his men pulled blood sucking predatory leeches from their legs, he likely would have also been breathing in the odors of a pungent leek that grew along those shores. The Algonquin people called them Checagou.  

By the time Hubbard found this shortcut, it had already been named Chicago Portage and had been used for over one hundred years. In 1673, French Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette joined French Canadian Louis Jolliet to map the Mississippi river. As they were paddling their way upstream on their return to the Great Lakes, they encountered a Miami tribe by the shore. The Miami tipped them off to a shortcut to Canada. Instead of paddling all the way up to Lake Superior, they told them they could hang a right at the Illinois River and head north through Lake Michigan instead.

The Illinois River becomes the Des Plaines River at what is now Joliet, Illinois. The river then opened to an estuary later dubbed Mud Lake near present day Lyons, Illinois – a suburb of Chicago. Thus began a days long slog tugging a boat made from birch logs; a portage to Lake Michigan and beyond.

Plodding their way to the mouth of the great lake on the horizon, Jolliet got to thinking about all the fur he could trade now that he knew this shortcut. After all, this portage connected two pivotal North American transportation routes – the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. In his journal he wrote,

“We could easily sail a ship to Florida…All that needs to be done is to dig a canal through but half a league of prairie from the lower end of Lake Michigan to the River of St. Louis [today’s Illinois River].”

Jolliet and Marquette spread the word and soon many others were trading through the Chicago Portage. The first to settle was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable and his wife Kitihawa in the 1780s. Jean Baptiste was of French and African descent and Kitihawa was from the local Potawatomi tribe. They were married ceremoniously among her people in the 1770s and then, having converted to Catholicism, were married in 1788 in Cahokia, Illinois in a Catholic ceremony. They, and their two children, went on to build a successful farm and trading post in a well appointed log cabin. They are considered the founders of what we now call the city of Chicago. Jean Baptiste died the year Gurdon Hubbard and his leech bitten crew showed up in 1818.

GRID AS YOU GROW

That same year the Illinois General Assembly was formed, the young state’s first government. Hubbard settled in Chicago and eventually became a legislator. He lobbied tirelessly for supplemental funding from the Federal government to build a canal that would replace the pernicious Chicago Portage. It worked.

They broke ground with Hubbard wielding the spade, in 1836. By this time Hubbard had also started Chicago’s first stockyard and meat packing plant. He knew, just as Jolliet did over one hundred years before, that Chicago was destined to be an attractive port town; a symbol of growth and prosperity. But neither could have imagined what happened next. It’s hard to believe today.

When Hubbard broke ground on the canal, the population was around 4,000 people. Ten years later, in 1850, that number grew nearly eight-fold to 30,000 people. By 1886, around the time Hubbard was buried just north of Chicago at Graceland Cemetery, there were nearly one-million people living in Chicago. Immigrant populations were flooding the city for work, many as laborers on the canal. Land prices were skyrocketing.

“In 1832, a small lot on Clark Street sold for $100. Two years later, the same property sold for $3,000. And a year after that, it sold for $15,000. A newspaper reporter wrote, “[E]very man who owned a garden patch stood on his head, [and] imagined himself a millionaire….”

It didn’t take long for survey crews to start gridding Chicago into tiny parcels. All spring I’ve been chronicling the spread of large-scale cadastral mapping across the country. While Jefferson’s vision of a gridded country included plats for developing cities, his primary objective was the expansion of land for agrarian purposes. After all, he was a farmer. But urban populations were starting to mushroom in the 1830s as masses of immigrants flooded the country. Especially Chicago.

Surveyors got to work dividing plats of land into skinny rectangles packed into gridded squares divided by roads and bounded by the curving shores of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. This 1834 map shows the land surveyed in Chicago from 1830 to 1834. Enough to handle the nearly 4,000 residents and growing.

By 1850 the population was nearing 30,000 and the city needed to expand. By 1855 the population had already jumped to 80,000. That’s 10,000 people a year flooding a few square miles. You can see in the 1855 map above just how much Chicago grew. When the city was founded in the 1830s it was about 2.5 miles square. By 1863 it grew west, south, and north four to six miles in each direction. Urban sprawl started in Chicago almost as soon as it was founded.

BILLY AND ANDY RAND MCNALLY

The opening of the Chicago River canal in 1848 and the penetration of rail lines in the 1850s culminated in making Chicago a freight and logistics transportation hub. A system that birthed iconic companies like Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck & Co. By 1850 Chicago was the biggest city in the country.

The intense growth of the city coincided with increased ethnic diversity, complex urban activity, and a shifting cultural context. It called for new methods of infrastructure management, land use policy, and regulation — but also new maps. Mapping became tools not just for documenting the record, but for managing complexity, decision making, and the risk of calamity.

This 1869 map shows the various insurance schemes spread throughout the city. Among other purposes, it was used to assess fire risk. A need that became abundantly clear two years later when the Great Chicago Fire destroyed nearly three and a half square miles of the city leaving 300 people dead.

Advances in printing technology spawned new varieties of publications, including maps. A year after the Great Chicago Fire, a printmaker from Massachusetts, William Rand, and an Irish immigrant, Andrew McNally, printed their first map. Their newly formed business, Rand McNally & Co., started off printing train tickets and schedules for the dizzying strands of trains snaking through the city. Soon Rand McNally became synonymous with ‘map’ in the United States becoming the country’s most dominant mapping company.  

ANOTHER SUPER HERO FROM IOWA

By 1870 48 percent of Chicago residents were immigrants; more than any other city in the country.  All this urban activity brought prosperity to a rising privileged social elite, but it also brought poverty, destitution, and segregation to the disadvantaged.

Last week I talked about the 1890 U.S. census. It was the birth of American ‘Big Data’ tabulated with newly invented punch cards. America’s ‘father of mapmaking’, Henry Gannett, was tasked with charting and mapping the data. It was an impressive feat, that included new methods of modeling and visualizing the growing ethnicities in America. But the analysis included overtones of patriarchy and racist theories. Five years later, out of the slums of Chicago, emerged a more thoughtful, altruistic, yet critical counter maps.

In 1895 an all-women boarding house, called the Hull House, went about collecting, analyzing, and mapping socio-demographic data aimed at improving the lives of their immigrant neighbors. One of those women was from my home state of Iowa. Her name is Agnes Sinclair Holbrook. She was born in Marengo, Iowa in 1867 and went on to study at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She studied math, science, and literature earning a bachelor of science degree in 1892. She then moved to Chicago to live with other women like her in the Hull House.

This was a home to women with university degrees situated in a poor Chicago neighborhood. The Hull House mission, which came from one of the founders, Jane Addams, was to empower educated women through her “Three R’s”: Residence, Research, and Reform. Instead of distantly studying anonymously surveyed data she encouraged,

“close cooperation with the neighborhood people, scientific study of the causes of poverty and dependence, communication of these facts to the public, and persistent pressure for [legislative and social] reform..."

Young Agnes Sinclair Holbrook collected and analyzed local data from her resident immigrant community and visualized it on a map. Her intent was to inform and influence local policy but to also lift up, empower, and encourage immigrant women to seek their own opportunities. Below is an example of her work from the 1895 Hull House publication.

Digitally produced urban maps like Holbrook’s are common place today. We’re practically numbed by their presence as they bob in the rivers of social media feeds. You can bet Agnes Sinclair Holbrook would have thousands of followers if she were alive today. She’d probably also be disappointed in the progress made toward social justice.

Holbrook wasn’t a fan of sterile, dispassionate pronouncements. She believed simply stating the facts doesn’t get traction, if you want to make change it must come with the right action. As Holbrook writes in the 1895 publication of Hull-House Maps and Papers,

“Merely to state symptoms and go no farther would be idle; but to state symptoms in order to ascertain the nature of disease, and apply, it may be, its cure, is not only scientific, but in the highest sense humanitarian.”

She didn’t stop there. She had a bigger message for America’s powerful, white, male elite. It’s a message that is so relevant today, that we’d be wise to reflect and learn from the socio-political environment of the late 1800s. Here the 28 year old Holbrook states,

“The politicians work on the people's feelings, incite them against the men of the other party as their most bitter enemies; and if this doesn't succeed, they go to work deliberately to buy some. Thus adding insult to injury, they go off and set up a Pharisaic cry about the ignorance and corruption of the foreign voters.

As everything in the old country has its price, it is not at all surprising that the foreigners believe such to be the case in this also. But Americans are to blame for this; for the better class of citizens, the men who preach so much about corruption in political life, and advocate reforms, never come near these foreign voters. They do not take pains to become acquainted with these recruits to American citizenship; they never come to their political clubs and learn to know them personally; they simply draw their estimates from the most untrustworthy source, the newspapers, and then mercilessly condemn as hopeless.”

As Holbrook and the women of Hull House worked to better improve the lives of those in the city, the ‘better class of citizens’ were leaving it. Since the 1850s streetcar suburbs were popping up everywhere to whisk affluent commuters in and out of the city; including one of America’s first planned communities, Riverside, Illinois. It was designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead and it provided the bucolic utopia that continues to lure Americans from dense urban cities to this day.

By 1873 Chicago had 11 different privately operated streetcar lines serving over 100 communities. Streetcar lines continued to stretch further distances all the way up to the twentieth century when the automobile arrived. This 1889 map shows the extent to which these suburbs dotted the surrounding landscape of Chicago.

Many believe the proliferation of roadways and automobiles created suburban sprawl in Chicago and cities like it. But it was the streetcar suburbs of the 1800s — all crafted by real estate developers looking to cash in on opportunistic land grabs. The roads of Chicago present connect the nodes of Chicago’s past.

As you can see on the map, one of those suburban communities is named Lyons. Remember Lyons? That’s where Jolliet and Marquette tugged their canoe through the slough. Then came Mr. Hubbard and the leeches too. Being the parasitic predators they are, they latch on to whatever life they encounter and forcefully, selfishly drain the life from unsuspecting victims. Showing a lack of mercy, they inject an anti-clotting chemical into the victim to prevent them from forging a natural occurring defense. And for every leech you manage to dislodge and dispatch, another appears. Waves of leeches will consume a host leaving only the leeches.

As waves of European colonial expansionists and empire builders leeched the lifeblood from unsuspecting Indigenous humans and dignity seeking dreamers they polluted the environment with their oozing industrial excrement. And so as to not wallow in their own toxic waste, they crawled over the masses calling for help, and hopped on a streetcar in search of a pristine, natural, patch of prairie next to a meandering river or lake bordered by the plant the locals called Checagou.