The Nature of New York: An Environmental History of the Empire State (review)

In what proved to be a brilliant pairing of project and author, Cornell University Press invited David Stradling to write “an accessible, comprehensive environmental history of New York State” (p. ix). The resulting volume, The Nature of New York, stands as an exemplary state-focused history. It is also a book brimming with insights into the complex relationship between technology and the environment.

New York’s environmental history is laced with episodes of national significance: completion of Central Park in 1864 (influencing the designs of future landscaped urban parks); establishment of the Adirondack and Catskill forest preserves in 1885 (offering a rationale and models for subsequent creation of state and federal forests); conversion of Long Island potato fields into the mass-produced housing of Levittown (a siren call for rampant suburbanization after World War II); and the Love Canal controversy in the late 1970s (fueling the emerging anti-toxics and environmental justice movements). Historians of technology will find familiar topics in Stradling’s discussions of European settlement and agricultural expansion, growth of commerce and industry, development of urban and transportation infrastructure, exploitation and conservation of natural resources, and implications of hyper-automobility. Technological considerations form an essential element of Stradling’s conception of how best to understand the “human interaction with place” (p. 5).

By the nineteenth century, New York stood as the nation’s most highly populated state, as well as the leading state in manufacturing and food production. Engineers helped usher in a more radical landscape transformation through the construction of waterways like the Erie Canal, railroad and highway networks, and extensive water-supply systems and related municipal services—all of which epitomized the growing “ability of Americans to overcome the obstacles set by nature” (p. 106). The spread of agriculture also did much to change the face of New York, as vast expanses of wetlands were drained and forests cleared for the plotting of farm fields. The entire state was not refashioned, of course, as developers bypassed large blocks of mountainous terrain, but the cumulative effect was immense.

The impact of technology and the environment on social policy and governance was prominently expressed during the Progressive Era. Environmental problems relating to public health, sanitation, water supply, sewerage, air quality, and noise pollution motivated reformers to strengthen the role of state and municipal government to pursue remedies, tempering the dominance of the free market and turning increasingly to experts in such fields as engineering, architecture, public health, and administration. Or, as Stradling argues, “the absolute necessity of developing solutions to environmental problems led directly to the expansion of government authority” (p. 109).

Stradling’s review of post–World War II city and regional planning, with its mantra of decentralization—pursued in part by the construction of limited-access highways enabling commuters to travel ever-longer distances, and with urban expressways laying waste to broad swaths of established neighborhoods—is very well handled. Pointing to Jane Jacobs’s 1961 critique of this auto-centric approach, The Death and Life of Great Amer-ican Cities, he explains what happened in New York City, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Albany, a pattern repeated across the country. The anti-highway movement (the so-called freeway revolts), which arose in New York, quickly spread through America’s metropolitan centers. In linking the historic preservation and wilderness preservation movements, Stradling observes that “they were both largely a reaction to the destruction wrought by the remaking of landscapes to suit the automobile, even at the expense of fundamental human needs” (p. 203).

In summary, The Nature of New York is an outstanding work of environmental history. That it also speaks so directly and perceptively to the technological history of the Empire State is a testament to both the cross-cutting nature of technology itself and the maturing reach of the history of technology.