An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans From Nature

By Craig E. Colten

Book Overview

Strategically situated at the gateway to the Mississippi River yet standing atop a former swamp, New Orleans was from the first what geographer Peirce Lewis called an impossible but inevitable city. How New Orleans came to be, taking shape between the mutual and often contradictory forces of nature and urban development, is the subject of An Unnatural Metropolis. Craig E. Colten traces engineered modifications to New Orleans's natural environment from 1800 to 2000. Before the city could swell in size and commercial importance as its nineteenth-century boosters envisioned, builders had to wrest it from its waterlogged site, protect it from floods, expel disease, and supply basic services using local resources. Colten shows how every manipulation of the environment made an impact on the city's social geography as well - often with unequal, adverse consequences for minorities - and how each still requires maintenance and improvement today. For example, while the massive levee system has controlled the unpredictable Mississippi, it also captures heavy down-pours, creating a new set of internal flood problems. Urban geographers frequently have portrayed cities as the antithesis of nat

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807129771
• ISBN13: 9780807129777
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr
• Length: 245 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Wresting New Orleans From Nature

"Wresting New Orleans From Nature" pretty much sums it up. Colten's book explains the reasons why and how New Orleans grew in what was essentially an impossible spot for a city. It's a bit dry at times - I find it hard to care about the exact wording of laws regulating sewage in the eighteenth century - as well as outdated, like any pre-Katrina book. It is, however, nicely thorough, covering enviornmental problems such as waste disposal as well as the more unique challenges New Orleans faces due to geography. The best chapters, I found, were those that focus on the systematic inequalities that went into the building and maintaining of neighborhoods.

the past [and future] costs of New Orleans?

Colten wrote this book in 2004. Or perhaps even earlier. Now, in October 2005, going through its pages, one is struck by how prescient are so much of his musings. Even the title takes on deeper meaning after the recent hurricanes. In all the current to-do about rebuilding New Orleans, many people could do far worse than to read his history of the town. Colten shows the decades (or centuries) of effort that went into protecting it from nature. Perhaps it is a tribute to those efforts that indeed, they did protect New Orleans for so long. Until 2005. The book also gives valuable perspective on whether we should indeed rebuild much of New Orleans. The early, emotive response by many evacuees has been to completely rebuild. Yet at what cost? After some $200 billion or more, are we just recreating a target-rich environment for future storms? Colten's narrative points out the key need for a port in that location. But, culture aside, that need is not the same as a need for 500 000 inhabitants, many of whom might service the tourist sector.