Growing Populations, Changing Landscapes Studies from India, China, and the United States (2001) / Chapter Skim
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11. Evolution of the Chicago Landscape: Population Dynamics, Economic Development, and Land Use Change
11. Evolution of the Chicago Landscape: Population Dynamics, Economic Development, and Land Use Change
Pages 275-300
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From page 275... ...
Simmons Department of Geography, Michigan State University Over the years the natural landscape of the Chicago region in the American Midwest has changed dramatically, from near-pristine prairie and forests in the pre-settlement period of the early 1800s, to an agriculture-dominated landscape by 1880, to the major metropolis of the twentyfirst century. Chicago has become one of the world's great industrial, financial services, and transportation centers because of the interaction between its urban core, with its vast array of services, and some of the world's most productive farmland, which stretches several hundred kilometers from the southwestern corner of Lake Michigan where Chicago is situated.
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From page 276... ...
DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDY REGION The six Illinois counties making up the Chicago study region (Figure 11-1) have a total land area of approximately 9,700 square kilometers.
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From page 277... ...
Today, Chicago depends on its rural hinterland much less than in earlier years, but its business service sector still provides sales and financing of agricultural property and legal, financial, processing, and transportation services for agricultural products. Land use in the Chicago region has changed dramatically since the early 1800s when it was still primarily unsettled, except for scattered indigenous encampments.
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From page 278... ...
The most substantial loss of agricultural land occurred between 1955 and 1992, when more than a quarter of the land classified as agricultural in 1955 was shifted to urban use. The greatest land cover conversion, however, occurred during the pre-settlement period to 1900; the conversion from natural areas to agriculture left less than 5 percent of the natural areas : ~ s ;s ~ .
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From page 279... ...
For example, in 1909 the Burnham Plan outlined a system of protected parklands along the shore of Lake Michigan and throughout the study region. And in 1915 the Illinois General Assembly enacted legislation creating public preserves (Chicago Region Biodiversity Council, 1999~.
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From page 280... ...
Overall, more than 80,000 kilometers of land in the Chicago region are currently held in protective reserves by federal, state, county, and municipal governments, as well as private organizations (Chicago Region Biodiversity Council, 1999~.
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From page 281... ...
Mixed European and Native American settlements expanded slowly durin~ the early decades of the nineteenth century, but rapid Growth began to .J .J ' 1 to with the westward movement of the frontier. Starting from a base of fewer than 5,000 people in 1840, the population of the city of Chicago grew at the extraordinary rate of 20 percent per year until 1850 (Table 11-4~.
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From page 282... ...
The unusually low natural population growth in 1930 was an anomaly reflecting the low national birth rates attributable to the dire conditions brought on by the Great Depression. Natural growth accelerated, however, with the return of prosperity during the 1940s and especially during the "baby boom" decade of the 1950s.
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From page 283... ...
In 1997 the density of the Chicago TABLE 11-5 Percent of Urban Population, Chicago Region, Illinois, and United States, 1900-1990 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 Cook County Chicago region (excluding Cook County) Region total 90 91 93 Illinois 54 62 68 United States 40 46 51 SOURCE: U.S.
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From page 284... ...
Even in the early nineteenth century, farmers could mitigate the risk of crop price fluctuations by contracting sales of their crops on futures markets prior to or early in the crop season. These were complex speculative markets in which prices for future delivery fluctuated with plantings, weather conditions, and forecasts in crop-growing regions and with economic conditions and forecasts of supply and demand on the East Coast and in Europe.
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From page 285... ...
, wholesaling, storage, financing, and transportation of lumber. Lumber storage occupied large tracts of land in Chicago (on the east bank of the south branch of the Chicago River, about 3 kilometers south of the present central business district)
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From page 286... ...
Since then, that percentage has fallen, but 50 percent of this region was still farmland in 1990. Similarly, employment data reveal that by 1840, 83 percent of the reg~on's workforce (excluding Cook County)
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From page 287... ...
In Cook County the share of employment in the primary sector had dropped sharply to 0.8 percent by 1930 and has not exceeded 0.5 percent since then. Despite the reduction in workforce and land dedicated to agriculture, crop yields have risen over time (see Figure 11-6~.
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From page 288... ...
Economic conditions on the East Coast and in Europe influenced demand as well. Agricultural productivity increased markedly in the past half-century
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From page 289... ...
The quality of the Chicago region's soils and its farms is demonstrable; for all three crops, the region's yield per hectare exceeded the national average despite dwindling farmland and labor. The proximity of the region's farms to the Chicago market, and the resulting high agricultural land values, evidently stimulated farmers to use land intensively.
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From page 290... ...
One of the most impressive characteristics of nineteenth-century Chicago was its ability to bring together imaginative entrepreneurs, financial capital, large numbers of productive workers, innovative financial and production techniques, and transport innovation. Massive investments were made in what is now called infrastructure capital: docks, dredging, landfill, streets, water supply, transportation, and, near the end of the century, electrified commuter subway and elevated rail lines.
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From page 291... ...
In the United States, about 20 percent of workers live in rural areas and have nonfarm jobs, but in recent decades most of those jobs have been located in nearby urban areas.4 Even in 1840,56 percent of Chicago's workforce held secondary sector jobs. For Cook County's entire workforce, the percentage was about half of that, and for the rest of the Chicago region (excluding Cook County)
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From page 292... ...
The region's income per capita remained more than 20 percent above the national average, and during that period manufacturing employment fell by about one-third and tertiary employment rose by almost two-thirds. In summary, in Chicago's earliest days it was a center for processing, transporting, and financing the bounty produced by the agricultural land in the region and hundreds of kilometers beyond.
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From page 293... ...
The Chicago River, the largest of several small rivers that empty into the lake within the metropolitan area, flows into the lake less than a kilometer north of the center of the central business district. Animal slaughtering and other polluting activities along its banks made the river a cesspool even in the nineteenth century.
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From page 294... ...
In particular, this analysis looks at the events leading to the dramatic conversion of the natural environment to a predominantly agricultural landscape at the turn of the twentieth century, the encroachment of urban and built-up
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From page 295... ...
Not only could products be shipped from Chicago to all eastern cities, and thus on to Europe from East Coast ports, but raw materials within a 2,000-kilometer radius could be transported to Chicago. During this period of development, the agricultural economy and urban settlements in the Chicago region were tightly connected, or coupled that is, the agricultural hinterland produced the raw goods that were processed in the urban center.
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From page 296... ...
Subsequently, a transformation, or decoupling, of the regional economy began with the shift to heavy industry and the importation of raw goods. By 1930 the regional economy had little more than 2 percent of its workforce in the primary sector, a third in the secondary sector, and nearly two-thirds in the tertiary sector (Figure 11-5~.
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From page 297... ...
Corroborating this conclusion is a detailed land use change analysis, which indicates that between the mid-1970s and 1990s approximately 194 square kilometers of agricultural land were converted to residential use (Greene, 1997~. The growing demand for residential land resulted from the movement of secondary and tertiary production from the urban core to the suburban fringes, a phenomenon recently referred to as edge city development.
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From page 298... ...
The major land use change during this period was the encroachment of urban land use into agricultural land. The final period of development, 1955-1992, saw the nearly complete decoupling between economic activities in the rural areas and urban centers.
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From page 299... ...
1995. Threat to high market value agricultural lands from urban encroachment: A national and regional perspective.
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