Customer Reviews

Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle (The Lamar Series in Western History)

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Matthew Klingle has written a brilliant study of how the city--in this case Seattle but it could be any city--creates at once both beauty and ugliness. Tracing stories about the physical, social, and cultural reorganization of Seattle and its hinterlands, Klingle shows exactly why the effort to build a more livable city also made Seattle increasingly unlivable for some residents. Readers will be left with a deeper appreciation for the strengths and weaknesses of urban environmental reform in the last century, how urban ecology intrinsically shaped social inequity, and why historical perspective is absolutely crucial when cities decide to address environmental problems. The epilogue is simply brilliant, providing readers with a brave and smart discussion about why acknowledging the shortcomings of past policies is essential for developing what Klingle calls a historically-informed "ethic of place" as residents turn to the future. This is an exceptional work of history.

If you are interested in both history and the environment, and a new, rigorous and thoughtful way of examining the interplay between the two, then The Emerald City will undoubtedly interest you. Mr. Klingle tackles the history of Seattle - literally from the ground (or is that the Sound?) up - with an eye on showing how the building of a major metropolitan city can lead to both inevitable and surprising consequences, even when said city-building is done with a cognizance of the need to take into account surrounding pristine environs, and, indeed, even when trying to develop the city with the best interests of the environment in mind. Which, I think, is the point; one cannot separate development and the environment, and as such they must be approached with a new paradigm.

Klingle comes at this tale from multiple angles - the greed and power of the early railway companies, the socio-economic impact not only on the native Sound tribes but on the early western settlers as well, the planning of Seattle's verdant parks by Olmstead, an extremely eye-opening take of the interplay between ecology and urban poverty - and brings them together in a way that, in the end, to my mind echoed perfectly the multiple waterways that all feed into, and sustain, Seattle.

That Mr. Klingle is a top-notch writer, with the ability to turn a beautiful phrase or metaphor with seeming ease, is just icing on the cake. I am neither an academic nor a scholar, but The Emerald City is a book of surpassing intelligence and thoughtfulness, and, like the "emerald" associated with Seattle, a gem worth looking into. Highly recommended.

I'd read several histories of Seattle before this, so I knew the basic outline of how the city was settled and how the land was reshaped by engineers -- filling in mud flats, knocking down hills, carving a ship channel connect Puget Sound to Lake Washington. But this book goes much further, exploring each of those developments in detail, plus many others I didn't know about, showing how developers, engineers, railroads, and government officials worked to carve a city out of the diverse and challenging environment. The author explores how engineers dominated city government for many years, and how their decisions about water supplies, auto traffic vs. parks, sewer lines, etc., continue to shape the city and its neighborhoods today.

Particularly revealing here is how some of the "victories" of Seattle's growing environmental consciousness have come at a pretty high price. For example, the cleanup of Lake Washington in the 60's was heralded as a great victory for science and the environmental movement -- but it came at the price of re-routing even more sewage into the Duwamish River (now one the nation's largest Superfund sites) and into Puget Sound (thereby creating further problems for the Sound's ecosystem).

Great read -- ties together nature, geography, ongoing court cases involving Indian fishing rights, urban geography and sociology.

Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle is a surprisingly engaging book.
This was an assignment for a graduate course and as a transplant to Seattle I figured I knew what I would read.

I totally underestimated the range of drama, destruction and oppression that totally blew my stereotype of Seattle.

Definitely a worthwhile read and I hope some other 'environmental history' titles will be as involving.
Its a keeper!