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Sponsored by the JFK Presidential Library

and Museum and UMass Boston

July 16, 2015

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How does the lens of environmental history allow us to better understand the human

history of Greater Boston? •  How has the natural environment shaped human

activities in the Boston area? •  How and why have people transformed the natural

environment of Greater Boston? •  What have been the outcomes of this interplay

between nature and society?

2,30.-,D"1%G'--",#8 •  A Seaside Town on the Shawmut

Peninsula •  An Oasis of Green in a Sea of

Industrial Gray •  Balancing Development and the

Environment in the Hub

H.1.#,"1%*-"%7.30.#8•  The City Upon the Shawmut Peninsula

o  Religious motivations o  Material ambitions o  Indigenous decimations

•  The leading American port o the Atlantic coast o  The first port o  The closest port o  A dynamic merchant class

•  The hinterlands o  Limited productivity o  A successful agrarian society

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Interactive Map of Boston, 1722

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•  Web link: http://pbs.panda-prod.cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/media/assets/wgbh/rttt12/rttt12_int_boston1723/index.html

•  Which areas of Boston were most heavily settled? Why do you think that was?

•  How would you describe the development pattern of colonial Boston?

•  How would you describe the balance between developed land, green/open space and water?

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•  Land fill projects •  Erosion of Atlantic

commerce •  Rise of textile and

industrial manufacturing

•  Railroads •  Consolidation of

farming

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Basics •  Balancing urban and

rural •  Separation of work and

home Boston •  Began around 1815 •  1850: a walking city with

over 300,000 •  1900: the center of a

region with a ten-mile radius with thirty-one cities and towns totaling over a million people

•  Annexations •  Stratification

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•  Use of natural resources for economic development •  Industrial and urban pollution and public health •  Environmental justice – costs and benefits of

development and environmental resources unequally distributed.

•  Desire to protect the environment (e.g. pollution clean up, park creation)

•  Suburbanization as separation of home and work

6-'"0'-%7.30.#8•  A move away from the water •  Urban decline, renewal, and redevelopment •  Highway construction •  Suburban sprawl •  Knowledge center •  Tourism

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•  Pollution of the Harbor long ignored.

•  Land making •  Sewage treatment facilities were

slow to be developed •  A lawsuit over discharged

pollution. •  A cleanup campaign. •  Creation of Boston Harbor

Islands National Park

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H.#D1E3,.#38•  How has the natural environment shaped human

activities in the Boston area? o  Responses:

•  How and why have people transformed the natural environment of Greater Boston? o  Responses:

•  What have been the outcomes of this interplay between nature and society? o  Responses:

7,;1,.C-":=48•  Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of new

England, rev. ed. New York: Hill and Wang, [1983] 2003. •  Dolin, Eric Jay. Political Waters: The Long, Dirty, Contentious, Incredibly Expensive, but

Eventually Triumphant History of Boston Harbor: A Unique Environmental Success Story (Amherst: University of Masachusetts Press, 2014).

•  Elizabeth S. Houghton papers. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society. •  WGBH Boston, Explore Colonial Boston [interactive map], http://

www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/rttt12.soc.ush.col.boston1723/explore-colonial-boston/

•  Hunt, Tristram. “Boston.” In Cities of Empire: The British Colonies and the Creation of the Urban World, 19-63. New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2014.

•  Massachusetts Audubon Society records. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society. •  Merchant, Carolyn. Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender & Science in New England.

2nd ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. •  O’Connnell, James C. The Hub’s Metropolis: Greater Boston’s Development from Railroad

Suburbs to Smart Growth. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013. •  Penna, Anthony N. and Conrad Edick Wright, eds. Remaking Boston: An Environmental

History of Boston and Its Surroundings. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. •  Rawson, Michael. Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 2010. •  Spiers, John. “Landscaping the Garden City: Transportation, Utilities, and Parks in Newton,

Massachusetts, 1874-1915.” Historical Geography 39 (2011): 248-274. •  Walk to the Sea, http://www.walktothesea.com/. •  Warner, Jr., Sam Bass. Greater Boston: Adapting Regional Traditions to the Present.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. •  Warner Jr., Sam Bass. Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston (1870-1900).

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962.