Lake Calumet: The “Golden Spike” of the Urbanocene

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Zach Ashby
Jonathan Garcia
Maggie Ottenbreit
Mia Rodgers

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The Anthropocene and Urbanocene are geological epochs that highlight different aspects of the human impact on Earth’s systems. The Anthropocene describes a time period during which human activities had significant effects on the Earth’s ecosystems.[1] Previous literature on the Anthropocene has framed its definition in terms of the search for a “golden spike,” a representative spatial metaphor through which the geologic era can be best understood.[2] Competing definitions of the “golden spike” have defined the start of the Anthropocene at different dates, including but not limited to 1610, 1950, and 1964.[3] The Urbanocene describes a related but distinct geologic era from the Anthropocene: it encompasses a more intense period of time characterized by rapid urban growth. To Urbanocene theorists, cities act as “modern urban lifestyle mass consumption centers” that “accumulate, concentrate, and centralize value, matter, energy, and people.”[4]

Not only do cities act as centers of power, economic activity, and wealth creation, but their development also generate the fundamental socio-environmental ills that define our time, such as food, energy, and water availability crises, pandemics and disease, pollution and poverty, and, of course, the burning of fossil fuels. Therefore, to understand human impact on the global environment, one must examine the loci for human activity: cities.

The examination of cities vis a vis the Urbanocene framework has thus far been a transdisciplinary study of the processes that produce the urban, and a study of the overarching effects that urbanization has on spatial relationships between places as mediated through economic, social, political, and climatic and environmental lenses. For example, scholar Geoffrey West lays a groundwork for the Urbanocene based on levels of population growth seen over the past 200 years. West sees this extremely rapid growth, coinciding with global urbanization, as one of the primary factors in humankind’s impact on the earth’s environment[5] By contrast, Neil Brenner argues that the urban cannot simply be understood through its differentiation with the rural, or vice versa. Population studies about the Urbanocene are centered around this differentiation, and the authors of this study argue that more radical and multiscalar methods must be adopted to truly understand this new epoch.[6] In particular, Brenner argues that urbanization must be seen as a “socio-metabolic process” through which cities and hinterlands co-produce one another. The hinterlands both produce inputs for cities (labor, capital, food, etc.) and receive their outputs (waste, pollution, etc.), making them fundamentally intertwined under an overarching socioeconomic and theoretical framework of urbanization that has defined spatial and environmental change across both city and hinterland.[7]

Inherent, but often not explicitly stated, in these competing definitions of the Urbanocene are different interpretations of a “golden spike” for the geologic epoch. For Geoffrey West, the golden spike of the Urbanocene might be defined by the first moment of exponential population growth in an urban space, or in an “Urban Age'' moment in which more than half of the global population is living in cities. For Neil Brenner, the golden spike might be the normalization of transnational economic flows that connected all cities and hinterlands together under a unified order of urbanization. But in this geo-story, we’d like to propose a different golden spike for the Urbanocene, rooted in a space that best exemplifies the local and global processes that have come to define urbanization: Lake Calumet, Chicago, Illinois in the United States.

Lake Calumet

Lake Calumet is the largest body of water in the city of Chicago, America’s third largest urbanized area. Formed by glacial retreat at the end of the last ice age, the lake became the center of one of the largest and most biodiverse wetland ecosystems in North America.[8] As Chicago rapidly developed in the late 19th century, however, the lake was annexed into city limits and was prized for its connectivity via the Calumet River to Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River basin. Much of the wetland ecosystem, including parts of the lake itself, was heavily industrialized beginning in the late 1880s as the region was transformed into one of the world’s most productive steelmaking powerhouses.[9] As factories, steel mills, and evolving civic interests competed for access to the region, the lake’s shape was substantially filled in and altered, spatially demonstrating the impact of urbanization on the region. Lake Calumet has experienced fundamental spatial and ecological changes over the last few centuries that are irrevocably tied to processes of urbanization: industrialization, migration, global economic trade, pollution, environmental degradation, and more. Our geo-story intends to track some of these changes through specific sites at and around Lake Calumet, to demonstrate its centrality in telling the story of global urbanization and its impact on the environment. Through a diverse array of spatial media, we aim to prove that Lake Calumet’s unique history and spatial characteristics qualify it to act as a “golden spike” for the Urbanocene. This creates a radically new toolbox for describing the Urbanocene based on place-based description over global trends a la Brenner or West.

Illinois International Ports District

The Illinois International Ports District was founded as a municipal corporation in 1952 in anticipation of the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway. In a rush to have a port ready for the expected boom of freight traffic from the Seaway, the state of Illinois ceded control over all of Lake Calumet to the new district, and in subsequent years over 1,500 acres of the lake were transformed from a diverse ecosystem to an industrial shipping operation.[10] This transformation acts as a mechanism of the Urbanocene, which relies on a global flow of goods that connects cities to hinterlands, creating and re-creating both spaces through their mutual dependence on urban modes of development. The Illinois Port is a key node in this flow, exporting the raw materials from the midwestern hinterlands to other cities while taking in materials from other hinterlands to fuel the urban development of the Chicagoland metropolis. The fact that this port was superimposed on what used to be a naturally self-regulating lake only makes the effect of the Urbanocene on the natural environment more blatant.
 
The above graphic depicts the port’s features and represents the extent of its growth in comparison to the old outline of Lake Calumet. It adopts the language of urbanization by speaking in the language of economic development. In doing so, it hopes to highlight the failure at the heart of the Ports District: that it is decaying and turning a measly profit, as its infrastructure is overbuilt and underused. The port never attracted the amount of traffic that it expected following the failure of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Its underuse calls into question some of the homogenizing assumptions of the Urbanocene, as it points to the uneven distribution of urbanization’s socio-metabolic processes. Viewers should be left wondering whether the sacrifice of Lake Calumet was “worth” the relatively minimal developmental benefits of the port.

Harborside International

In 1991, the Illinois International Ports District, the de facto owners of Lake Calumet since 1951, was ordered by the Illinois EPA to seal a toxic 450-acre landfill on the northern edge of the lake that had been polluting the lake body and groundwater for decades. Four years later and $30 million lighter, the Ports District opened Harborside International Golf Course to the general public, featuring two 18-hole championship-caliber courses and a 58-acre practice facility. [14]




Today, when Harborside’s existence goes unquestioned, it erases decades of human intervention to the site. But the history of these interventions reveals ample evidence of the Urbanocene in the changing relationship between ecology, development, and urbanization made manifest there. The above graphic attempts to track this evidence in the form of a layered collage representing both the passage of time and the physical increase in elevation at the site throughout recent history. Each layer in the collage transformation reflected a new era in the development of urban Chicago. First, the land for the site was stolen from native peoples, as parts of the Harborside complex lie on a treaty boundary broken by white settlers. As late as 1892, when Lake Calumet remained mostly undeveloped, the site remained underwater and hosted an ecologically rich wetland environment. In its transformation into a dump, the site first hosted common trash from residences, but its shift towards slag and petcoke layers began to reflect the increasing industrial development of the Calumet region, which produced goods that were shipped out to the rest of the world via railroad and the Illinois International Port. The layers of toxic waste in the latter half of the twentieth century, meanwhile, showcase the deindustrialization that afflicted the region during that time period and the growing recognition of the harms of industrial pollutants. The very decision to close and cap the landfill represents the growing influence of the environmental movement relative to industrial interests. Finally, the transformation of the site from a dump to a golf course mirrors the rise of the neoliberal and postindustrial age in urban America, in which spaces are recreated to serve an experience economy that values producing services over goods. By tracking the layers of elevation of Harborside International, therefore, the viewer comes to a better understanding of the shifting tides of urbanization present in the site’s history, which can act as a visual and spatial metaphor for the processes described by the Urbanocene.

Pullman

Constructed in 1881, Pullman originated as a planned community to support George Pullman’s Palace Car factory. Pullman chose the community’s location on the banks of Lake Calumet to use clay dredged from the lake to fashion the iconic bricks that would become part of the town’s visual identity, and to escape the kinds of “morally corrupt” urban atmospheres that he saw as conducive to strikes.[19] Ironically, labor activity would become perhaps the most defining aspect of Pullman’s legacy. In May of 1894, thousands of Pullman workers went on strike to protest the company’s cuts in wages, even as it charged them equivalent or higher rates for rent and basic necessities in the company town. Under the direction of Eugene Debs, workers launched a nationwide boycott of Pullman Cars that resulted in thousands of members of the U.S. military converging on Pullman to end the strike in force by July.[20]  Just thirty years later in 1925, Pullman was the site of a second major labor movement, this time organized by A. Philip Randolph on behalf of the Black sleeping car porters and maids that worked in Pullman trains nationwide. Pullman’s eventual capitulation to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters’ demands for higher wages and shorter hours in 1937 was the first time ever that a Black union successfully negotiated with a major corporation. [21]


The above graphic puts the two strikes in conversation with one another so as to make them indistinguishable, revealing a fundamental truth about the Urbanocene: it relies on the exploitation of workers like those in Pullman to fuel global urban development. While industrial urbanization can offer certain quality of life benefits to laborers, particularly migrant workers like the Black Americans who became Pullman porters as part of the Great Migration, it also can deprive them of autonomy, respect, and self-sufficiency and subject them to abuses at the hands of capitalists. Exploitation is not unique to urbanized landscapes (see: feudal societies), but under the Urbanocene, it is co-opted across multiple geographies to support the expansion of urbanization. This calls into question the utility of urbanization for those who have become victims, not champions, of it. Yet, for the Pullman porters and the strikers of 1894, the incremental gains advanced by organized labor had a tangential impact on their quality of life and created a culture of unionization that would empower them to demand a share of the economic creations of the Urbanocene.

Flatfoot Lake

Situated just off I-94, Flatfoot Lake provides a sense of serenity amidst a vast industrial corridor. Surrounded by railroads, landfills, wastewater treatment plants and the towering expressway, Flatfoot Lake is really a hidden gem. The lake contains nearly nine acres of high-quality wet prairie, and five acres of oak savanna. It is also a choice location for recreation as locals fish the waters—which are stocked with largemouth bass—and watch the variety of birds that call the ecosystem home. The secret truth about Flatfoot Lake is that it didn't exist until the 1960s. Flatfoot Lake, Lake Cottage Grove, and Lake Victory are among a collection of lakes in the Calumet Region that were not formed naturally, but rather by the indirect effects of urban expansion and industrialization. The following map shows the location of these lakes.


To anyone sitting on the banks of Flatfoot Lake, the ecological history of this region would be almost entirely unapparent. What we now see as a lake, before European settlement, was a wet prairie until early agriculture and grazing altered the soil and removed native vegetation. Railroad and expressway construction further damaged soils and cleared areas for use in construction staging. Flatfoot Lake was the location of a 19 acre strip mine [27]. After digging 15 feet underground in search for coal, industry left a gaping hole in the land which was eventually filled by years of rainwater and runoff from the Calumet river. This story is not unique, Lake Cottage Grove was originally a clay pit and later, a landfill. The same goes for Lake Victory. Powderhorn Lake was just a small portion of a continuous stretch of tallgrass prairie, sedge meadow, savanna and wetland.

The Urbanocene “accumulates, concentrates, and centralizes value, matter, energy, and people in hubs of ‘modern urban lifestyle mass consumption,’”[28] and the very existence of these lakes portrays just that phenomenon. Seen as “pristine” and “natural environments,” in actuality these lakes were morphed, destroyed, rebuilt, and crafted in the name of urbanization. They show us that even the most “natural of environments” can, in reality, be entirely unnatural. This media shows a cover of The Calumet Record from 1912 that depicts a plan to intertwine the waterways of the Calumet region with the rapidly growing network of Railroads around the city. The image is adorned with bags of money, pickaxes, an engineer, and an architect all triumphantly standing in the foreground of a map displaying the new plans for development in the Calumet Region. The media we created used elements of this periodical and an image of Flatfoot Lake to create a new version of this image. In the same way that industrialization and urban expansion created natural areas that were merely a parody of the ecological reality, this media appropriates the vintage periodical that promotes the industrialization of the Calumet Region.



West Pullman

West Pullman is uniquely seated at the intersection of Lake Calumet, historical railroad sites, and an abundance of land. This has created a compelling site for investors and community members alike to “revitalize” the space.

The West Pullman neighborhood stands at the frontier of what modern urbanization looks like in residential zones of Chicago. The recent “revitalization” the area has undergone has brought about a series of statistically notable shifts in the surrounding housing demographics and data. Historically West Pullman has been home to an ethnically diverse population, and has generally been situated within a strong intersection of transportation and residential land occupation. For the purpose of underscoring the more subtle shifts that have and continue to occur as the land of West Pullman is further utilized for economic development, there is a major decade in time that should be taken into account. Between 2010 and 2021 there has been a significant campaign spearheaded by CNI.[31]What this initiative sought to accomplish was improving economic conditions for West Pullman residents and by-and-large, the greater Chicago area. What is unique about the efforts being taken in West Pullman, however, is that they are heavily centered around West Pullman’s abundance of land ownership that allows it to take advantage of several industries and build for a multitude of commercial and industrial sites. In analyzing the progress of the many projects undertaken by CNI for West Pullman, its roots in urbanization become clear when understanding the previous state of West Pullman that brought about this desire for change, as well as the steps taken to make change. West Pullman has been defined by the ways in which it is interconnected with waterways and railroad systems, as well as its large swaths of land. The outlined goals of CNI are four-fold, and they all center around ways to both drive up commerce as well as create and sustain infrastructures that are conducive to larger populations. These goals are highly characteristic of the values of the Urbanocene and point to how the previous usage or lack thereof, of the dormant resources within the neighborhood, were not conducive to those values. The goal of this focus section is to represent the data coming out of the decade’s long work of the CNI in a way that is visually engaging and underscores the relational characteristics of the Urbanocene. 


Figure Six: West Pullman. Principal Data Sources: CNI[32], CMAP.[33] The Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives (CNI) is a group purported to dedicate resources to exploring ways to revitalize neighborhoods within Chicago. Specifically over the past decade CNI has been working toward creating a version of West Pullman that is revived by its commercial enterprises and recreational spaces. The CMAP data was collected over several years and accounts for primarily 2017-2021. It holds a large amount of demographic data on the region of West Pullman.

Unveiling Toxic Releases and Holding Facilities Accountable

The Chicago Industrial Corridor System, originating in the late 1800s, is a network of designated industrial zones. At its core lies Lake Calumet, once a vibrant hub for numerous large industrial enterprises; however, the toxic emissions generated by the enterprises surrounding the Lake have significantly harmed residents’ health. The negative impacts of industrial sites on surrounding communities began to gain traction notably in the late-20th century, and the biggest discoveries were made with the help of data collection by the TRI. 

On October 17, 1986, President Reagan signed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) into law.[34] Section 313 created the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) to provide communities with information about toxic chemical releases from industrial facilities into the environment and to support informed decision-making. In 1990, 5,356 facilities were reported as TRI sites in the state of Illinois, with the majority of facilities (2,321) in Cook County.[35] As seen in Figure 7, from 1990 to 2017, the majority of TRI sites in Cook County are located within or in close proximity to the industrial corridors.

However, when the map is weighted by the quantity of toxic releases in comparison to point location density, it becomes evident that the Calumet Corridor exhibits the highest volume of both on-site and off-site toxic releases, as seen in Figure 8. 



Focusing on the Calumet Corridor, the facilities with the highest volume of toxic releases reported are Acme Steel, Befesa Zinc, and Ford Motor Company. The development of facilities near Lake Calumet was influenced by the access to water transportation and the proximity to railways and highways. Each of these facilities appeared on the TRI list in ‘90, ‘95, ‘00, ‘05, ‘10, ‘15, ‘16, ‘17, suggesting long-term contamination, and repeated toxic exposures for both workers at these sites, and residents living in close proximity.  This dense cluster of high-emission facilities has significantly harmed residents’ health. For example, this region experiences a notably higher rate of coronary heart disease compared to both the rest of Chicago and other industrial corridors.[42] 


 The TRI’s inception in 1986 illuminated the extensive release of toxic chemicals and revealed the Calumet Corridor as a central area impacted by these releases. The proximity of industrial facilities to Lake Calumet and the concentration of high toxic releases highlight the complex relationship between economic/industrial development and the well-being of communities. The Urbanocene is not solely a narrative of advancement or progress, it has also triggered significant repercussions that demand our attention. 

Conclusion

As described in the introduction, the Urbanocene framework conceptualizes the spatial relationships between places as mediated through economic, social, political, and climatic and environmental lenses. The spaces contained by and surrounding the boundaries of Lake Calumet have undergone profound changes that are best described through these lenses, including but not limited to: the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the rise and fall of industrialization, the Great Migration of African Americans to the area, dumping of toxic substances, and the alteration of wetland and lake ecosystems. That the local processes that shaped Lake Calumet perfectly map on to the instruments of global urbanization is no coincidence, as the lake itself has been treated by industry, governments, and commercial enterprise alike as a spatial node in an overarching urbanization framework that has supported the development of the Chicagoland region and the export of its goods further abroad. Thus, understanding the changes that Lake Calumet has gone through reveals critical insights into how the Urbanocene is manifested in hyperlocal urban ecologies. Each piece of media displayed in this project attempted to unmap a chosen space to divulge the silences created by traditional forms of spatial representation, describing a history of profound human intervention shaped by the changing “needs” of urbanizing forces over time. For example, Flatfoot Lake and Harborside International were products of the “renaturalization” of decommissioned industrial spaces, though one was intentionally transformed and the other neglected; the International Port dominates the footprint of Lake Calumet in spite of its waning economic importance, while Ford Motor Company’s economic influence and environmental impact on the lake endures; and Pullman and West Pullman represent the shifting tides of labor, migration, and residential development that have shaped the region. By placing these pieces of media in conversation with one another, the viewer comes to understand the relationship between the local processes of change described in each image and the overarching Urbanocene framework.

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<sup>[1] Geoffrey B. West, Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies, 231.

[2] Francine MG McCarthy et al. “The Varved Succession of Crawford Lake, Milton, Ontario, Canada as a Candidate Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point for the Anthropocene Series.” The Anthropocene Review 10, no. 1 (April 1, 2023): 148.

[3] Lewis, Simon L., and Mark A. Maslin. “Defining the Anthropocene.” Nature 519, no. 7542 (March 2015): 171–80. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14258.

[4] Stephan Barthel et al., “Global Urbanization and Food Production in Direct Competition for Land: Leverage Places to Mitigate Impacts on SDG2 and on the Earth System.” The Anthropocene Review 6 (1–2): 75.

[5] Geoffrey B. West, Scale, 232.

[6] Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid, “The ‘Urban Age’ in Question.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38 (3): 742.

[7] Neil Brenner and Nikos Katsikis, “Operational Landscapes: Hinterlands of the Capitalocene.” Architectural Design 90 (1): 25.

[8] “Lake Calumet Wetlands Tour.” Sierra Club, 2008.

[9] Calumet National Heritage Area Initiative, “Innovation and Change for Factories and Workers.”

[10] “Public Port District Profile,” Illinois Marine Transportation System Plan, Illinois International Ports District, March 2021.

[11] “Public Port District Profile,” Illinois International Ports District.

[12] “Illinois International Port District Financial Statements, 2022 and 2021.” Baker Tilly, LLP, Prepared for IIPD, December 31, 2022.

[13] “World Imagery,” ArcGIS, ESRI, November 2, 2023.

[14] N. Marcia Jimenez et al., “Calumet Area Ecological Management Strategy,” City of Chicago Department of Environment, 2002: 67.

[15] N. Marcia Jimenez et al., “Calumet Area Ecological Management Strategy.”

[16] “Reusing Cleaned Up Superfund Sites: Golf Facilities Where Waste is Left on Site.” Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation, United States Environmental Protection Agency, October 2023.

[17] Gary Reinmuth, “Lovely Harborside Rises from the Pits,” Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1995.

[18] Henry Gannett, “1892 Topographical Map,” TopoView, United States Geological Survey, 1892.

[19] Janice L. Reiff, “Pullman,” Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago History Museum. 2004.

[20] “The Strike of 1894,” Pullman National Historical Park, National Parks Service.

[21] “Workers at the Pullman Company Gave Rise to Powerful Unions. Their Actions are Still Felt Today.” Pullman and the Railroad Rebellion, WTTW.

[22] Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, “Pullman Porters and Maids: Attention!” November 1925, Newberry Library.

[23] Dr. Jacob Friefeld, “A labor leader goes to prison for leading a landmark strike,” Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, January 12, 2021.

[24] “The Strike of 1894,” Pullman National Historical Park, National Parks Service.

[25] “TIGER/Line Shapefile, 2019, County, Cook County, IL, Area Hydrography County-Based Shapefile.”

[26] Landing, “Conceptual Plan for the Lake Calumet Ecological Park: Chicago, IL.”

[27] Forest Preserves of Cook County, “Flatfoot Lake Population Survey,” 2016.

[28] Stephan Barthel et al.,  “Global Urbanization and Food Production,” 75.

[29] The Calumet Record, Industrial Edition of the Greater Calumet Region, 1912.

[30] Jeff Zoline, Flatfoot Lake, 2017.

[31] “About.” CNI Group, June 1, 2022.

[32] “About.” CNI Group, June 1, 2022.

[33] CMAP Community Data snapshot | west pullman. Accessed December 7, 2023.

[34] "History of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program," EPA: United States Environmental Protection Agency, last modified May 18, 2023, accessed December 7, 2023, https://www.epa.gov/toxics-release-inventory-tri-program/history-toxics-release-inventory-tri-program.

[35] "TRI Basic Data File: Calendar Year 1990," table, csv.

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[37]"Boundaries - Industrial Corridors (current)," Chicago Data Portal, last modified December 7, 2023, accessed December 7, 2023, https://data.cityofchicago.org/Community-Economic-Development/Boundaries-Industrial-Corridors-current-/e6xh-nr8w.

[38] "TRI Basic," table.

[39] "TIGER/Line Shapefile, 2022, County, Cook County, IL, Linear Hydrography," DATA.GOV, last modified January 14, 2023, accessed December 7, 2023, https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/tiger-line-shapefile-2022-county-cook-county-il-linear-hydrography.

[40] "Boundaries - Industrial," Chicago Data Portal.

[41] "TRI Basic," table.

[42] Calumet Connect, 209.

[43] "TIGER/Line Shapefile, 2022, County, Cook County, IL, Linear Hydrography," DATA.GOV, last modified January 14, 2023, accessed December 7, 2023, https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/tiger-line-shapefile-2022-county-cook-county-il-linear-hydrography.

[44] "Boundaries - Industrial," Chicago Data Portal.

[45] "TRI Basic," table.</sup>