Dissertation Research: Working Nature: Shaping Seattle's Urban Environments, 1880-1970

本论文研究项目探讨了科学技术在塑造华盛顿州西雅图市1880年至1970年间的建筑环境和自然环境中所起的作用。它的设计是为了揭示城市生态系统的创造、成长和发展的历史。它还将表明科学、技术、社会和文化之间的相互影响如何塑造人类对自然世界的理解。它通过调查建筑和自然环境如何共同构成西雅图，将环境历史和科学技术研究结合在一起。该项目希望证明，城市环境问题源于历史条件，将建筑与自然融合在一起。更具体地说，“工作性质”描绘了工程师、城市规划者、工人和政治领导人如何创造西雅图发展不可或缺的基础设施和城市形式。研究的重点是西雅图景观的物质变化如何反映和影响市民如何使用和理解自然。创造西雅图城市环境的科学理念和技术系统介导了土地的变化。在决定居民如何认同自己的城市接近自然，以及西雅图未来的规划将采取何种形式方面，它们也发挥了不小的作用。第一阶段的研究重点是1880年至1940年期间的当地原始资料。它还将研究与西雅图铁路发展和位于明尼苏达州、马萨诸塞州和华盛顿特区的公园设计有关的记录。第二阶段将回到当地资源，这一次是在第二次世界大战后，研究面对先前景观变化，对城市自然的态度变化如何影响环境管理的尝试。

This dissertation research project investigates the role that science and technology played in shaping the built and natural environments of Seattle, Washington between 1880 and 1970. It is designed to cast historical light on the creation, growth, and development of urban ecosystems. It will also suggest how the reciprocal influences between science, technology, society and culture shape human understandings of the natural world. It brings environmental history and science and technology studies together by investigating how the built and natural environment together comprise Seattle. The project hopes to demonstrate that urban environmental concerns flow from historical conditions that fused the built with the natural. More specifically, `Working Nature` charts how engineers, city planners, workers, and political leaders created the infrastructure and urban forms integral to Seattle's growth. The research focuses on how material changes to Seattle's landscapes both reflected and affected how citizens used and understood nature. Scientific ideas and technological systems employed to create Seattle's urban environment mediated changes in the land. They also played no small role in determining how residents would come to identify their city as close to nature, and what shape future plans for Seattle would take. Phase one of the research focuses on the local primary source material for the period between 1880 and 1940. It will also look at records associated with Seattle's railroad development and park design housed in Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. Phase two returns to local sources, this time after World War II, to examine how changing attitudes toward city nature influenced attempts at environmental management in the face of previous landscape changes.