Robert Nelson
After reading Sanderson’s and Brown’s piece, the main idea that I felt that they were aiming at was that there is an inverse relationship between urbanization and biodiversity. Humans are willing to extract nearly anything from their environments in order to support their ever-growing needs, and New York City is a prime example. Its state today is virtually unrecognizable compared to when it was still inhabited by the Lenape Indians. This is shown in the statistical charts that the authors provided, which demonstrate that human-dedicated areas constituted 0.1% of Manhattan’s total area and natural areas constituted 99.9% in 1609; a complete reversal of this can be seen in 2004, when human-dedicated areas represented 97% of Manhattan’s total area and natural areas were just a mere 3% (Sanderson and Brown, 552-553).
In my IDC class last term, our very first group project was very similar to the Mannahatta piece, since it involved us going to the Financial District and comparing the present area with the ecosystems that used to inhabit it. We were assigned certain portions of the area, and had to go to every intersection to document where salt marshes, estuaries, beaches, grasslands, and other ecological zones were once located. We were all astounded by how much the landscape of Manhattan, and New York City in general, has been transformed ever since the Dutch and English colonized the area. Of course, they never would have chosen to settle here if there had not been such an abundance of natural resources, but depleting them at almost inconceivable rates disrupts the natural equilibrium of the area.
Many conservationists have been trying to restore this before we consume at a rate faster than we can produce. “William Cullen Bryant and Horace Greeley, among others, led the charge to create Central Park on rocky and swampy lands in the middle of the island” (Sanderson and Brown 547), but this park is still artificial, as it was built along the confines of the grid system and not natural boundaries. Also, I know that people like Jane Jacobs were against Robert Moses building expressways through heavily populated areas, but I feel that she was more concerned about people than the countless other organisms and species that call Manhattan home. As in the last reading, we need to collectively join forces and get people to feel personally responsible for the well-being of their residences in order for us to protect the rich biodiversity of our metropolitan area for many generations to come.
