Tag: mannahatta

Mannahatta Response

While reading this article I couldn’t help being astonished by the facts. The huge drop from 99% of natural areas in the city to just 3% is tremendous. It is difficult to imagine Manhattan now considered a concrete jungle to have once been comprised of jungles.

When I think of Europeans moving into New York, I think of the conflicts between the whites and Indians that were previously living here. I think of the constant wars and winnings of people but not of nature. Not only were the native people of Manhattan displaced but a huge amount of native plants and animals were lost.

This reminds me of last semester’s IDC seminar where we studied gentrification and the moving of people from their own neighborhood. I believe that this class fits well since it gives an additional perspective to the destruction of the environment and movement of the animals that were once roaming the area.

The establishment of Manhattan was destructive but has lead to many great achievements. Manhattan is now seen as a hub of culture and diversity. Many immigrants have come here from around the world with dreams to make it in this vibrant city. If only we can then learn from how other areas in the world coexist with their environments and apply it to this great city.

Response to Sanderson’s and Brown’s “Mannahatta: An Ecological First Look at the Manhattan Landscape Prior to Henry Hudson”

Before reading this paper written by Sanderson and Brown, I knew that the Manhattan I grew up knowing was not always a busy, populous city. The skyscrapers and other human made structures did not exist. There were more trees, more hills and more bodies of water. However, that was the extent of my knowledge. I never thought of asking myself how much more natural areas were there? How much of the island was covered in trees and forests? How diverse were the ecological communities? What did Manhattan look like?

After reading this paper, it felt eye-opening to learn in-depth about the natural environment of Manhattan before substantial human settlement. It is difficult for me to imagine a Manhattan that used to be 99.9% natural areas when I have seen Manhattan and New York City overall as a place covered in large skyscrapers and buildings (552).This fact made me curious to see some visual images of the Mannahatta Project. On the project website, they had a Google Earth application where I was able to see an overview of Mannahatta. I typed in my address and the application had a lot information regarding what the surrounding environment was like. I learned that most of my neighborhood used to be an oak-tulip forest home to a diverse amount of wildlife such as Eastern Chipmunks, Red-Tailed Hawks, and Brown Snakes. Today, it is just a neighborhood consisting of
brick buildings, a few trees on the sidewalk, some pigeons, and some squirrels. If I could have saw my neighborhood with this much environmental diversity, it would be amazing.

One point that Sanderson makes in the paper is that there is a trade-off between the progress of human society and the well-being of the environment. As Manhattan and New York City expanded in its commercial development, more of the environment needed to destroyed or modified in order to suit the needs of the City and its growing population. In particular, 1825 was a significant year as the completion of the Erie Canal made the City a very important port according to Sanderson (547). However, even before 1825, we can see from the table on page 552 that human-dedicated areas increased from 0.1% in 1609 to 16% in 1782 while natural areas decreased from 99.9% to 84%. In less than 400 years by 2004, only 3% of natural areas remained and have become eclipsed by human-dedicated areas which occupy 97% of Manhattan’s land (553). The natural environment of Manhattan which had been developing for thousands of years was destroyed in less than 400 years for the sake of society’s progress. If the trend continues, more of the natural areas would be destroyed to provide society with the resources it needs. Eventually, those resources will likely be exhausted. Society will also lose many of the benefits nature can provide such as stress relief and medical advancements.

Overall, I thought Sanderson’s paper did a great job at exploring in-depth the environmental landscape of Manhattan before human development. It impresses me that with one historical document, Sanderson and Brown were able to extract so much information and create an entire project off of the map.

“Mannahatta: An Ecological First Look at the Manhattan Landscape Prior to Henry Hudson” Response

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.