The Watershed Approach - Urban Watersheds: Geology, Contamination, and Sustainable Development - page 2

which led to the development of major industrial centers located near large trunk streams
(Rugg 1972). As cities grew, they became increasingly chaotic: factory smoke smothered
neighborhoods where workers lived, cars demanded an increasing share of the land, and
the geographic order of land uses in and around cities became disrupted and fragmented.
The massive rise in automobile use after World War II led to the frenetic and unplanned
growth of suburbs.
After World War II, the United States began the largest public works project in history—
the Interstate Highway System. Over 72,000 km (45,000 mi) of new highway were built
between 1956 and 1992. Virtually every major city was connected, and many central busi-
ness districts were bisected by these new and wide expressways. Aided by these new
routes, urban populations moved to the suburbs, where urban sprawl not only ate up more
land but also changed the character of land use. A separation of land uses arose where
subdivisions housed the large hordes of urban commuters and other locations supported
the new variety of retail and commercial zones that included strip malls, outlet stores,
large shopping malls, “big box” retail stores, and corporate parks. Meanwhile, the older
cities saw their tax bases decline, and increasing abandonments of industrial properties as
the general manufacturing capacity of the United States declined due to foreign competi-
tion and a shift to service sector jobs.
The historical development of the heavily urbanized Rouge River watershed in south-
eastern Michigan (Figure 1.1) provides many compelling reasons for selecting it as a base
case for this topic:

• There is a lot of water in the region (the Great Lakes).
• A major urban industrial center lies within it (Detroit).

Detroit

N

0 50 km

FIGURE 1.1
Rouge River watershed in southeast Michigan. (From USEPA, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2004
Rouge River Remedial Action Plan Revision, http://www.epa.gov/greatlakes/aoc/rougriv/2004_Rouge-River-
RAP-Revision.pdf (accessed August 1, 2009), 2004b.)