Metronatural: Inventing and Taming Nature in Seattle - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 110

not nearly as benign as Thomson claimed, due to the geographic distribu-
tion of Seattle's population. Middle- and upper-class residents in Seattle
lived on the ridges and hills, looking down upon the polluted lowlands
below that were occupied by low-income, minority, and transient popu-
lations. 89 The regrading and fi lling projects raised the lowlands and cre-
ated more land for economic growth, and as a consequence, populations
who lived in these lowlands were pushed further afi eld and concentrated
in areas outside of the downtown business district. 90 As noted earlier,
the regrading activities resulted in the relocation of some middle- and
upper-income residents on the ridges and hills, but this relocation paled
in comparison to the fi lling of the tidelands because the latter activities
encompassed a larger area and were more comprehensive in nature. As
such, the Promethean activities in Seattle are an example of “how nature
and society combine in the production of socio-spatial fabric that privi-
leges some and excludes many.” 91
During the Great Depression, shantytowns sprung up on the water-
front and the newly fi lled tidelands south of downtown. In 1935, an esti-
mated four to fi ve thousand residents lived on the tidelands in an informal
“Hooverville” community (fi gure 5.7). In 1942, municipal offi cials cited
national security issues related to waterfront activities for the war effort
as an excuse to burn Hooverville to the ground. 92 Fire would once again
be used to reorder the landscape, but this time it was a deliberate interven-
tion aimed at improving the social order. Meanwhile, Progressive idealism
espousing the civic virtue of massive engineering efforts hid the removal
of unwanted residents, fi lth, and blight from the city. Those living at the
bottom of society, both economically and physically, shouldered the nega-
tive consequences of rationalizing the Seattle landscape for economic gain.
In 1931, the regrade projects came to an unceremonious end due to a
gradual erosion of public support as well as the arrival of the Great De-
pression. 93 Thomson was an adept political strategist during his tenure as
city engineer, but his regrading efforts had turned Seattle into “one vast
reclamation project” for three decades, and residents were fed up with
living and working in a perennial construction zone. 94 The disenfranchised
and those who were displaced or whose property values were diminished
by the regrading efforts fi nally succeeded in fi ghting off the municipal
government. Refl ecting on this period in Seattle's development, Klingle
notes, “The genius of the engineer was to make the ceaseless destruction
and rebirth of the city an exercise in progress, but progress had its limits.
Even Thomson could not annihilate all of Seattle's hills at once.” 95 Despite
the end of the regrades, the newly created landscape was a permanent