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This chapter focuses on the push for institutional change that accompanied the shift from the paradigm of privatism to that of public-private redevelopment partnerships in mid-twentieth century Chicago. The fragmentation of the city’s institutional arrangements posed an obstacle to the new slum clearance and redevelopment program, since execution of projects required centralized decision making and limited opportunities to delay and obstruct projects. The chapter describes the decade-long effort to consolidate the city’s various agencies involved with the city’s redevelopment program in one department, eliminating inefficiencies and making the obstruction of projects more difficult. The chapter findings support the argument that the prospects for new policy paradigms are determined in part by their fit with a city’s institutional arrangements.

This chapter presents a chronological narrative of institutional fixes implemented to counter industrial decline in Chicago. It considers different programs and institutions that supported Chicago's industrial renewal program and examines the Chicago Land Clearance Commission (CLCC) as the city's major industrial redeveloper in the 1950s that was authorized to designate blighted areas and vacant land as redevelopment projects. It also elaborates the CLCC's key role in the creation of new industrial property as a solution to Chicago's industrial decline. The chapter details how the CLCC used state and federal legislative tools that enabled cities to appropriate federal funds for private ends, to allow the exercise of eminent domain over blighted property, and to realign ownership rights in favor of property developers. It describes blight, falling property values, and declining retail sales as problems that would continue to undermine Chicago's prominence and cut into company profits.

This chapter demonstrates the Mayor's Committee for Economic and Cultural Development (CECD) that substituted the Chicago Land Clearance Commission's (CLCC) strategy of using government funds to replace razed blighted space with new industrial districts. It examines the methods used by the CECD to modernize the practices that induced industrial firms to invest in city property. It also points out how the CECD was instrumental in shaping how city leaders viewed industrial property through the 1960s and early 1970s. The chapter recounts CECD's work to resituate industrial property as a space for science-led industrial development and the rejuvenation of existing factory areas between 1961 and 1976. It cites how the CECD contributed to the government-led economic development policies that became increasingly common in the United States since the 1970s by forcing the city and industrial institutions to rethink how to promote industrial growth.

The Pleistocene Epoch, often referred to as the Ice Age, lasted from approximately 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. The last major ice advance began about 110,000 years ago, and the most recent episode of maximum ice coverage, the Last Glacial Maximum, began about 26,500 years ago and ended approximately 19,000 years ago. Thereafter, glacier retreat began, largely ending by about 11,700 years ago. That marked the beginning of the Holocene interglacial geologic epoch, which continues to the present. During the last glacial period, sea level was much lower because so much water was locked up in ice sheets, largely at the poles. This lowering of the sea level exposed the margins of the continents (the continental shelves) around the world. When the Ice Age ended, sea level started to rise during the deglacial period, a process that continued into the Holocene. Deltaic regions received meltwaters from the thawing glaciers, along with glacier- derived sediments. Of particular note in the late Holocene is a climate episode called the Medieval Warm Period, originally identified by the English botanist Hubert Lamb. The Medieval Warm Period was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region and may have also impacted other areas around the world. It lasted from about the years 950 to 1250. Later in this chapter, I will discuss this climate anomaly, along with something called the “Hockey Stick” debate, which relates to exceptional warming during recent centuries of the Holocene (i.e., global warming). In any case, all modern and paleodeltas formed during periods of peak sea level in the Holocene. These new deltas had fertile soils that were constantly irrigated by the flow of fresh water, which promoted early settlement by humans. So, the Holocene started near the end of the retreat of the Pleistocene glaciers, and human civilizations arose entirely in the Holocene Epoch. To view the Holocene, simply look around you today. In this chapter, I will explore the natural and human-induced causes of global climate change and how they impact deltaic regions.

As human populations have increased on the planet, so have their effects on the natural landscape. When human-engineered changes in the movement of soils and rocks occur in the vast watersheds of major rivers, they can have dramatic consequences with respect to the amount of sediment needed to “feed” and support large river deltas at the coast. Many of the largest effects of human activity on the surface of the earth have occurred recently—in the past 200 or so years—and they have been so dramatic it has been argued it is time to create a new epoch in the Geologic Time Scale, one called the Anthropocene. That suggestion is being considered seriously. Nevertheless, the first alterations of the landscape began as early as the Paleolithic, approximately 400,000 to 500,000 years ago, when our human-like ancestors Homo erectus are believed to have begun altering the natural landscape with simple dwelling structures. As humans evolved, so did the tools they used, from sticks and animal antlers to wood and iron plows. Although modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) had developed in East Africa by about 200,000 years ago, their ability to extensively modify the landscape through agricultural activities did not likely happen for another 120,000 years. Incredibly, there was a rise in agricultural communities about five millennia ago that seems to have occurred simultaneously, yet independently, in six different regions of world (see Chapters 1 and 2 for linkages among human civilizations, deltas, and stabilization of climate in the Holocene). After the invention of the wheel in the middle Holocene, it became much easier to perform earth-moving activities. This was followed by the Iron Age, around 2,500 years ago, during which iron replaced earlier, less efficient copper and bronze tools for moving earth. Amazingly, the first man-made canal, connecting the Mediterranean and Red seas, was constructed before the Iron Age, around 3,600 years ago. Today, humans are the most effective animals on the planet with respect to altering Earth’s surface, and the use of machinery enables earth-moving activities, such as strip- mining, for extraction of valuable mineral resources like copper and silver.