Rawson chronicles Boston’s transformation from a rural town of 25, 000 people clustered on the northeastern side of the Shawmut peninsula in 1800, to a highly functional urban center with a population of 560, 000 in 1900. This population growth and requisite spatial expansion, he argues, would never have been possible without an evolving relationship between man–made places and natural environment. Rawson describes how Bostonians created some of America’s first canals, urban parks, water works, sewer systems, railroads, factories, residential suburbs, rural cemeteries, harbor facilities, and suburban forest preserves—all key points of connection between the human and natural worlds that continue to structure how the two interact. By helping to create these connections, they also helped to invent the new environmental relationships that came to define urban places. | Eden On The Charles by Michael Rawson, Paperback | Indigo Chapters