The Great Lakes Geographer
Volumes 2.1 & 2.2, 1995
Volume 2, No. 1
Deglaciation of the Port Huron Moraine in Northwestern Lower Michigan
W L Blewett
Department of Geography/Earth Science
Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
Abstract
Evidence based on an analysis of topographic quadrangles, aerial photographs, soil maps, and extensive field work indicates that at least 9 distinctive ice-marginal positions exist within the area previously mapped as the Inner and Outer Port Huron moraines. Of these positions, six are large heads of outwash exhibiting nearly all the criteria for morphosequences. The remaining three margins are inferred from patterns of extensive kame terraces developed on the proximal or up-ice flanks of the major heads of outwash. Collectively, these positions and their associated outwash surfaces likely record long intervals of quasi-stable ice-marginal conditions favoring thick outwash deposition punctuated by brief transitional periods of rapid incision due to ice-marginal retreat. Land form and sediment relationships show that this retreat was characterized by an ice margin that pivoted clockwise to the northwest during final deglaciation. Thus, deglaciation of the massive, extensive, and chronologically important Port Huron moraines in this part of Michigan was different and far more complicated than previously interpreted.
The Economics of Agglomeration and Firm Location
Anne C. Selting
MRW Associates
Oakland, CA
Scott Loveridge
Community and Economic Development, West Virginia University Extension Service
Morgantown, WV
Christopher Allanach
Dept of Agricultural and Applied Economics
University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN
Abstract
This article reviews, summarizes and critiques the existing literature on agglomeration and firm location decisions. The strengths and weaknesses of agglomeration economies as an explanation of current settlement trends are discussed. The article covers methods of measuring agglomeration economies, including surveys, indices, production function models, and simulations. Most studies conclude that agglomerative forces are strong. There is a need to refocus research on the issue of whether current subsidies provided to firms moving to the urban fringe are needed, and how the benefits of agglomeration are distributed.
Picking Winners and Fixing Losers: A Critique of Industry Targeting in Local Economic Development
Donald T. Iannone
The Urban Center/Levin College of Urban Affairs
Cleveland State University
Abstract
This article analyzes the conceptual basis for industry targeting as a local economic development strategy. Economic development practitioners and state and local policy-makers have aggressively employed industry targeting techniques to provide a focus for their economic development programs. While these practices appear deceptively simple and attractive on the surface as local economic development policies, they introduce several complex questions about the appropriate role of government in industrial location, investment, and competitiveness decisions, which economic developers and policy-makers should be better prepared to answer. Four reasons underscore the current importance of this policy research: I) industry targeting is used widely by state and local economic development groups; 2) local economic development practice sorely needs an improved knowledge and theory base; 3) state and local officials should understand the close connection between industry targeting and national industrial policy; and 4) current pressures placed on the states and local governments to respond to Federal policy and budget changes may lead these officials to adopt more industrial policy type responses to economic problems, especially in offering help to industries negatively impacted by these Federal policy changes. In general, the author is skeptical about the overall value of these practices, but urges future empirical research on the impact of industry targeting activities on industries and local economies.
A Rustbelt Economy's Experience in the Nation's First Services(?) Recession
Nancy Green Leigh
Graduate City Planning Program
Georgia Institute of Technology
Abstract
Deindustrialization's impact on the manufacturing-intensive economy of the Great Lake city Milwaukee, Wisconsin was devastating. In the 1979-1982, nearly 57,000 manufacturing jobs were lost. Subsequent recovery was largely due to employment growth in service-producing industries, but Milwaukee still remains an important durable goods manufacturing sector, and has less than the national average in services-producing employment. Up until the most recent downturn in the business cycle, those metropolitan economies with greater proportions of their employment in services than Milwaukee's appeared to be less subject to downturns in the business cycle; the 1990-91 recession seemed to be qualitatively different than previous recessions. This paper begins with an overview discussion of the 1990-1991 recession from an occupational and industrial distribution perspective to determine if the 1990-91 recession was indeed the "first services recessions" that it was labeled. Next, comparative analyses are made using an industry-focused version of the shift-share method to examine the Milwaukee Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) economy's performance relative to the nation's for two time periods. 1979-1989 and 1989-1992. These analyses demonstrate that Milwaukee was relatively immune to the most recent recession, and they point to Milwaukee's later shift towards services-producing employment in combination with its continued higher concentration of manufacturing employment as the mitigating factors. This paper concludes by discussing whether such factors may be expected to be mitigating factors for Milwaukee and similar traditional industrial economies' experiences in future recessions.
Impacts of Fluctuating Water Levels and Flows to Hydropower Production on the Great Lakes: Planning for the Extremes
K.N. Irvine
Dept. of Geography and Planning and Great Lakes Center for Environmental Research
and Education, State University College at Buffalo
M. Leonard
Woodward-Clyde Consultants
North Tonawanda, NY
S.W. Taylor
Dept of Civil Engineering
SUNY Buffalo
K. McFarland
Dept. of Geography and Planning and Great Lakes Center for Environmental Research
and Education, State University College at Buffalo
E.J. Pratt
Dept. of Geography and Planning and Great Lakes Center for Environmental Research
and Education, State University College at Buffalo
Using 90 years of monthly mean levels and flows as input to hydropower production models, electrical generation at major projects on the Great Lakes are examined. Duration curves show that at least 60% of the time (54 years), energy and capacity production would vary by a small percentage. For approximately nine years of the record, much higher production than average is expected, while much lower production than average also is expected for approximately nine years. Current regulation of Lake Ontario has a significant negative impact on the magnitude of energy production for two of three projects on the St. Lawrence River. Economic benefits related to energy production could be as great as $259 million for the larger utilities such as Ontario Hydro during a year of extreme high water, as compared to an average year. Costs of replacing energy for a larger utility could be in the range of $100 million during a year of low water, as compared to an average year. Although spillage occurs during extreme high water, the greatest negative impacts to hydropower interests result from including drought contingency planning, demand side management and public information programs would be more effective in off-setting the impacts of low water.
Federal Highway 20: The Last Transcontinental
Daryl Norris
Department of Geography
SUNY Geneseo
Abstract
US 20 was completed in 1940-41 as a coast-to-coast hard-surfaced highway from Boston MA to Newport OR, via Chicago and Yellowstone National Park, whence it earned the nickname 'Yellowstone Highway'. US 20 is now the only essentially intact example of a transcontinental Federal Highway dating from the pre-Interstate era. Completed just prior to American embroilment in World War II, US 20 did not fulfill its promoters' hopes as a great tourist highway from Chicago and the northeastern states. Nonetheless, the flurry of promotional activity following the formation of the National Highway 20 Association in 1939 is an instructive perspective on the successes and trials of boosterism in the attenuated setting of over 3,000 miles of road. The Association's early efforts were centered in Lusk WY; its ambitious plans to run a Chicago-based transcontinental operation appear, like the road, to have been stillborn by the War. But, as a backwater highway over much of its length, US 20 has bequeathed an impressive legacy of early highway engineering and roadside structures, many now closed, some recycled. And the road's identity has been rekindled by another Highway 20 Association, already active from the Midwest to Wyoming, with no traceable linear descent from its 1939 precursor. As yet, the Association has not fully capitalized on US 20's historical importance. This paper provides compelling visual evidence for the road as a living museum of the second and relatively mature phase of the automobile era in the United States and as one slender lifeline in America's wide expanse of rural, nonmetropolitan, barely viable settlements.
Volume 2, No. 2
Great Lakes Shoreline Management in Ontario
Patrick L. Lawrence
Department of Geography
University of Waterloo
Abstract
The Great Lakes shoreline is characterized by a diversity of natural ecosystems ranging from low-lying rock shores, eroding glacial till bluffs, and sandy barrier beaches and under intensive pressure from human development and land uses. Existing shoreline management, planning policies and programs have focused on attempts to reduce property damages from severe flooding and erosion caused by high water levels. Shoreline management plans completed by Ontario Conservation Authorities focus on the physical conditions leading to flooding and erosion and a range of attempts to modify the hazard by the use of shore protection structures. This single issue approach fails to recognize the complexity of the Great Lakes shoreline and the issues and concerns that need to be addressed in a comprehensive coastal management program. Shoreline hazards are a function of human use and adaptation to the shoreline and should not be managed separately from land use and broader environmental concerns such as water quality, habitat loss and ecosystem health. With the current focus on land use planning reform in Ontario and the work of the Toronto Waterfront Regeneration Trust, there is an opportunity to consider improved mechanisms for decision making and management to reflect the growing international interest in integrated coastal zone management A framework for Great Lakes coastal management is highlighted which would include developing a strategic vision, provisions for linkage of existing provincial legislation and policy, an improved method of resource inventory and environmental monitoring, and public education and communication.
Rural Planning and Agricultural Land Preservation: The Experience of Huron County, Ontario
Wayne Caldwell
County of Huron
Dept. of Planning and Development
Abstract
The long-term welfare of many rural communities is dependent upon the preservation of the agricultural land resource. Not only is the physical loss of farmland a threat to an active agricultural industry, but so too are the restrictions that tend to accompany the gradual introduction of non-farm uses in agricultural areas. This paper reviews the evolution of agricultural land preservation within the Province of Ontario, with a specific focus on the successful approaches employed at the local level within the County of Huron. These local approaches have a central goal of not only protecting farmland, but also of minimizing potential regulation that might encumber the farm community A key component of this overall approach is the development and implementation of an integrated approach to planning that addresses economic development.
City of London's Experience with Demand Management Strategies
Jennifer L. Mills and Dan Shrubsole
Department of Geography
University of Western Ontario
Abstract
Since 1990, the City of London Ontario has implemented a demand management strategy in order to reduce water demand. This paper examines the effectiveness of this strategy which consisted of educational, technological and economic components. Water use data was tested through time series analysis. The findings suggest a 15% decrease in domestic water use occurred immediately after the increasing block rate structure was introduced in 1990; and a further 10% decrease was noted after the establishment of an environmental charge in June 1993. Overall, it is concluded that the City of London s demand management strategy has decreased domestic water use by 8% to 39% between the period January1991 and October 1993.
The Decline of Finnish Ethnic Islands in Rural Thunder Bay
Dallen J. Timothy
Department of Geography
University of Waterloo
Abstract
As the Finns settled around the shores of Lake Superior, they established small, isolated communities ("ethnic islands") where Finnish was generally the only language spoken and where Finnish culture dominated. Today, however, in Northwestern Ontario, the Finnish character of these villages has nearly vanished. Based on field interviews with Finnish-Canadian community members and leaders, and with the interpretive aid of some prominent geolinguistic theories of language maintenance and language shift, the decline of Ontario s Finnish culture and settlements is examined. Likewise, this paper establishes an approximate time frame and reveals many of the major external reasons, as observed by the local Finns, for the marked decline of their once-thriving ethnic communities.
The Making of an Ethnic Island: Initial Settlement Patterns of Netherlanders in West Michigan
Henry Aay
Department of Geology, Geography, and Environmental Studies
Calvin College
Abstract
This article focuses on the historical geography of the Netherlandic settlement area of West Michigan. The research identifies all those Netherlanders who patented land in twelve townships of Allegan and Ottawa counties in West Michigan beginning in 1847. Information about these land patents is linked to published sources that provide additional data both about those who bought the land from the government and about the land they purchased. A chronological mapping of the land patented by Netherlanders reveals that the expansion of this ethnic island is governed by the initial settlement centers, by the Macatawa River system, by soil quality, and by the availability of land. The Dutch patent holders sometimes cluster by Netherlandic provincial origins around centers named for their Dutch provinces. At other times the patent holders from a particular province are highly scattered without a clear orientation to any center.
The Downsizing of the Illinois Central Railroad: Core, Regionals and Shortlines
Michael L. Thaller
Department of Geography
Kent State University-Stark Campus
Abstract
Today's Illinois Central Railroad shows how downsizing can lead to financial success. This study examines the spatial consequences of that process. The emergence of a 2700-mile core from a 9000-mile system focused the canter solely on a north-south main line while all else was considered surplus. Five packages comprised of secondary lines were sold to emerge as regional railroads, some of the first in the United States. These sizeable spinoff lines experienced varying levels of success and in one case, failure. They showed the need for careful planning and adequate capitalization on the part of their investors. Some of the Illinois Central's unwanted segments became strategic parts of new carriers or Class I railroads while many other segments became local shorelines. A high degree of uncertainty seems characteristic of the downsizings resulting spatial patterns but the future role of regional railroads clearly seems secure.
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