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Manifest Destiny and the Growth of America: Cheap Energy and Spending Natural Capital

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Abstract

Manifest Destiny is the sine qua non of American history. At one time almost every American child was toilet trained on this idea of inevitable expansion of European settlement to blanket the continent. In 1833, the author Horace Greeley is reputed to have said “Go west young man.” He expressed the widespread feeling at the time that America was a land of limitless possibilities, that if a person worked hard, especially on the fertile lands of the west (referring to the land of the Ohio Valley and the Midwest) he or she could succeed and prosper.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Greeley’s actual advice to “any young man” was “Go to the West: there your capabilities are sure to be appreciated and your energy and industry rewarded.” Williams, Robert C. 2006. Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom (Kindle ed.). New York University Press.

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  6. 6.

    http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WUP2005/2005wup.htm.

  7. 7.

    Currently, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities and as of May 2014, there were 463 cities of a million or more, the vast majority of them in the developing world. Tokyo was still the largest at 36.7 million, but the others in the top five were in developing countries (Delhi 22.2 million, Sao Paulo 20.3, Mumbai 20, and Mexico City 19.5). In 2010, China alone had 89 cities with more than one million people; India had 46, the U.S. 42, Brazil 21, and Mexico 12. So between 1800 and 2010, world population increased sevenfold, but the number of cities populated by over one million people increased by a factor of more than 450.

  8. 8.

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  9. 9.

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  11. 11.

    Burger et al. 2012. The Macroecology of Sustainability. PLOS Biology, 10 (6), 1–7.

  12. 12.

    Source: US Census Bureau 1990 and 2000. Urban/Rural Census Data 1900 to 2000, Online at: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/planning/wtp/datalibrary/population/PopGrowthSMSA.htm.

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Day, J.W., Hall, C. (2016). Manifest Destiny and the Growth of America: Cheap Energy and Spending Natural Capital. In: America’s Most Sustainable Cities and Regions. Copernicus, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3243-6_2

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