Sinking ChicagoIn Sinking Chicago, Harold Platt shows how people responded to climate change in one American city over a hundred and fifty year period. During a long dry spell before 1945, city residents lost sight of the connections between land use, flood control, and water quality. Then, a combination of suburban sprawl and a wet period of extreme weather events created damaging runoff surges that sank Chicago and contaminated drinking supplies with raw sewage.