A city is a great compromise between glass, concrete, steel and water, rock and terrain. We want to build in straight lines on flat surfaces, because that is easiest, but we are forced to take turns, to yield where we cannot break the earth. The view from above Chicago reveals what success this flat marshy plain has afforded civic engineers and what obstacles simply cannot be conquered. From the 94th floor of the Hancock observatory, the great, expansive grid lies to the West, and comprises hundreds of very straight, very flat streets. To the South, you can view the majority of downtown Chicago – the city’s most valuable real estate encourages us to build ever higher to extract the most potential from a limited space. The East is swallowed by a Great Lake, and like a boulder in a stream, forces us to sprawl in all other directions. To the North, Lake Shore Drive is a great snake; and at blue hour, it’s vast orange back slips and slides along the curves of Lake Michigan until it vanishes on the horizon.
Click through the photo below to see it on Flickr – I’ve added notes and links on the photo at positions where I’ve taken some of my more popular images. This is a 24 megapixel monster – prints available.
Photo by Justin Kern – Feel free to use images with links and credit – no commercial use without permission.
by Justin
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