Environmentalists have been chiding us for decades: You can’t throw something “away.” Whether they’re just out of our sight or hundreds of miles distant, the things we consume and discard have an environmental impact.
Landscape architect and Illinois Institute of Technology professor Conor O’Shea sees a similar misconception in urbanism. There’s no such thing as “outside the city,” he believes. From the titan skyscrapers of the Loop in O’Shea’s native Chicago, to the city’s bungalow belt, cul-de-sac suburbia, and warehouse exurbs bleeding into oceans of cropland, it’s all one urban ecosystem. Even if designers tend to tune out as soon as they’ve driven past their farthest-flung project.
