A garland of nature crowns Chicago

“If buildings sprang up suddenly out of the ground like mushrooms, their rooftops would be covered with a layer of soil and plants. That’s not how humans build, of course. Instead we scrape away the earth, erect the structure itself, and cap it with a rainproof, presumably forgettable, roof. It’s tempting to say that the roofscape of every city on this planet is a man-made desert, except that a desert is a living habitat. The truth is harsher. The urban roofscape is a little like hell, a lifeless place of bituminous surfaces, violent temperature contrasts, bitter winds, and an antipathy to water.”

Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel

Read full article by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Original post by Rachel Wingfield