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(Im)possible Chicago #30
The Chicago where the United Nations Secretariat is now headquartered. Every September, when world leaders gather together for the annual opening session of the General Assembly, also hosted by the city, the very much alive Muammar Gaddafi pitches his sprawling tent city in Grant Park, south of the Buckingham Charbagh.
The Chicago where the United Nations Secretariat is now headquartered. Every September, when world leaders gather together for the annual opening session of the General Assembly, also hosted by the city, the very much alive Muammar Gaddafi pitches his sprawling tent city in Grant Park, south of the Buckingham Charbagh.
(Im)possible Chicago #29
The Chicago which is subdivided into parcels with roughly equal population. On the middle of each one is a public dining hall where everyone eats together. There are no restaurants and supermarkets.
(Im)possible Chicago #28
Tourists are always on the look out for the homeless here, as though they were on a treasure hunt. When they spot one, they become unhinged, voraciously snapping photographs of them and even with them. That’s because, from the first day of spring until the end of autumn, with some breaks in the summer, the Chicago Parks Department dresses the city’s vagrant population in ghillie suits.
Looking like a cross between the Swamp Thing and Cousin It, a ghillie suit is a type of camouflage clothing worn mostly by snipers and hunters to blend into their surrounding. To enhance its stealth profile, the already shaggy garment is sometimes augmented with bits of vegetation found in the area.
Once considered a nuisance, now the homeless in their ghillie suits are welcomed ornamental additions to the city’s public spaces. Before a stinking mound dozing off on manicured lawns; now a Picturesque hermit cocooned in his wearable hermitage. Before a pitiful blot on the street you always try to avoid eye contact with; now a mobile micro-garden strutting its vegetal spectacle alongside beautifully landscaped medians and curbside mini-Edens. Before when they came together to commiserate, they were loitering; now it's a pop-up Versailles.
Looking like a cross between the Swamp Thing and Cousin It, a ghillie suit is a type of camouflage clothing worn mostly by snipers and hunters to blend into their surrounding. To enhance its stealth profile, the already shaggy garment is sometimes augmented with bits of vegetation found in the area.
Once considered a nuisance, now the homeless in their ghillie suits are welcomed ornamental additions to the city’s public spaces. Before a stinking mound dozing off on manicured lawns; now a Picturesque hermit cocooned in his wearable hermitage. Before a pitiful blot on the street you always try to avoid eye contact with; now a mobile micro-garden strutting its vegetal spectacle alongside beautifully landscaped medians and curbside mini-Edens. Before when they came together to commiserate, they were loitering; now it's a pop-up Versailles.
(Im)possible Chicago #23
There are no families in Chicago that live under the same roof, for each member lives separately: husbands from their wives and children; siblings from each other and their parents.
A few—and they are almost always the dads—choose single accommodations in bachelor pieds-à-terre, but most prefer to share quarters with the members of other dispersed clans. Fathers with other fathers, mothers with other mothers, parents with a brood of unrelated children.
There are all sorts of domestic arrangements, as different as the next, but not a single one involve immediate blood relatives (that is, up to and including the grandparents) living at the same address. The closest they can be to a next of kin is two blocks away.
Families still come together. They eat at the same table, nurse their sick loved ones back to health, and celebrate the high holidays in one big gathering. But at the end of the day, they retire to separate dwellings.
If they want to speak to someone about something, they simply tap on their touch walls and if answered, it then flickers with the videoconference images of their telepresent family. At the other times, the walls simply broadcast images of empty rooms, splicing dislocated spaces, as it were.
Meanwhile, holographic avatars move about the house like ghosts, passing easily through doors and furniture, some of which are part of a network of surveillance sensors. In fact, every decorative knickknack is an ambient actuator of a data stream.
Even the plants are wired to both monitor the health of your family and display these sensor readings botanically. In other words, if they seem vigorous, your child is physically well. If they’re starting to droop or yellow, then it’s time to call the doctor.
There are no families in Chicago that live under the same roof, for each member lives separately: husbands from their wives and children; siblings from each other and their parents.
A few—and they are almost always the dads—choose single accommodations in bachelor pieds-à-terre, but most prefer to share quarters with the members of other dispersed clans. Fathers with other fathers, mothers with other mothers, parents with a brood of unrelated children.
There are all sorts of domestic arrangements, as different as the next, but not a single one involve immediate blood relatives (that is, up to and including the grandparents) living at the same address. The closest they can be to a next of kin is two blocks away.
Families still come together. They eat at the same table, nurse their sick loved ones back to health, and celebrate the high holidays in one big gathering. But at the end of the day, they retire to separate dwellings.
If they want to speak to someone about something, they simply tap on their touch walls and if answered, it then flickers with the videoconference images of their telepresent family. At the other times, the walls simply broadcast images of empty rooms, splicing dislocated spaces, as it were.
Meanwhile, holographic avatars move about the house like ghosts, passing easily through doors and furniture, some of which are part of a network of surveillance sensors. In fact, every decorative knickknack is an ambient actuator of a data stream.
Even the plants are wired to both monitor the health of your family and display these sensor readings botanically. In other words, if they seem vigorous, your child is physically well. If they’re starting to droop or yellow, then it’s time to call the doctor.
(Im)possible Chicago #22
Students in their senior year of high school must pass a comprehensive final exam on the subject of Chicago streets. They cannot graduate otherwise.
In the drawing section, they must sketch out the layout of the city in its entirety, making sure to label every road correctly. In the oral section, they are asked to recite the shortest route, give or take one block, between two addresses. The final section is the essay. Last year’s one-word topic was “63rd,” and the year before was “Garfield.”
The success rate is surprisingly high, or maybe not that unexpected considering these kids have been collaging their mental pictures of the grid from their very first day of kindergarten, fleshing them out street by street, alleyway by alleyway, year after year. Those who fail are usually the newly arrived.
At least an hour of the school day is devoted to doing memorization drills. Geospatial facts are recited over and over as though they were sacred verses. During this hour, the hallways have the sonic ambience of a madrasah.
Names of streets are constantly being converted into poems and song lyrics. In fact, each year produces a long laundry list of new mnemonic devices. Maybe one day a descendant of Carl Sandburg will collect all these scraps of ephemeral verses, like a WPA archivist sent out to do field recordings of folk music and oral histories before they are lost, eventually collating them into a multi-volume Homerian epic: The Odyssey set on the grid.
After soccer practice or ballet lessons, students make their parents take long, circuitous detours on the way home. Field reconnaissance of sorts. When they’re old enough to drive, they continue their cartographic survey on their own or with friends. On some nights, roving gangs of teenagers out on a scopic prowl clog the streets, making for scenes straight out of American Graffiti, but with Google Streetview vans.
After graduation, they head en masse to the forests and deserts and oceans and polar ice caps.
In the drawing section, they must sketch out the layout of the city in its entirety, making sure to label every road correctly. In the oral section, they are asked to recite the shortest route, give or take one block, between two addresses. The final section is the essay. Last year’s one-word topic was “63rd,” and the year before was “Garfield.”
The success rate is surprisingly high, or maybe not that unexpected considering these kids have been collaging their mental pictures of the grid from their very first day of kindergarten, fleshing them out street by street, alleyway by alleyway, year after year. Those who fail are usually the newly arrived.
At least an hour of the school day is devoted to doing memorization drills. Geospatial facts are recited over and over as though they were sacred verses. During this hour, the hallways have the sonic ambience of a madrasah.
Names of streets are constantly being converted into poems and song lyrics. In fact, each year produces a long laundry list of new mnemonic devices. Maybe one day a descendant of Carl Sandburg will collect all these scraps of ephemeral verses, like a WPA archivist sent out to do field recordings of folk music and oral histories before they are lost, eventually collating them into a multi-volume Homerian epic: The Odyssey set on the grid.
After soccer practice or ballet lessons, students make their parents take long, circuitous detours on the way home. Field reconnaissance of sorts. When they’re old enough to drive, they continue their cartographic survey on their own or with friends. On some nights, roving gangs of teenagers out on a scopic prowl clog the streets, making for scenes straight out of American Graffiti, but with Google Streetview vans.
After graduation, they head en masse to the forests and deserts and oceans and polar ice caps.
(Im)possible Chicago #21
The Chicago with only one mode of passenger transport: the piggy-back ride.
Among other things, this has created a servant class of musclemen and a leisure class of Geishas. One might expect the city to have densified to keep down the mileage. It did not, for the musclemen are incredible beasts of burden and can easily carry the truly dainty Geishas from one end of the city to the other.
Gyms are a ubiquitous sight. Practically every neighborhood has at least one, from the local franchise of the mega corporate chains to the small family business operation and to the pop-up of roving journeymen. Most of these places also serve as central dispatchers, fielding service calls from riders and then doling out the requests to their members. A turf war periodically erupts and engulfs the whole city.
At first the Geishas and their musclemen piggy-backed on the streets. But after one too many scuffles with pedestrians, the city decided to fulfill the dreams of an earlier age and laid out an extensive network of elevated walkways. To help cushion the feet, they are landscaped with industrial strength turf.
Among other things, this has created a servant class of musclemen and a leisure class of Geishas. One might expect the city to have densified to keep down the mileage. It did not, for the musclemen are incredible beasts of burden and can easily carry the truly dainty Geishas from one end of the city to the other.
Gyms are a ubiquitous sight. Practically every neighborhood has at least one, from the local franchise of the mega corporate chains to the small family business operation and to the pop-up of roving journeymen. Most of these places also serve as central dispatchers, fielding service calls from riders and then doling out the requests to their members. A turf war periodically erupts and engulfs the whole city.
At first the Geishas and their musclemen piggy-backed on the streets. But after one too many scuffles with pedestrians, the city decided to fulfill the dreams of an earlier age and laid out an extensive network of elevated walkways. To help cushion the feet, they are landscaped with industrial strength turf.
(Im)possible Chicago #20
The Chicago in which neighborhoods were renamed with the names of other neighborhoods. Englewood for Beverly, Lithuanian Plaza for Boystown, Cabrini-Green for Edgewater, and so on with the rest. With this flip flopping some prejudices and biases were transplanted while others remained, becoming even more entrenched when new residents moved in by mistake. A few stigmas were erased, balanced out by new predispositions cropping up elsewhere.
(Im)possible Chicago #19
At night when you're out driving, you can tell which neighborhood you're in by the light of the streetlamps, because each ward basks in its own different hue. For instance, if the streets are all aglow in azurite, you're definitely joy riding around Marquette Park.
Zoning codes require that windows are tinted according to the neighborhood's chromatic identity, so no matter how the interiors are lighted, houses, skyscrapers and 7-Elevens do not give off wayward wavelengths.
Even your car lights beam out the same color. When you cross over into another ward, they instantaneously switch filter to match that ward's assigned spectrum.
At night when you're out driving, you can tell which neighborhood you're in by the light of the streetlamps, because each ward basks in its own different hue. For instance, if the streets are all aglow in azurite, you're definitely joy riding around Marquette Park.
Zoning codes require that windows are tinted according to the neighborhood's chromatic identity, so no matter how the interiors are lighted, houses, skyscrapers and 7-Elevens do not give off wayward wavelengths.
Even your car lights beam out the same color. When you cross over into another ward, they instantaneously switch filter to match that ward's assigned spectrum.
(Im)possible Chicago #18
No longer just a regular plot tucked into a small corner of the city, Lincoln Park Zoo now zigzags through neighborhoods, suburban outlets and farmlands further afield. It even extends through the lake. To make this spaghettified zoo continuous, wildlife overpasses are spliced in.
Inner precincts once barren of biodiversity now teem with exotic species. From living rooms and kitchens, one can spy on the wildlife scampering around in their habitat enclosures. Day and night, the sonic ambience of jungles and savannas mingle with that of the city.
In the summer, the zoo's small herd of wildebeest undertake their annual migration, usually doing at least a few, dusty orbits. Then it's the elephants' turn. On rooftops, bleachers are erected for spectators to watch this natural spectacle, NASCAR-style.
While rare, animals do escape from time to time, and when that happens, news helicopters are dispatched immediately to follow the retrieval team. On the ground, reporters shadow their every move like wildlife filmmakers, even emulating the hushed timbre of David Attenborough during their live telecasts. It's always a top story, even if people aren't savagely attacked or an outbreak of a virulent disease isn't imminent.
No longer just a regular plot tucked into a small corner of the city, Lincoln Park Zoo now zigzags through neighborhoods, suburban outlets and farmlands further afield. It even extends through the lake. To make this spaghettified zoo continuous, wildlife overpasses are spliced in.
Inner precincts once barren of biodiversity now teem with exotic species. From living rooms and kitchens, one can spy on the wildlife scampering around in their habitat enclosures. Day and night, the sonic ambience of jungles and savannas mingle with that of the city.
In the summer, the zoo's small herd of wildebeest undertake their annual migration, usually doing at least a few, dusty orbits. Then it's the elephants' turn. On rooftops, bleachers are erected for spectators to watch this natural spectacle, NASCAR-style.
While rare, animals do escape from time to time, and when that happens, news helicopters are dispatched immediately to follow the retrieval team. On the ground, reporters shadow their every move like wildlife filmmakers, even emulating the hushed timbre of David Attenborough during their live telecasts. It's always a top story, even if people aren't savagely attacked or an outbreak of a virulent disease isn't imminent.
(Im)possible Chicago #17
Up and down the banks of the river, the bodies of the dead are cremated on the ghats.
The corteges arrive before first light, trunks heavy with the dearly departed and bundles of kindling. Some come the night before and park in line to have a better chance at claiming their preferred spot for the day, for instance, the same landing where generations of their family have been set ablaze.
At dawn the pyres are lit. The ritual takes the entire day, so it isn't a drive-by affair. Someone must always be there to tend to the fires, to feed it when needed, and to gather up and return to the pyre limbs and fleshy bits that might break off and tumble down to the water. Meanwhile, all the worldly possessions of the dead are washed on the river, and that means their beds, cabinets and crockery—not just their clothes—are carried down the steps for a ritual cleansing. There is also a feast.
Naturally, smokes billow out from the river, carrying with them the smell of charred bodies and the plaintive wails of lamentations. By mid-day, the city is filled with a gauzy smog.
So bright are these burnings at night that they can be seen by orbiting astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station, as a bracelet of radiant fireflies. At around midnight, when the last of the cremations should have finished, the ghats are hosed down in preparation for the next day's conflagrations.
Up and down the banks of the river, the bodies of the dead are cremated on the ghats.
The corteges arrive before first light, trunks heavy with the dearly departed and bundles of kindling. Some come the night before and park in line to have a better chance at claiming their preferred spot for the day, for instance, the same landing where generations of their family have been set ablaze.
At dawn the pyres are lit. The ritual takes the entire day, so it isn't a drive-by affair. Someone must always be there to tend to the fires, to feed it when needed, and to gather up and return to the pyre limbs and fleshy bits that might break off and tumble down to the water. Meanwhile, all the worldly possessions of the dead are washed on the river, and that means their beds, cabinets and crockery—not just their clothes—are carried down the steps for a ritual cleansing. There is also a feast.
Naturally, smokes billow out from the river, carrying with them the smell of charred bodies and the plaintive wails of lamentations. By mid-day, the city is filled with a gauzy smog.
So bright are these burnings at night that they can be seen by orbiting astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station, as a bracelet of radiant fireflies. At around midnight, when the last of the cremations should have finished, the ghats are hosed down in preparation for the next day's conflagrations.
(Im)possible Chicago #15
This is the Chicago which has incubated a transatlantic fusion of Vogue Dramatics and parkour. Night and day, the David Belles and the Alloura Zions zig-zag through its grid, a cross-dressing of the Situationist pavements of the banlieues with the inner city ballrooms of the P.U.S.S.Y.C.U.N.T.Y.B.I.T.C.H. Up on the aerial dance floors threading together the city's boom-era tenements, they trace the horizontal falls of Yves Klein and Don DeLillo. During the ball season, they battle it out on invisible catwalks like Archaeopteryxes, their legs akimbo and their talon-like arms swiveling and pirouetting.
This is the Chicago which has incubated a transatlantic fusion of Vogue Dramatics and parkour. Night and day, the David Belles and the Alloura Zions zig-zag through its grid, a cross-dressing of the Situationist pavements of the banlieues with the inner city ballrooms of the P.U.S.S.Y.C.U.N.T.Y.B.I.T.C.H. Up on the aerial dance floors threading together the city's boom-era tenements, they trace the horizontal falls of Yves Klein and Don DeLillo. During the ball season, they battle it out on invisible catwalks like Archaeopteryxes, their legs akimbo and their talon-like arms swiveling and pirouetting.
(Im)possible Chicago #12-14
At the state dinner, the mayor asked why they had built a full scale model of Chicago in the Gobi Desert, near the village of Huangyangtan.
The Chinese president replied, “Oh, that. That's just part of our anti-desertification program. We hope the city will stop sandstorms from forming and blocks sand dunes from encroaching.”
**
At the state dinner, the mayor asked why they had built a full scale model of Chicago in the Gobi Desert, near the village of Huangyangtan.
The Chinese president replied, “Oh, that. There's a huge demand for housing in China, and we hope the city will satiate that demand.”
**
At the state dinner, the mayor asked why they had built a full scale model of Chicago in the Gobi Desert, near the village of Huangyangtan.
The Chinese president replied, “Oh, that. That's just the outdoor studio sets for Jia Zhangke's upcoming epic The New World.”
At the state dinner, the mayor asked why they had built a full scale model of Chicago in the Gobi Desert, near the village of Huangyangtan.
The Chinese president replied, “Oh, that. That's just part of our anti-desertification program. We hope the city will stop sandstorms from forming and blocks sand dunes from encroaching.”
At the state dinner, the mayor asked why they had built a full scale model of Chicago in the Gobi Desert, near the village of Huangyangtan.
The Chinese president replied, “Oh, that. There's a huge demand for housing in China, and we hope the city will satiate that demand.”
At the state dinner, the mayor asked why they had built a full scale model of Chicago in the Gobi Desert, near the village of Huangyangtan.
The Chinese president replied, “Oh, that. That's just the outdoor studio sets for Jia Zhangke's upcoming epic The New World.”
(Im)possible Chicago #11
Forgoing the option of expanding in the cramped quarters of the Museum Campus as well as out into Lake Michigan, the Shedd Aquarium instead took to the skies, tethering and propping up on stilts rivers encased in glass.
From anywhere in the city, you can look up and find eels slithering their way through interlocking tubular loop-de-loops. You can also watch schools of tuna rhyming with the murmurations of starlings, something that never fails to mesmerize.
Popular among lovers are the bioluminescent critters. At night they twinkle and glow above where stars have long ago been blotted out by urban light pollution. Surely, under this shimmering airborne ocean, a very romantic evening can be had.
The most popular attraction, of course, are the humpback whales soundtracking the city with their plaintive songs. This is but the latest leg on their Darwinian odyssey: from sea to land then back to sea again, and finally, to the skies. If the entire structure collapses, well, it's back to land again in a sort of Douglas Adams dysfantasia.
Near where the loops dip to within a few feet off the ground—usually in the park—children play next to Charybdis, the Kraken and the Leviathan.
Forgoing the option of expanding in the cramped quarters of the Museum Campus as well as out into Lake Michigan, the Shedd Aquarium instead took to the skies, tethering and propping up on stilts rivers encased in glass.
From anywhere in the city, you can look up and find eels slithering their way through interlocking tubular loop-de-loops. You can also watch schools of tuna rhyming with the murmurations of starlings, something that never fails to mesmerize.
Popular among lovers are the bioluminescent critters. At night they twinkle and glow above where stars have long ago been blotted out by urban light pollution. Surely, under this shimmering airborne ocean, a very romantic evening can be had.
The most popular attraction, of course, are the humpback whales soundtracking the city with their plaintive songs. This is but the latest leg on their Darwinian odyssey: from sea to land then back to sea again, and finally, to the skies. If the entire structure collapses, well, it's back to land again in a sort of Douglas Adams dysfantasia.
Near where the loops dip to within a few feet off the ground—usually in the park—children play next to Charybdis, the Kraken and the Leviathan.
(Im)possible Chicago #10
Every ten years the fires come.
Starting from Land Grant Fire Ignition Stations strategically gridded on the outskirts of the city, they come howling, coronal, as though the prairies have sprouted solar prominences arcing and looping eastward towards the lake.
First they stream through the fire avenues of the Emerald Necklace, extended, renetworked and planted with highly combustible trees and shrubbery for this decennial event. Once a neighborhood is surrounded, the flaming noose contracts and gorges on the trapped kindling.
Those who evacuate—taking this as a reason to go on vacation—live in Shinto-built bungalows. Before leaving, they move what belongings they want saved, if any, down to their climate-controlled basements or off-site in self-storage units, also hermetically sealed. These are all tiny spaces, for no one in the city is a pack rat.
The last on the checklist is to turn on the GPS transmitter. This will make it easier for them to locate their charred homestead in what will certainly be a landscape devoid of recognizable landmarks, let alone passable roads. When they do return, they can rebuild on the same site, but they can also choose to make camp elsewhere. It is the basements that are deeded. The land and air rights are not parceled out.
Most residents stay to ride out the firestorm, however, holed up in their thickly concreted bungalows. They only need to stock up on food and water for a week and, most critically, tap in to the city's underground network of O2 tunnels to supply their bunkers with breathable air.
To pass the time, they tune in to The Burn Channel, watching Anderson Cooper survey the ongoing conflagration inside his Nomex suit. A solitary astronaut on the surface of Mercury.
They check when the nearest firefront will singe through their street, scorch their gardens and evaporate the past decade's ornamental fads from their home's exterior. The sights of skyscrapers collapsing are eagerly anticipated.
Correspondingly, they participate in online public forums to design a new city. All aspects of the city in waiting are decided by popular vote. This democratic form of urban planning have in the past resulted in wildly experimental urban forms and at other times, carbon copies of the White City.
Whatever city they get next, it will be yet another fleeting thing, turning fugitive in ten years' time.
Every ten years the fires come.
Starting from Land Grant Fire Ignition Stations strategically gridded on the outskirts of the city, they come howling, coronal, as though the prairies have sprouted solar prominences arcing and looping eastward towards the lake.
First they stream through the fire avenues of the Emerald Necklace, extended, renetworked and planted with highly combustible trees and shrubbery for this decennial event. Once a neighborhood is surrounded, the flaming noose contracts and gorges on the trapped kindling.
Those who evacuate—taking this as a reason to go on vacation—live in Shinto-built bungalows. Before leaving, they move what belongings they want saved, if any, down to their climate-controlled basements or off-site in self-storage units, also hermetically sealed. These are all tiny spaces, for no one in the city is a pack rat.
The last on the checklist is to turn on the GPS transmitter. This will make it easier for them to locate their charred homestead in what will certainly be a landscape devoid of recognizable landmarks, let alone passable roads. When they do return, they can rebuild on the same site, but they can also choose to make camp elsewhere. It is the basements that are deeded. The land and air rights are not parceled out.
Most residents stay to ride out the firestorm, however, holed up in their thickly concreted bungalows. They only need to stock up on food and water for a week and, most critically, tap in to the city's underground network of O2 tunnels to supply their bunkers with breathable air.
To pass the time, they tune in to The Burn Channel, watching Anderson Cooper survey the ongoing conflagration inside his Nomex suit. A solitary astronaut on the surface of Mercury.
They check when the nearest firefront will singe through their street, scorch their gardens and evaporate the past decade's ornamental fads from their home's exterior. The sights of skyscrapers collapsing are eagerly anticipated.
Correspondingly, they participate in online public forums to design a new city. All aspects of the city in waiting are decided by popular vote. This democratic form of urban planning have in the past resulted in wildly experimental urban forms and at other times, carbon copies of the White City.
Whatever city they get next, it will be yet another fleeting thing, turning fugitive in ten years' time.
(Im)possible Chicago #9
The United Great Lakes is a hydrostate encompassing the entire drainage basin of the Great Lakes plus a chunk of the St. Lawrence River Basin. These territories ceded from Canadian provinces and American states are organized into administrative cantons coterminus with the sub-basins of each individual lake. The capital city is Chicago.
The choice of Chicago as the capital was controversial at first, because it had for decades allowed the Illinois and Michigan Canal to wastefully drain water out of the lakes. No one objected once the flow of water was re-reversed, especially since everyone realized it was strategically positioned near the parched city-states of Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix, their main hydro-export markets.
Indeed, Great Lakes freshwater is their main commodity. It is also their only major industry. Gone are the Boeings, the GMs and the Dow Chemicals: they've all either moved to the low-tax pastures of Texas or gone bankrupt. But with unquenchable demand of the petrostate of New Alberta and more distant markets like China, linked via the Mississippi River turned international waterway, the economic impact of their desertion and erasure was minimally negative.
Below the city and following its grid system are the cavernous reservoirs of thousands of Mega-Notre-Dames, buttressed with buttressed buttresses, columned and aisled with service passages and emergency tunnels. Jutting out from each one and puncturing the surface are Neo-Gothic spires housing pumping stations, pressure release valves and permanent crew quarters, with the grander ones additionally housing the federal government of the water cartel. Some are quite tall, even reaching the height of the once standing Sears Towers. Not for anything is Chicago now nicknamed The City of Spires.
The United Great Lakes is a hydrostate encompassing the entire drainage basin of the Great Lakes plus a chunk of the St. Lawrence River Basin. These territories ceded from Canadian provinces and American states are organized into administrative cantons coterminus with the sub-basins of each individual lake. The capital city is Chicago.
The choice of Chicago as the capital was controversial at first, because it had for decades allowed the Illinois and Michigan Canal to wastefully drain water out of the lakes. No one objected once the flow of water was re-reversed, especially since everyone realized it was strategically positioned near the parched city-states of Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix, their main hydro-export markets.
Indeed, Great Lakes freshwater is their main commodity. It is also their only major industry. Gone are the Boeings, the GMs and the Dow Chemicals: they've all either moved to the low-tax pastures of Texas or gone bankrupt. But with unquenchable demand of the petrostate of New Alberta and more distant markets like China, linked via the Mississippi River turned international waterway, the economic impact of their desertion and erasure was minimally negative.
Below the city and following its grid system are the cavernous reservoirs of thousands of Mega-Notre-Dames, buttressed with buttressed buttresses, columned and aisled with service passages and emergency tunnels. Jutting out from each one and puncturing the surface are Neo-Gothic spires housing pumping stations, pressure release valves and permanent crew quarters, with the grander ones additionally housing the federal government of the water cartel. Some are quite tall, even reaching the height of the once standing Sears Towers. Not for anything is Chicago now nicknamed The City of Spires.
(Im)possible Chicago #8
Mrs. Blumenthal, 55, of Florida, has been driving around the city for hours now. Since landing at O'Hare, she's taken in the fleeting sights of the northern and western neighborhoods. This afternoon, she'll barrel along the inexorable super-linearity of Western Avenue all the way down to the city limit before making a U-turn and returning to her hotel for the night. Tomorrow and for the rest of the week, she'll make the same perambulations.
Meanwhile, at a cavernous control room in one of the buildings at the Illinois Medical Super-Complex, doctors and technicians have been monitoring her driving through a mesh network of surveillance cameras scoping for the early tell-tale signs of a neurodegenerative disease. Every micro murmuration, every nano-flux, every subtle correction in her navigation is being recorded. Every speed, every acceleration, every direction — indeed her every reaction to this city turned diagnostic tool will be plotted. Then her medical tour of Chicago will be data mined.
At the end of the week, she'll be given her diagnoses report, although her consultation with the doctors will be a little hurried, as the FBI will be taking over the network for their annual probe for pederastic and terrorist behaviors.
Mrs. Blumenthal, 55, of Florida, has been driving around the city for hours now. Since landing at O'Hare, she's taken in the fleeting sights of the northern and western neighborhoods. This afternoon, she'll barrel along the inexorable super-linearity of Western Avenue all the way down to the city limit before making a U-turn and returning to her hotel for the night. Tomorrow and for the rest of the week, she'll make the same perambulations.Meanwhile, at a cavernous control room in one of the buildings at the Illinois Medical Super-Complex, doctors and technicians have been monitoring her driving through a mesh network of surveillance cameras scoping for the early tell-tale signs of a neurodegenerative disease. Every micro murmuration, every nano-flux, every subtle correction in her navigation is being recorded. Every speed, every acceleration, every direction — indeed her every reaction to this city turned diagnostic tool will be plotted. Then her medical tour of Chicago will be data mined.
At the end of the week, she'll be given her diagnoses report, although her consultation with the doctors will be a little hurried, as the FBI will be taking over the network for their annual probe for pederastic and terrorist behaviors.
(Im)possible Chicago #7
A forest was allowed to grow and blanket the city after its roads and parking lots were depaved, its houses and skyscrapers carted away.
While the process of ecological succession took a while, the desired climax community was reached in record time with the use of expert wilderness management strategies.
Encircling this 145,400-acre urban park is the successor city, thickly encrusted on a thin but continuous band of annexed suburban territory and sand nourished coastline. Separating the two is the new Michigan Avenue, still flower-potted and Art Nouveau-lighted but serviced with the longest subway line in the world. This grand boulevard has been tasked with the monumental job of stopping the city's sheer, vertiginous cliff-like streetwall (a mile-high in some places) from creeping into the woods.
Within are cabinets de verdure, or “rooms” cut into the woodland; the big cultural events take place here. They are all connected together by a network of allées, which are lined with topiaries of unrelentingly unvariegated design.
Beyond these formal clearings are hunting grounds, orchards, wildlife refuge areas, camping grounds and even an experimental Pleistocene Park. One can still detect the outlines and landforms of the old park system, but they're now mostly bramble patches dotted with the ruins of fountains.
All forms of dwelling are strictly prohibited, not even housing for park rangers on duty. However, the homeless and the hermits occasionally manage to avoid detection. When they are discovered, the homeless are swiftly evicted, their hovels razed to the ground. On the other hand, the hermits merely get a warning, because their authentic hermitages have become fashionable landscape accessories again.
While the process of ecological succession took a while, the desired climax community was reached in record time with the use of expert wilderness management strategies.
Encircling this 145,400-acre urban park is the successor city, thickly encrusted on a thin but continuous band of annexed suburban territory and sand nourished coastline. Separating the two is the new Michigan Avenue, still flower-potted and Art Nouveau-lighted but serviced with the longest subway line in the world. This grand boulevard has been tasked with the monumental job of stopping the city's sheer, vertiginous cliff-like streetwall (a mile-high in some places) from creeping into the woods.
Within are cabinets de verdure, or “rooms” cut into the woodland; the big cultural events take place here. They are all connected together by a network of allées, which are lined with topiaries of unrelentingly unvariegated design.
Beyond these formal clearings are hunting grounds, orchards, wildlife refuge areas, camping grounds and even an experimental Pleistocene Park. One can still detect the outlines and landforms of the old park system, but they're now mostly bramble patches dotted with the ruins of fountains.
All forms of dwelling are strictly prohibited, not even housing for park rangers on duty. However, the homeless and the hermits occasionally manage to avoid detection. When they are discovered, the homeless are swiftly evicted, their hovels razed to the ground. On the other hand, the hermits merely get a warning, because their authentic hermitages have become fashionable landscape accessories again.
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