BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER
Mapping the historic dunes hidden beneath the surface of Chicago.
FROM THE FEBRUARY 2017 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.
A few years ago, Mary Pat McGuire, ASLA, became fascinated by the South Side of Chicago?or rather, with what was beneath it. She was flying back to the East Coast often, leaving from Midway Airport, and she started to notice ?really interesting patterns along the coastline that looked like stripes, ridges along the shore. They were some kind of remnant,? she says, describing the landscape south of the city. ?I just started to wonder, ?What?s really going on here" What was this place"??
McGuire, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was already familiar with the South Side?s more recent history of white flight, shuttered industry, and disinvestment. Now, she became interested in the area?s geologic history, and how it might be put to work. The landforms she spied from the air prompted McGuire to look at early soil maps made by the U.S. Geological Survey. What she found were the ghosts of Lake Michigan?s shoreline: giant sand deposits, old dunes, just inches below the surface but as much as 25 feet deep, hiding beneath the surface of the city. The discovery has spurred a multifaceted research project that rethinks the materiality of cities? surfaces. McGuire sees the asphalt and concrete layer that covers much of Chicago as a ?hard scab? that obscures th...