Toll plaza near Chicago

The bulging roadway of a toll plaza near Chicago, with cash to the edges and an uninterrupted flow of open-road tolling in the middle. As plate recognizing is improving, I've been noticing a number of cities starting to remove even the option of cash tolls. Perhaps in twenty years the next generation will never have even seen a toll plaza, and these bulges will all be turned into rest areas.

Inflated arenas near Chicago

Inflated sports arenas, good cheap structures for playing things like tennis inside during the winter---at least as long as there's not a snow that's heavy enough to pop it.

Concrete pipe facility near Chicago

A storage yard full of concrete pipes in various sizes, ready to become culverts and such throughout the surrounding area.

Grand Victoria Casino, Elgin, IL

A riverboat casino near Chicago, permanently docked yet still benefitting from the unusual laws common through the Mississippi watershed, which allow gambling in floating establishments but not on land.

Golf community near Chicago

To me, the most curious of all suburban communities are those wrapped intimately around the curves of golf courses. I used to always wonder what sort of people and lifestyle choices are such that proximity to a golf course was a primary decision in their choice of housing location. But then, a family that we are quite close to has made exactly that choice, and knowing their basis I can no more critique them than I would critique the choice of a family who wished to live next to a pond or a playground. The class implications, however, still make my skin crawl.

Chicagoland development

Another spidering pattern of bulbous cul-de-sacs.

Chicagoland development

Short and flat with only a couple of meaningful bulges, this development is simplified by the compression of individual homes into multi-unit townhouses.