Gravel piles, Charlotte, NC

A very complex tangle of conveyors and gravel piles at a sand and gravel company near Charlotte.

Duplex overload, Charlotte, NC

So many, many duplexes, so tightly packed together.

Patchy semicircles, Charlotte, NC

This development is unusual, in that the unbuilt houses are distributed in a patchy and asymmetric structure. My suspicion is that this is a place that sold lots for construction, but then has had something go wrong that caused people who bought lots to change their minds about actually going through with building.

Machines at work, Charlotte, NC

Well, not exactly at work, but clustered up to resume their work in the morning, extending this suburban housing development.

Three-legged development, Charlotte, NC

A three-legged shape sketching this development-to-be.

Circular development, Charlotte, NC

An unusual circular development, building step by step clockwise around its planned sweep.

Circled waters, Charlotte, NC

Something strange and artificial is going on in this pond, making broad white circles.

Cluster lighting, Arlington, VA

A cluster of lighting, dripping color downward toward the floor.

Crossing escalators, Arlington, VA

Two escalators crossing in a gleaming X.

Ballston mural, Arlington, VA

Down to the Ballston food court, a vivid mural of food and flowers.

Open-air mall, Arlington, VA

Once closed, the Ballston Mall has now been pulled inside out to be open to the sky.

Condos to the sky, Arlington, VA

Condos soaring high into the sky above the Ballston Mall in Arlington, Virginia.

Three curves, Washington, DC

I like this building's architecture, with three different curves interlacing with one another.

Reflecting walls, Washington DC

Buildings reflecting in the walls of another, higher glass-walled building.

World War 2 Memorial, Washington, DC

The oval region here before the reflecting pool is the World War 2 memorial. Having been there, it is a pleasing space and design, but somewhat disappointing in terms of impact, more celebrating American glory than reflecting on the costs that go along with it.

Washington Monument, DC

Looking down the National Mall, through the Washington Monument to the Capitol Building.

Osterman Beach, Chicago

A densely packed beach on the North side of Chicago, shaped and protected by its breakwater.

Floating party, Chicago shores

A floating party off the shores of Chicago, with a bunch of boats lashed together and people lounging on inflatable boats nearby.

Shipping warehouse in construction, Chicagoland

Big shipping warehouses are typically all about the rows and rows of truck ports. Even in construction, they are appearing from the moment the walls go up.

Sewage processing plant, Chicagoland

Sewage processing plans always make me think of clocks, with their open circular tanks with long catwalks out into the middle that looks like clock hands to me.

Dry basins, Chicagoland

Idle settling basins, mostly dry of water and thus exposing their oddly colored sludgy bottoms.

Straight and wavy, Chicagoland

People generally like meandering paths, and so some architect appears to have decided that this development should therefore have non-straight paths connecting these houses, even though the area is perfectly flat and open and the houses themselves are in perfectly straight lines.

Tetris maze, Chicagoland

This apparently abandoned development makes me think of a maze or Tetris blocks.

Greenhouses, Chicagoland

Many, many greenhouses of different sizes and patterns in a dense complex on the outskirts of Chicago. I suspect they are growing high-value unseasonal crops like baby lettuce or hothouse tomatoes.

Chair development, Chicagoland

Development with roadways shaped like a rocking chair.

Go-Kart Farm, Chicagoland

This complex on the Western edge of the Chicago region appears to be a tourist-friendly combination of farm and go-kart track.

Colorful offices, Maryland

Colorful windows on an office building in Maryland. I wonder what the tinting looks like from the inside the actual offices (which could be quite odd), or whether they've managed to make it just an optical effect from the outside.

Hotel paneling, Shady Grove, Maryland

Fun and unusual geometric patterning in a Maryland hotel.

Curving neighborhood, Baltimore, MD

Curving bubbles on the alien sigil of this development's pattern of cul-de-sacs.

Parallel docks, Baltimore, MD

Along this stretch of coast, every house appears to have its own long parallel dock stretching out to sea.

Offshore extension, Baltimore, MD

An unusual pinkish color marks this as not just a dock, but a constructed and paved extension of the land out into the harbor, with no function but to be a pleasing walk and observation point for visitors of this park.

Elaborate shell of docks, Maryland

Another flight, another trip, this one bringing me down into Baltimore, where land and sea tangle together in intricate patterns of settlement. On this particular tendril of harbor, the development at top is served by an elaborate shell of docks, presumably pushing out from too-shallow tidal areas to where boats may always safely dock.

Lower Manhattan, NYC

Speaking of distinctive skylines, Lower Manhattan is less so from the air, but still absolutely unmistakeable for me. I always love when a flight brings me within range of this remarkable artifice of human activity.

Great Kills Harbor, NJ

The near-perfect oval and symmetry of Great Kills Harbor both marks its human-shaped history and also makes it a pleasing aesthetic sight for my eyes.

Downtown Philadelphia

Downtown Philadelphia's tower farm, more dispersed and less iconic than that of many other great cities of the US. Historically, Philadelphia was a late developer of skyscrapers, with no building allowed to surpass the statue of William Penn atop its city hall until the 1980s. Since then, ten higher skyscrapers have been built, but none have really had a chance to impress themselves on our media consciousness in the way that those in places in New York, Chicago, or San Francisco have, and there are no truly unique and unusual features like one finds in Seattle or Paris.

Southport Auto Terminal, Philadelphia, PA

And this is where all of the imported cars for the region enter and are stored, with each of the tight-packed whitish squares a block of dozens waiting for dispatch to their final destinations. The place can apparently accommodate 24,000 cars all told.

Chemical trades, Philadelphia, PA

A world of fuel and/or other chemical storage at the Bramell Point terminal, just downstream of Philadelphia city center on the New Jersey side of the river.

Philadelphia Airport

Philadelphia's airport, its terminal a single long comb rather than the more intricate or dispersed structures found in many other major airports.

Poplar Island, Maryland

We've visited the curiously geometric Poplar Island previously: on this flight, I managed to get a more detailed picture, showing that some of the structures in the white region on the left appear to have evolved, becoming more complex, in the two years between the first picture (2017) and this one (2019).

Roller coaster, Charlotte, NC

Another view, emphasizing instead the smaller, darker coaster below the tall blue one.

Roller coaster, Charlotte, NC

I love how roller coasters look from the air: nothing else have the same sort of skeletal three-dimensionality.

Water park, Charlotte, NC

A large water park near Charlotte, with wave pools at left and right (distinguished by their asymmetry to a focus at the bottom), a tangle of water slides in the middle, and a lazy river at the top.

Clockwise progression, Charlotte, NC

At 12 o'clock, the development is old and established, at 3 o'clock new but inhabited (judging by tree distributions), at 5 o'clock houses are in construction, while 7 sees only finished roads and at 10 the roads are still raw earth.

Layers and grades of settlement, Charlotte, NC

At the lower half of this development, the natural gentle slope of the land is being graded and restructured into flat layers simpler to build upon, rather than just conforming the houses to the curve. In Iowa, where the fractal watercourse nature of the land means nearly everything is sloped, the style is instead to have houses with a different number of stories in back and front.

Tendril cul-de-sacs, Charlotte, NC

Five long stems of cul-de-sac emerge from a partial development near Charlotte.

Blooming tendrils, Charlotte, NC

The branching lines of this development stem out from the root / entrance at right in a way that makes me think of a growing plant.

Pads at every stage of development, Charlotte, NC

This development shows housing pads at every stage of development, from barely cleared to concrete slap to balloon frame to finished structure.

Development in progress, Charlotte, NC

A curving pi on the left in the red North Carolina earth marks this development in progress.

Linear terrain in the Appalachians.jpg

Long low ridge-lines in the middle Appalachians, likely somewhere near the long line of Interstate 81, which follows these parallel folds of land all the way from Knoxville, on the eastern edge of Tennessee, up the western border of Virginia and through the narrow neck of West Virginia into Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  We drove this line once a few years ago, and the countryside is beautiful from the ground as well.

Appalachian fog

On this early morning flight from Iowa to Charlotte, North Carolina, the fog lay beautifully in certain wet valleys of the Appalachian mountains.