Perhaps no American city rose so meteorically from farm field to industrial giant as Chicago. Just some sixty years after the city was first platted, the World’s Columbian Exposition brought travelers from around the globe to this dynamo, this behemoth of production. Smokestacks belched here and there, hogs were slaughtered by the thousands in the stockyards, and commodities were traded downtown. The glory of the World’s Fair and the beauty of Lake Michigan contrasted with the heft of freight ships and locomotives.

What happens as a city loses its connection to the land?