This is the cookie-cutter landscape in which I grew up. I was lucky - my neighborhood, south of that main road you see running E-W in yellow, was covered in trees, a large lake, and [slightly] curving streets, unlike my neighbors to the North. But the houses were the same split floor plans, one- to two-car garages, some with pools, repeated ad nauseum with the occasional deviation in plan, color, and style.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how landscape works, and how it is crafted and manipulated. Is it merely a matter of convenience that we concoct these suburban landscapes of the same, over and over again? A purely economical motive? Or is it a deep-set desire for sameness, and the familiarity that comes with it?
And ultimately, how does this contrast with what we know about antiquity? How much more often did the Greeks and Romans work with the landscape instead of against it when building not only their homes but their sacred places?
