What if Chicago took a wrong turn in 1972 when, in the spirit of civic grandee Daniel Burnham (“Make no little plans”), it opted to build the world’s largest sewers instead of making all possible efforts to keep rainwater out of them? Scott Bernstein, the founder of the
Center for Neighborhood Technology, says that the Deep Tunnel imposed a massive opportunity cost because the city and the district did little else to adapt. The MWRD spent billions on what engineers call “gray infrastructure” (pipes, tanks, pumps) and virtually nothing on “green infrastructure”: rain barrels, detention ponds, green roofs, porous pavements, and other adaptations that would have kept water out of the system…Please click here to read Henry Grabar’s story, “Tunnel Vision,” in Slate. Warning: This story contains language that may offend some readers.