In my mid-20s, after growing up largely in the rural south and then attending university in Washington, D.C., I visited Chicago for business, staying downtown a few blocks from Lake Michigan, which was already dancing with ice in early December. There are limits on building heights in Washington, and Chicago was the first truly big city I had visited. The experience was a bit overwhelming, tinged with “batophobia,” the fear of being in or near tall buildings. Indeed, standing on those cold, windswept sidewalks of the Windy City, gusts almost blowing me over, I felt the whole city might come tumbling down on me like bowling pins.
Twenty years later, including a decade of living in Shanghai, I revisited Chicago for a conference. And what occurred to me then was how incredibly small it
