The New Yorker this week re-prints a classic 1987 article by John McPhee, on New Orleans and its strange topography - and it's really so good, so unbelievably interesting, from an architecture/landscape engineering/future catastrophe standpoint, that it's hard to imagine anyone doing better than this, almost literally ever. I'm in awe, frankly. One example, explaining ground level shifts due to rainwater pumping: "The property sinks another foot. The house stays where it is, on its slab and pilings. A ramp is built to get the car into the carport. The ramp rises three feet. But the yard, before long, has subsided four. The carport becomes a porch, with hanging plants and steep wooden steps. A carport that is not firmly anchored may dangle from the side of a house like a third of a drop-leaf table. Under the house, daylight appears. You can see under the slab and out the other side. More landfill or more concrete is packed around the edges to hide the ugly scene. A gas main, broken by the settling earth, leaks below the slab. The sealed cavity fills with gas. The house blows sky high." New Orleans as animated hydrological-Wagnerian stageset (as designed by Edward Gordon Craig)...