Airports, like railroads and highways, have had a large impact on the economy and the physical form of urban regions. Once built, they tend to cause a major re-ordering of the entire life of the metropolis. Nowhere has this been truer than in Chicago. And nowhere are the stakes higher if public authorities fail to reinvest sufficiently in them.

Robert Bruegmann is an historian of architecture, landscape and the built environment. He received his BA from Principia College in 1970 and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976 with a dissertation on late 18th and early 19th century European hospitals and other institutions. In 1977 he became assistant professor in the Art History Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he is currently Professor with appointments in the School of Architecture and the Program in Urban Planning and Policy. He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of the Arts, MIT and Columbia University. He has also worked for the Historic American Buildings Survey and Historic American Engineering Record of the National Park Service.

Recorded Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at Chicago Architecture Foundation.