Photos From the Sky Show Chicago's Transformation

Lawrence Okrent, a planning and zoning consultant who moonlights as an aerial photographer, has put together a series of "before" and "after" pictures that document how Chicago has changed over the last 25 years.

The Chicago trib has a nice write-up on the photos and the book that Okrent has put together (“Chicago From the Sky: A Region Transformed” Books Press, $49.50, hardcover, 245 pp.).  The paper says, "Okrent’s images are sharp and his text is lucid, shedding light on little-known corners of the region. Who knew, for example, that the number of single-story distribution buildings along the Stevenson Expressway skyrocketed from 12 in 1999 to 193 in 2009 — or that low tax rates in Will County contributed to this little-noticed boomlet (above and left)? Okrent illustrates and explains this change to the landscape with admirable succinctness, writing that the area shifted from “farmland to big boxes in less than a generation.”

Here are some of the photos.

Steve Clowney