If you take the Acela train from Baltimore to New York, you travel up the spine of the eastern Megalopolis of the United States. Aside from some rural areas of north east Maryland, cityscape cling to either side of the tracks. And perhaps because it is well past the hey-day of rail transport in the U.S., there is no longer an observably right side of the tracks.
The rails run through the industrial and post industrial areas outlying the major cities on the east coast - Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton, NYC, all the way up to Boston. Frequently, on either side of the train, you may see the costs of our lifestyle - great landfills, vast junk yards, and immense factories looking more gaunt and shattered than any sacked cathedral.
Taken in analogous areas of the Pacific Northwest, the photographs of Chris Jordan document one of this cost of consumerism: the toll in space and landscape of the the aggregate of individual purchases. (Via Metafilter)
