The urban landscape not only describes land, buildings, roads, biological life, and culture but also a system of infrastructure that has been engineered to support human values. Some of this infrastructure is hidden, buried underground, but some is very exposed though often goes unseen. It is the web of electric, telephone and cable wires that have been cast over our urban space.

Our homes and work places and even some of our busses and trains are tethered to this web. The web runs our building’s lights and our home’s refrigerators. It allows us to communicate with one another without moving. It runs our traffic lights and supports our traffic signs. It stretches along and across almost every street in this country’s urban landscape creating a transparent, but very real, ceiling above the streets we travel.

The web is supported by a grid of poles, wires, and fasteners. Together, the wires and poles imply a tent covering our streetscapes under which we drive, bike, walk and run. The supporting poles are made of wood or metal and, though they primarily support the mess of wires above, they also offer a place to hang signs and put lights. Wooden poles are dipped in creasote and tar to prevent their rot and buried into the earth and secured by poured concrete. The poles, like their natural counterparts (trees), eventually get old and fall over. We use fasteners and wires to shore them up and prevent their premature demise. Metal poles are fastened to the earth by industrial sized lug nuts (I’ve never seen a metal pole leaning over, threatening to fall). These poles offer a second, probably unintended, function to society. They are places for people to post messages: cities post official signs, opportunistic businesses use them to advertise, and individuals and groups use them to post announcements of sales and events.

So why, if so many of us rely on this web and the functions that it supports, does it go so unnoticed? Perhaps because of its relative transparency or because of its ubiquitous presence in the landscape or perhaps its because we don’t look up enough.