Manicured Spaces Without People

Barley, a dog, walks along the perimeter of a marking lot in a space that doesn’t seem natural, but is also devoid of signs of habitation.

Every international airport has a halo of weirdly depopulated spaces. This is for many reasons. Planes require a ton of space to store and maintain. Shipping hubs require huge sorting and warehousing facilities. And most of all, housing developers aren’t going to screw their own potential property values by building within earshot of planes landing and taking off at all hours. Where there are people at all, they’re usually limited to the hotel chains and outlet malls. There are no neighborhoods in these places, no neighbors. There are few sidewalks - why would anyone be on foot in a place like this, when every hotel has a shuttle service?

One of the consequences of this weird mix of heavily developed and practically unlivable is that there is so little human detritus. Walk in any normal neighborhood, even a nice one, and you’ll see some signs of humans passing through. A bit of litter, perhaps, or a flyer that came loose from someone’s front door and now wanders free with the wind. Some signs of yard work or a cheeky sign. Not in the Airport Hinterlands. I’ve never felt further from civilization while standing on concrete amid well-kept landscaping.