That Summer Fields Grew High provided a guided urban drift through St. Louis’ near north side neighborhoods of Old North St. Louis, St. Louis Place and Carr Square Village. These are areas where over half of the buildings ever built were erased, leaving wide open areas with conditions ranging from grassy lots to row-crop corn fields to the forest of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project site. This drift presented the opportunity for participants to craft a collective imaginary in which the abundance of open space was in fact realizing urban vitality, rather than representing undesirable loss. The dichotomy between “the city” and “vacant land” misses several points in between where other conditions exist or are possible.
