Every day, as I climb the stoop of a beautiful old Brooklyn brownstone, open the door, and enter my sublet apartment, I come across an impressive map of Manhattan Island from the eighteenth century (Figure 1). Part of my everyday landscape in New York City, this map serves a purpose: it reminds me of the backstory of the made lands, intricately interwoven with water, wetlands, and marshlands—features that are no longer easily recognizable in the city today, at least in Manhattan. When I first...