Margot Lystra is a PhD candidate in the history of architecture and urban development at Cornell University, and holds a master of landscape architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a bachelor of arts in biology from Swarthmore College. She has taught landscape architectural design, representation, and theory at California Polytechnic State University—San Luis Obispo and University of Detroit Mercy. Her work has been published in Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, Journal of Design History, and The Next American City. As a designer she has worked for CMG Landscape Architecture, the Detroit Collaborative Design Center, and various San Francisco–based landscape architecture firms.