Census Dotmap

A New Humanism Part 2 (Robert Lamb Hart via Metropolis)

"And the practices and results envisioned in the modern movement – the neo-classicisms, organic architecture, new urbanism, post-modernism, placemaking, green building, and many other sensible ideas – have proven to hold great promise. The problem remains, though, that applications of these approaches and styles, in practice, tend to explore too narrowly the actual human experience of the places that are built. While these places may or may not deal brilliantly with functional and technical issues or display an intellectual rigor, they still tend to become focused more on the personal drive for expression by the designers, the “producers” and their design and business processes, than on the thought-out impressions and subjective experience of the “consumers.” They concentrate on the attributes of their products rather than the responses of the people who use them. Creative ideas are too often about the striking image, the style-makers, theories, manifestos, celebrity or a quick-fix, more than “what is it like to be there?”

The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit (Andrew Herscher via Design Observer)

"The enclosure of commons was a key component of the development of capitalism, a means to incorporate collective open space into property regimes and profit-making processes. [9] In this regard unreal estate provides a lens through which to see how a decline in the exchange value of property can encourage the undoing of enclosures and the creation of possibilities for new sorts of commons — a commons neither designed nor intended, but rather a collateral result of the extraction of capital."

The Real Estate Deal that Could Change the Future of Everything (Atlantic Cities)

Under a new company called Fundrise, the Millers invited anyone in the area – accredited or not – to invest online in this one building and its future business for shares as small as $100, in a public offering qualified by the Securities and Exchange Commission. By the time the deal closed last week, 175 people had together invested $325,000, for just under a third of the whole project. If the rest of this experiment works like the Millers hope it will, the idea embedded in this one unassuming storefront could have an impact on communities everywhere.

Chicago's Urban Farm District Could be the Biggest in the Nation (Grist)

"In the coming weeks, the city’s planning department is expected to approve the creation of a green belt with a strong focus on urban agriculture within the neighborhood of Englewood. The plan is an element of Chicago’s Department of Housing and Economic Development’s (DHE) Green Healthy Neighborhoods initiative, designed to shepherd and foster redevelopment in 13 square miles of the South Side. Years of disinvestment and population decline have left the area riddled with 11,000 vacant lots totaling 800 acres."

The Political Geography of 21st Century America

2012 will likely be recognized as a more pivotal moment in the history of America than 2008. Despite a weak economy, despite voter suppression, despite the unprecedented amount of corporate money supporting Mitt Romney's blatantly dishonest and cynical campaign, The United States re-elected President Barack Obama and symbolically rejected radical Republican social and economic ideology. Of course the Democratic victory was not universal. The United States is a culturally and economically divided nation. Geographically we are most clearly divided between diverse urban areas and conservative rural and ex-urban counties.

Since the 1960's the Democratic Party has promoted civil rights policies that have absorbed new social groups into its electorate while the Republicans have increasingly become a party that derives its energy from white backlash and religious fundamentalism while promoting economic policies that primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans. Republicans re-framed the national debate over the role of government by ideologically tying the basic initiatives of the New Deal and social safety net (education, health care, poverty assistance)  to urban minorities. For forty years the Republican narrative has repeatedly reinforced an idea that the "Real America" of white, rural and suburbanites are the true source of our national prosperity that they are perpetually burdened by an undeserving poor, urban, minority population.

Republican mythology has of course ignored the Federal Government's overwhelming promotion of suburban middle class life through home loan guarantees, tax deductions and highly subsidized infrastructure and gas. The lily white suburban dream would never have been a realistic possibility for the majority of Americans without massive federal support. It was always a dream - fueled momentarily by cheap energy and a consumption based economy. Mass suburbanization was, in many ways, a 60 year experiment in economic stimulation through physical expansion, over-consumption and debt accumulation. That dream, the white suburban dream, is over.

Picket Fence Apocalypse (Charles M. Blow, NYTimes)

The Real Reason Cities Lean Democratic (Atlantic Cities)

The Techies Who Helped Re-Elect Obama (The Atlantic)

No Southern Comfort for Wishful Liberals (The New Republic)

Image Source

The Belly of an Architecture (CLARISSA SEBAG-MONTEFIORE)
"The people of Beijing seem excited about how their city is being shaped. And so they should be. Architecture in China today is bold and unapologetic.

But it embodies China’s rapid growth in less positive ways, too. Although the industry is buoyant these days, its long-term benefits for the people who live here are questionable. Too often, form trumps function."

Scarcity contra Austerity (Design Observer)

"We live in an age of austerity; or, rather, we are told that we live in an age of austerity. In the United States and throughout Europe, austerity is presented as a necessary stricture, and the mantra “cuts now, growth later” is repeated so steadily that it seems an inevitability, with consequences ranging from the personal (shortened shopping lists) to the public (cutbacks in major civic projects). As a discipline that spans the private-public spectrum, architecture inevitably is bound to this new regime, and so it is not surprising that the machinations of economic austerity are being played out in the mainstream of contemporary building."

Jeanne Gang Interview (Wall Street Journal)

"The truth is that cities and nature are completely intertwined, and we should find ways to make them seamless. With the human population now at seven billion and climbing, cities have become huge territories that don't allow the passage of other species through them. What's interesting to me is figuring out how closely we can get these two communities to intersect, so that animals can have their territory while at the same time increasing and concentrating the human population. We can bring seams of nature—like veins—through the middle of the city."

Generation Whine: Self-pitying Twentysomethings And The Boomers Who Made Them (The New Republic)

“Girls” is part portrait and part send-up of a particular type: relatively privileged, newly ejected from the liberal arts bubble, armed with an expectation that the world will react to their quest for fulfillment with appreciative patience. And one reason the show struck such a chord was surely that its real-life inspiration is everywhere right now. A steady stream of articles and books is constantly reminding us that today’s young people, the recession’s unlucky children, are experiencing their twenties as an unprecedented period of paralyzing limbo."

City Colleges Doing the Right Thing? (Crain's)

"Ms. Hyman dubs her strategy Reinvention. Its aim, she says, is to award students with an occupational certificate or associate's degree that has value in the job market or at a four-year university."

Stress and the city: Urban decay (Nature Journal)

Scientists are testing the idea that the stress of modern city life is a breeding ground for psychosis.

"Identifying which parts of a busy city life are the most stressful is another massive challenge (see 'Stress and the city'). The common urban experience of feeling different from your neighbours because of socioeconomic status or ethnicity could be one factor, Meyer-Lindenberg thinks. If so, immigrant groups, who often experience isolation, may be processing stress in a similar way to city-dwellers."

The Face of Decline (Richard Longworth)

"...Leave Manhattan and the Loop, head east from Seattle or north from the Bos-wash Corridor, hit the interstates through the Midwest and the South, plunge into the empty and echoing hearts of Detroit or Cleveland or the arid reaches of the Great Plains, and another America emerges."

The Perils of Rust Belt Memes (Richey Piiparinene, Atlantic Cities)

"Ruin!" versus "Revival!" narratives are mesofacts— broad, flexible yet significant beliefs about places or peoples. Mesofacts influence perceptions, which drive behaviors, which affect how places are cared for, praised, derided, or left for dead. When we package the idea of a Rust Belt death and rebirth with superficial themes, people on the ground are left to clean up the mess.

Dreaming Big Along the River (Chicago Sun-Times)

"Putting aside the question of funding, there was much to like about the conceptual ideas released Monday, which responded to requests for proposals dating back to the Daley administration. The designs, based partly on community input over the past few years, reveal something that would be uniquely Chicago, not simply copied from riverwalks elsewhere.

Money remains an issue. But we’re glad it hasn’t stopped Chicago from thinking big."

Debunking City Lists & Rankings

One of the symptoms of professional journalism's decline is an increasing reversion to lists and rankings for various news items and cultural events. These lists seem to pop up with greater frequency toward the end of the year (Top moments in reality TV, top moments in the presidential campaigns, top songs of the year, etc.) The primary reason for this is simply that informative, investigative journalism requires either expertise or a great deal of research - both of which are expensive. The days of in-depth reporting - of journalists who knew the characters and dynamics of the places they lived - are almost history. Apart from cities that have large enough populations to support alternative newspapers and websites, local journalism itself is almost history.

For large national publications with writers who are experts at nothing in particular - it is far easier, cheaper and more profitable to do a cursory glance at some statistics and generate a list or ranking based on an excel metric. The places that we live and work are not immune to this obtuse, shallow form of data-smog. Not a week goes by without a major news source publishing a meaningless list with a couple paragraphs of shallow observation. Travel magazines do this frequently, but so do publications like Forbes and Atlantic Cities. Apart from clear quantitative analysis measures like population, ethnicity, income distribution, etc. (things that the Census measures) - the vast majority of the lists that masquerade as information about cities are completely meaningless. Lists for the "happiest, coolest, most well-educated" or "best" - are laughably immaterial.

Not only are many of these qualities subjective, the lists themselves are often comparing apples to oranges. The most egregious error that almost every list makes is to rank cities in absolute terms (the most creative) when measuring by relative statistics - the average number of Starbucks per person. This relative measure automatically rules out any city of significant socio-economic diversity and ignores the effects of critical mass. A small college town may have more Starbucks per person than New York, but it certainly doesn't have the critical mass of relationships and talent to invent in the same manner.

Everything depends on how one defines a city - or what you would call a "population" in statistics. Is a city defined by municipal limits or an entire metropolitan area? Either way there are huge problems comparing cities in different parts of the country (with different historical circumstances) to each other. For example; older cities of the North and Upper Midwest were the first to by hemmed in by Home Rule laws that allowed townships and small municipalities to prevent annexation by the central city. No such limitation exists on newer cities like Houston, that continue to annex their periphery into already sprawling municiple boundaries. Thus, through historical development patterns different cities encompass different scopes and mixtures of their overall metropolitan population. Many older cities, like Chicago, remain defined as much by their working class neighborhoods and slums as they are by their beautifully gentrified quarters.

As a result of college towns and geographically small, extensively gentrified cities like Boston, San Francisco and Seattle tend to dominate "livability" measures. America's largest, most diverse cities - New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are almost always near the bottom of these lists and rankings - even though they each contain several neighborhoods that, if considered independently, would out-rank their smaller competitors by leaps and bounds. For example; you can fit Boston (48 sq. mi) and Manhattan (22 sq. mi) inside the city limits of Chicago (227 sq. mi) and still have room left over for Detroit (138 sq. mi). Incidentally Boston + Manhattan + Detroit roughly equals Chicago in population. Los Angeles is geographically the size of two Chicagos. Houston and Phoenix are both as big as Los Angeles and Detroit combined.

Large cities with large working class and poor populations inevitably score poorly on these lists precisely because the they target the kind of generic qualities that define upper middle class urbanity. They say nothing of a city's character, its history, its assets or its opportunities. Lists say nothing about the relationships and networks of people and capital that define the city.

Almost every list suffers from confirmation bias - or the tendency to favor information that confirms preexisting beliefs. The creation of a city list or ranking probably says more about the perceptions of the publication or author than it does about the cities in question. Each lists reveals the criteria that a publication deems relevant to the definition of whatever quality they're ranking. The bias and subjectivity of these findings was most egregious in a recent "Coolest Cities" list created by Forbes. Houston certainly come to most people's mind when thinking of a cool city, but Forbes, a conservative financial magazine has clear motivations behind picking a bland, sprawling, southern "Red" city ahead of traditionally urban, liberal oasis. To achieve this "cool city" coup they simply used metrics like unemployment rate, age of home ownership and population growth - which have more to do with job growth and affordability than anything else.

The point, once again, is obviously not to report or inform us about the condition of metropolitan America - it is to call our attention to relatively meaningless bits of information that confirm rather than challenge the reader's perception of cities. Forbes doesn't want all of its conservative suburban readers feeling uncool while they tour the golf course, so it tells them what they want to hear - that they're just as cool - actually, this year they're cooler - than the fashion whores in New York City. Of course, in my book both of them are lame.

Almost every list, in other words, is bullshit. Unfortunately its often the only substitute people have for any real knowledge about America's cities.

The G.O.P., Anti-Urbanism and the Demonization of Obama

How the G.O.P. Became the Anti-Urban Party (Kevin Baker, NY Times)

"For Republicans, cities now became object lessons on the shortcomings of activist government and the welfare state — sinkholes of crime and social dysfunction, where Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens” cavorted in their Cadillacs. The very idea of the city seemed to be a thing of the past, an archaic concept"

Mr. Baker had nice piece in the Sunday New York Times, but it only begins to scratch the surface the G.O.P.'s demonization of all things urban. America has a long history of anti-urbanism. For most of our history popular folklore has idealized rural life and frontier adventure while making urban life the repository of everything implicitly un-American, corrupt and evil.

Since the Civil Rights Movement the G.O.P. has persistantly projected the blame for social and economic problems away from "Middle America" to everyone that is not white, suburban, Christian and conservative. The "people that are ruining our country" are thus all implicitly urban; immigrants, minorities, homosexuals, intellectual elites and so on. Barack Obama, a former community organizer, an intellectual, a Chicago resident and a clear product of our country's mixed racial heritage personifies everything that confuses and scares the Right-Wing. It's no wonder that, despite Obama's objectively moderate polices, Republicans have literally done everything they can to demonize and de-legitimize his presidency for the last four years. As the 2012 presidential campaign has entered the final month, Mitt Romney has resorted to grossly distorting, if not out-right lying, about Obama's record while evading the truth about his own platform.

Chicago, the President's home town and the heart of the Democratic Party, has come to occupy the center of the G.O.P.'s anti-urban rhetoric. Republican politicians continuously characterize Obama as a member of the "Chicago Machine" - which is laughable to those who know anything about Chicago politics. Obama is no machine boss. He's an academic who's consistently caught in an abyss between opposing forces that very few of his supporters or enemies understand.

Fear of a Black President (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

"In a democracy, so the saying goes, the people get the government they deserve. Part of Obama’s genius is a remarkable ability to soothe race consciousness among whites. Any black person who’s worked in the professional world is well acquainted with this trick. But never has it been practiced at such a high level, and never have its limits been so obviously exposed. This need to talk in dulcet tones, to never be angry regardless of the offense, bespeaks a strange and compromised integration indeed, revealing a country so infantile that it can countenance white acceptance of blacks only when they meet an Al Roker standard."

Obama's Power Problem (Rick Perlstein, Chicago Mag)

"Both political traditions—that of the Democratic machine and that of the idealistic reformer—can successfully confer power. But what has become increasingly clear is that Obama has not harnessed the potential flowing from either. Indeed, the president’s biggest problem, come the election on November 6, isn’t that he’s too Chicago. It’s that he’s not Chicago enough."

Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, the G.O.P.'s imaginary Obama remains a foreign-born, communist, Chicago ward boss that shared stogies with Saul Alinksy and David Ayres. This mythology is geared toward making Obama far more radical and threatening than he really is. This strategy is very effective in stoking the hatered the G.O.P.'s base of old, reactionary white people but falls on def years to younger generations. The "silent majority" that left the city decades ago may still have strong anti-urban sentiments, but their children are increasingly positive about city life.

Urbanity doesn't imply the same things that it did 30 years ago. Today it represents everything that is current, dynamic, diverse and interesting about contemporary American life. Increasing numbers of young people are not only moving to cities, they're beginning to invest and raise families there. There are still inner city ghettos and bombed-out shells of once great cities - but even they have become cool in the next generation's search for authenticity. The script has flipped. The most desirable lifestyle isn't in the suburbs, its in the heart of cities like New York, San Francisco and Chicago. The new frontier isn't the suburbs, its Detroit.

Many suburbs are now as racially and economically diverse as cities. They may not be "urban" in the traditional sense, but they tend to have much more in common with the central city than its rural hinterlands. By defining itself as so strongly anti-urban the G.O.P. has become increasingly marginalized to a core group of mostly old, white, rural/exurban evangelical voters.

A Tale of Two Conventions (Mother Jones)

"At the Tampa arena, many GOP delegates oozed entitlement and privilege. When Ann Romney proclaimed, "This is our country"—and the crowd cheered—it didn't come across as a moment celebrating inclusion."

A President for Cities (Brad Lander, Huffington Post)

"Democrats embrace and invest in cities. We recognize and value them as places of extraordinary vitality, where jobs are created, where diversity and tolerance are fostered, where immigrants are welcomed, and where those "obligations to one another" are addressed."

The present division of the parties - one urban and cosmopolitan, the other rural and reactionary - has created a tragic paralysis at time when our country needs foresight and long-term solutions more than ever.

Cities have always been the engine of civilization. They encompass our triumphs and our tragedies, they represent the best and worst of human nature. America's great experiment with suburbia was motivated as much by a desire to escape from our problems as it was an attempt to find a better life. In fact, in America "better life" has too often been a euphemism for an avoidance of responsibility. The G.O.P.'s repeated appeal to anti-urban mythologies and reactionary, right-wing policies is nothing less than an attempt to perpetuate a daydream of irresponsibility. The Party's answer to solving the problems of society is to leave it behind - to escape from civilization to a private utopia of consumption. This will do nothing but hasten our decline. The answer is not to leave, not to escape, not to lie to ourselves, but to return - to face reality, to dig in and to rebuild our nation. This must begin, as it always has, in the City.

Tenants flee suburban office parks (Crain's)

"Highs and lows are a part of real estate, but the ongoing recovery in Chicago differs in one big way from past cycles: Better times have yet to commute out of the city."

The RTA is the solution, not the problem (Greg Hinz, Crain's)

"The core problem is, and always has been, money, mixed with the desire of Chicago Democrats and suburban Republicans to each hold the reins of power and patronage."

Why We Love Derrick Rose

While its certainly over-dramatic and it may be building too much hype for the return of Derrick Rose, there's a new Adidas commercial that certainly captures something about the sentiment that Chicago feels towards its basketball superstar. In only a couple of years we've grown to love Derrick Rose more than Michael Jordan.

Don't get me wrong, as kid growing up in Oak Park - 6 miles west of the Madhouse on Madison - I loved Michael Jordan. Like a lot kids, especially a lot of kids from Chicago, I was obsessed with him. I knew every one of his stats. My room was covered in his posters. Chicago never felt like we'd lose a game with him on the floor. But for as much as we were amazed and inspired by Jordan - for as much as we wanted to be "like Mike" - we knew that we couldn't. Michale Jordan was god and we were blessed that he played for us.

Derrick Rose is literally one of us. He's an inspiration, a kid who grew up the worst part of the City and, through fortune and the guidance of his mother and support network, managed to rise to the top of the world. And, unlike Kevin Garnett or Dwayne Wade (both from Chicago), he came back. Derrick Rose's humility matches our own. He's human and, unlike Jordan, he's genuinely a nice guy.

The NBA has changed since the days of Magic, Bird and Jordan. It's full of primadonas, Hollywood hype and transparently manufactured teams (ahem, Heat, Lakers, etc.). We're obviously biased, but we get the feeling that there aren't a lot of good guys left in the NBA, except Derrick Rose.

The Bulls of the 90's were the greatest team of all time, and we'll always cherish them. But the current team matches our temperament more closely. It's a team of role players and hard workers and it's only superstar is literally just a kid from Englewood.

We love Derrick Rose because we aspire not just to his skill level but to his character and because, at the end of the day, he loves us too.

In Chicago, gangs abound, but where are they? (WBEZ)

"CPD Chief of Organized Crime Nicholas Roti appeared on The Afternoon Shift to address several questions about the maps, their use and their limitations"

Chicago: Simultaneously Growing more Dense and Vacant

There is no greater illustration of the vast disparity of real estate values that capitalist cities produce than the tremendous cluster of skyscrapers between Lake Michigan and the prairies of the American West. By the 1880's the world's busiest river traffic and a thick belt of rail terminals prevented Chicago's central business district from expanding beyond a single square mile. The extreme centralization of the city's infrastructure in a relatively small location thus facilitated the birth of the skyscraper on what was nothing more than a swamp 50 years earlier.

Though Chicago was one of the first cities to grow vertically, it was also one of the fastest sprawling metropolitan areas in history. This pattern of simultaneous concentration and dispersal continues to define the City. Recent census figures show that downtown Chicago is the fastest growing central area in America.

In the map below red represents population growth, green represents decline. What's showing up as population decline in Northside Lakefront neighborhoods in the map below is due mostly to the effects of extreme gentrification - where physically large, wealthy homes and condos are replacing what were once smaller, more densely populated units (More on this later).

Chicago Leads America in Downtown Population Growth (Chicago Business Journal)

If Chicago were still defined by its 1875 limits, it would be the fastest growing city in America.

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Within these 1875 boundaries the City continues to rapidly gentrify. Roughly 10 high-rise apartment buildings are under construction within a 3 blocks of the central branch of the river. A dozen more are planned within the downtown area. Before the real estate crash Chicago was building what would have been the tallest residential building in the world (The Chicago Spire).

But Chicago isn't just defined by a 2-mile radius from City Hall or its 1875 municipal boundaries. Downtown isn't hemmed in by massive rail yards anymore. The City isn't confined to an island like Manhattan or squashed between mountains and a harbor like Hong Kong. There is, at face value, no obvious reason for Chicago to continue growing vertically while vast swaths of the South and West Sides are vacant and depopulated.

Though natural and physical barriers have been overcome, social and economic forces continue to facilitate the concentration of Chicago's growth in the Central City. Outside of downtown, and unlike older cities on the East Coast, Chicago remains primarily defined by single family homes and two flats. The neighborhoods that are now the most impoverished in the City (Englewood, Garfield Park, Austin, etc.) where literally Chicago's suburbs in the late 19th Century. Though these areas were annexed by the City they never urbanized as extensively as areas closer to downtown and the lakefront. As a result their housing stock remains generally comprised of relatively flimsy stick-built buildings instead of solid brick and stone construction. With less density there where naturally fewer business to begin with. As these former suburban neighborhoods began to decline they became isolated from almost all economic activity. The nature of Chicago's built environment (an extremely dense core surrounded by vast areas of relatively low-density housing) has thus facilitated the isolation of poverty in outlying neighborhoods to a much greater degree than older East Coast Cities.

Chicago's Poor Neighborhoods: Everything Deserts (Chicago Mag)

Chicago's unique historical circumstances and physical organization continue to vividly illustrate the spatial disparity that our socio-economic system produces. As demographics and energy consumption patterns pivot development toward traditional urbanism, Chicago's impoverished outlying neighborhoods may also foreshadow the decline of low-density suburbs across America. Market capitalism - especially unregulated market capitalism - exacerbates the accumulation of wealth, infrastructure, talent and opportunity in certain locations while isolating and impoverishing others. Advantages and prosperity don't trickle down, they concentrate. New York may be more gentrified, but only Chicago illustrates the simultaneous clustering of high-rise developments immediately adjacent to thousands of vacant lots. Areas that were nothing but rail yards and warehouses are now teaming with luxury high-rises. These conditions have created a very strange sensation when approaching the Loop from the West and South Sides - a mirage of prosperity in a desert of vacancy - as if Manhattan suddenly landed in the Detroit River.

North Lawndale, Rainy Day (2009 MArch Thesis)

Of course this also presents a tremendous opportunity. No other great city of the world contains this mix of vibrancy and vacancy. Cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco are almost complete. New buildings will come and go and neighborhoods will change, but there isn't an opportunity to completely re-imagine these cities. Chicago has that opportunity. It literally has a void of space to reinvent itself in. Detroit and other towns of the Great Lakes have this opportunity as well, but only Chicago is already anchored by a strong center.

The Bloomingdale Trail reveals Chicago's idea of grand city planning (WBEZ)

Proposed Milwaukee Avenue Bridge at Leavitt Street

(Rendering by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.)

The Post-Apocalyptic Tech Scene (Alex Madrigal, The Atlantic)

"..It seems the "developing world" model of an ultra-rich class living in heavily guarded isolation from the desperate underclasses is becoming the way of the world.

Perfect world travelers versus people who don't have passports. The drone owners versus the drone targets. And, strangely, those who can move freely in physical space and those who can't."

Bruce Sterling on Dark Euphoria, Gothic Hi-Tech & Favela Chic

This starts a little slow and has its annoying parts (Obama is not a Chicago Machine politician for example), but overall Sterling presents some fascinating concepts and perspectives. Good science fiction is always more about the present than the future. This holds true for Sterling's concepts of "Dark Euphoria, Gothic Hi-Tech and Favela Chic."

Dark Euphoria describes the sense of malaise that we feel now, on what some would argue is the plateau of progress and history, with little clarity about what our future holds other than a kind of continual crisis of energy shortages, economic stagnation and climate change.

Gothic Hi-Tech and Favela Chic both describe the continued development and push of technology (especially communication technology) within societies that are otherwise being ripped apart by ballooning inequality and conflict. Since the 1970's the apotheosis of the consumer society, the deregulation of global market capitalism, extreme inequality and cynicism about the democratic process, the rise of evangelical religion (Christianity and Islam) and the emergence of instant, sound-bite communication have all threatened to unravel the basic institutions of modern, Enlightenment - (science) based societies. We may continue to produce technological marvels, in other words, but until we gain the social and political will to reorient ourselves, quality of life measures will decline for the vast majority of society. Until we make a choice to solve our larger problems, we'll continue run away from our own individual and social mortality and toward a future defined by religious mysticism, disorganization and extreme inequality.

Food Production in The United States

Nice graphics, but nothing really surprising except the dense clusters in Southeastern Pennsylvania, coastal North Carolina, Fruits and Vegetables in the lower Mississippi Valley and Cotton in West Texas.

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Silicon Prairie Redux: Will Chicago's Tech Boom Last? (Chicago Mag)

After years of hype and hope, is the city finally building a tech sector to be reckoned with?
By David Lepeska

“The community is so damn collaborative,” says Raman Chadha, a professor of entrepreneurship at DePaul University. “That didn’t exist ten years ago, when it was a bit more competitive, a bit more siloed. Today, when we hear of a startup thinking about leaving, we rally around them to get them to stay. This would never have happened in the past, to do a sort of intervention. Now there’s a civic pride that wasn’t there before.”

Urban Nation: The Feds Lionize Mayors, but Forsake Their Cities (The Next American City)

"The truth is that the federal government long ago conceded that federal urban policy was merely an issue of intergovernmental relations. Partnerships between the federal government and mayors either help cities flourish by providing financial support or stifle cities by the same means. But under no circumstances is Washington itself responsible for what goes on in urban America."

Open House Chicago (October 13 - 14)

The Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Open House Chicago is a free public event that offers behind-the-scenes access to over 150 buildings across Chicago.

No reservations are required and everyone is welcome. Explore the hidden gems and architectural treasures of Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods -- all for free.

Detroit's Gleaming Start-Up Tower (The Atlantic)

"Where I live in the Bay Area, there's a certain glamour to Detroit. It's the heart of what Bruce Sterling termed "dark euphoria." "Dark Euphoria is what the twenty-teens feels like," Sterling said. "Things are just falling apart, you can't believe the possibilities, it's like anything is possible, but you never realized you're going to have to dread it so much."

The Personality of Cities

Turns Out Where You Live Really Does Shape Who You Are (Emily Badger, Atlantic Cities)

I would certainly agree with the theory that cities can be characterized by certain cultures, personalities and priorities. Much of this has to do with history and geography as well as the economies and institutions that tend to dominate communities. These qualities not only influence those who grow up in these cities - they are often part of the magnetic pull that particular places have on certain personalities. The recession not withstanding, Americans have become increasingly mobile over the last century. Now, more than ever, those with means choose where they want to live. This has lead many to argue that we have become as segregated by our political persuasions and recreational subcultures as we have by our income and ethnicity (The Big Sort). This goes beyond segregation within a city to segregation between metropolitan areas.

There's an argument that globalization is making everywhere the same - the same chain stores, the same suburban / edge city style development. To a certain extent this is true. There really isn't that much difference between Arlington, Virginia and Buckhead, Atlanta. However, on a larger scale and despite the supposed leveling effects of globalization, many cities are now defined more by particular personality traits and subcultures than ever before. Though these stereotypes obviously don't apply to all or even a majority of the metropolis, they can be used to understand a city's broader identity. In many cases city's market their identity as a kind of "lifestyle brand" to footloose residents and tourists. The city, in other words, becomes another commodity in our consumer culture. Incredibly complex metropolitan areas are thus reduced to sound-bites in an age of instant communication and mobility. In our consumer culture it has become more advantageous to be easily identifiable, understood and consumed than to be complex or interesting. The city, like the individual, becomes defined by a subculture.

Since graduating from college I've witnessed first-hand how my friends and associates have scattered across the country. Again, we're talking about a relatively small demographic - educated, typically from relatively well-to-do families, etc. Friends involved with cultural production gravitated to New York or L.A. Friends that wanted to be near mountains gravitated toward Denver and Seattle and so on...

Where does Chicago fit into this mix? People move to Chicago for many of the same basic reasons they move to other cities - for a job, to go to school, to be near family, etc. But unless you're from the Midwest or pursuing theater, Chicago probably isn't the number one destination that comes to your mind. Aaron Renn argues that Chicago's global status suffers from its lack of a magnetic industry (entertainment in L.A., finance in New York, government in D.C., etc.). No single industry dominates Chicago. It's a center of culture but not a media magnet like New York, L.A. or even Atlanta. We don't have mountains. We do have an incredible inland sea, but that isn't the first thing that comes to most outsiders minds when they think of Chicago. Instead, the national and global cultural imagination of Chicago tends to fall back on its history - namely gangsters, industry, cold weather, corruption and architecture. None of these historic characteristics define contemporary Chicago more than any number of other qualities - corporate service industries, food, craft brewing, sports, beaches and, increasingly, tech and logistics. Concentrated poverty and persistent gang violence on the South and West sides continues to overshadow the countless ways the City is changing while perpetuating Chicago's historic gangster stereotype.

At the end of the day, all of this adds up to a city's who's apparent underlying personality is that of the pragmatic tough guy. Ms. Badger's article states that Chicagoan's are "sensible." That might be a euphemism for "Midwestern," but I'll take it as a compliment. In a celebrity-obsessed culture dominated by the promise of wealth, at time when very real problems need to be addressed, Chicago's greatest asset may be its honesty and authenticity.

Other cities and towns are nice, some have better weather and fewer perceived problems, but no other great American city feels as open and honest as Chicago. It's been suggested recently that the larger Rust Belt has become more attractive to the younger generation for exactly this reason (Rust Belt Chic). We're tired of empty promises and fake facades. Every time I visit another region of the country I feel like I've stepped into someone else's daydream - as if there is a complete lack of self-awareness. As if everyone else is distracted.

This isn't to say that cultural myths aren't present in Chicago - its just that there's something about being in the Midwest that keeps Chicago from getting as caught up in the fads and obsessions of contemporary culture. Part of this has to do with the fact that media exposure is so heavily concentrated in New York, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. But it also has something to do with the personality of the place itself. The East Coast is always looking back across the Atlantic. From the Neo-Georgian mansions of Northern Virginia to the fashion and art of New York to the academics and yatch clubs of New England - East Coast insecurities still revolve around not being European enough. It is the First Born, trying to be like its father. The West Coast looks out to the abyss of the Pacific. It's insecurities are tied to a kind of existential crisis. It is the aloof, wondering daughter. The South looks back in on itself and grows insecure in its fear and discomfort with rest of the world. It wants something for nothing (the comforts of civilization without paying for them). It is the baby of the family. Chicago looks around and sees all of North America. It's insecurity lies in putting in a life of hard work without much notice from the rest of the family. It is the middle child of America. Perhaps that's part of what makes it "sensible."

The Re-Use of Chicago's Shuddered Coal Power Plants (Architect's Newspaper)

“A lot of people want to see more green space,” said Nelson Soza, executive director of Pilsen Alliance. “But they also want to see jobs. We don’t think that’s mutually exclusive.”

The Innovation Culture of the Great Lakes

- The Atlantic Series Featuring Numerous Articles on Chicago's Start-up Scene

Chicago Turning into FarmVille (Chicago Mag)

"Long known as a city of neighborhoods, Chicago is rapidly becoming a city of neighborhood farms. On top of the countless backyard and community gardens that dot the city, several larger-scale agricultural ventures are underway."

Frank Lloyd Wright Archives Relocate to New York (ArchDaily)

Why the Art Institute Passed on Frank Lloyd Wright's Collection (Crain's)

This is truly unfortunate. Wright was from Wisconsin, he worked for Louis Sullivan and began his career in Chicago. The vast majority of Wright's works are located in the Midwest (including about 50 in the Chicago area). His philosophy and his architecture were always rooted in his relationship with the prairie landscape and transcendental culture. Wright largely despised MoMA (and the founder of its Architecture Department, Philip Johnson) for the central role it played in promoting the so-called "International Style" of architecture, which he considered to be a dumb, stripped down version of the spatial innovations that he pioneered.

The Art Institute of Chicago would have have been the obvious location for his consolidated collection. This is a huge missed opportunity. The fact that MoMA and the Avery Library will now hold his collected works has to be one of the great ironies in the history of architecture.

Up to Speed: Chicago

Gene Weingarten: Coolsville

"Sure, Ithink Washington is cool, but I tuck my shirt into my underpants. The fact is, empirical evidence militates strongly against Washington as any sort of avatar of cool."

Disney World on the Hudson (Jeremiah Moss, NYTimes OpEd)

"The High Line has become a tourist-clogged catwalk and a catalyst for some of the most rapid gentrification in the city’s history."

Within the last year I'd say that the High-Line has certainly become a victim of its own success. I visited it for the second time this past May - while the work itself is beautiful, the experience was aweful. Unlike a typical park there's relatively limited access and the "public" space itself is extremely narrow in parts - which means you can consistently find yourself trudging along single file, as if you were waiting in line for a roller coaster.

I wouldn't limit the "Disney World" comment to the High Line, the Meatpacking District or Chelsea. Almost all of Manhattan has a strange kind of unreality to it. Greenwich Village looks more like a Hollywood set than an actual place where people live. It's been decades since SoHo housed any real starving artists. The Upper East Side has become a half-occupied retirement community for the World's 1%. In many ways New York is becoming a  kind of luxury show-room for the world - more of a place where interesting things are displayed and consumed than a center of innovation.

A Lifeline from the World (Richard Longworth)

"It's easy --and wrong -- to say that the people in these towns are globalization's leftovers, men and women who can't cut it in this new economy, refugees happily hiding from the rest of the world, with no interest in that world and nothing to say about it. Many do indeed feel like castaways, but they long for more links with a world that has passed them by.

...But what struck me most in the two days of conversations was the almost desperate thirst in the state's isolated small towns for some link to the wider world, for the need to tap into minds and thinking beyond the town limits, if only to feel that they haven't been totally exiled from life..."

The Story of Rust Belt Chic (Richey Pilparinen via Aaron Renn)

"Think of this incident between two individuals–or more exactly, between two realities: the famed and fameless, the make-up’d and cosmetically starved, the prosperous and struggled–as a microcosm for regional relations, with the Rust Belt left to linger in a lack of illusions for decades.

But when you have a constant pound of reality bearing down on a people, the culture tends to mold around what’s real. Said Coco Chanel:

“Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity”.

And if you can say one thing about the Rust Belt–it’s that it’s authentic."

Where the Chicago Accent Comes from and How Politics is Changing it (Chicago Mag)

"In a lengthy PowerPoint presentation, Labov shows how the Erie Canal moved the New England settlement stream west along the Great Lakes (separate settlement streams moved southwest from Pennsylvania and west from the coastal South). So, in some part, momentum carried an entirely separate linguistic culture along that narrow band."

World of Chicago (NBC 5)

'Father of carbon trading' predicts growth in clean-tech startups (Crain's)

"Crain's met with Mr. Sandor recently to learn more about why he's betting the Midwest -- and Chicago in particular -- will grow to become the next Silicon Valley of clean technology and other green businesses."

Top Architectural Record award for Guangzhou Opera House? Really? (Archinect)

"Promoting clearly flawed design as the “best” we have to offer is demeaning and makes us look ridiculous to people outside the architecture subculture. This is how we lose power in the larger society and become marginalized as a discipline."

The Unprecedented Urban Dynamic in Pennsylvania's Voter ID Law (Atlantic Cities)

"As many as 280,000 voters in Philadelphia may need to get an ID between now and November to have their votes counted."

Mayor Emanuel says Chicago economy is booming (Op-Ed in the Sun-Times)

"We are not riding a national trend; our strategy for economic growth is creating our own trend. Because we are not resting on our strengths but investing in them, companies have the confidence to invest and grow in Chicago."

Wiel Arets named Dean of The Illinois Institute of Technology's College of Architecture (Cityscapes)

"Arets, who was dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam from 1995-2002, will join IIT this fall and will lead an academic program originally shaped by the vision and work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe."

The Creative Class' 10th Birthday (The New Republic)

"At the same time, Stauber says, Florida’s regional determinism overlooks the role that specific decisions and investments have played in making some places thrive. It’s no accident, for one thing, that many of his most “creative” cities are home to public universities. Why assume that new investments might not prop up other places as well?"

Second Nature City - 2009 Masters of Architecture Thesis

Open publication - Free publishing

Nice to find this on the web - it was better than I remember it. Very happy - hope others find it interesting.

Chicago's economy improving faster than other major cities (WBEZ)

According to a new report, Chicago's had the largest decline in unemployment in the last year among the top ten metro areas in the nation. The report comes from Austan Goolsbee, the University of Chicago professor and one of President Obama's former economic advisors.

A Cluster Grows in Chicago (Richard Longworth)

"There's been a run of good news for Chicago recently which, apart from giving Mayor Rahm Emanuel some happy headlines, tell us something about the nature of global cities, about the shape of this new economy, and about who wins and who loses."

American Violence and Southern Culture (Chicago Mag)

"Part of Lemann's thesis, not that he ignores the effects of segregation and concentrated poverty, is that the divide between city and backcountry was also brought north: "Every aspect of the underclass culture in the ghettos is directly traceable to roots in the South -- and not the South of slavery but the South of a generation ago."

Is Detroit Becoming Michigan's Next Suburb?  (The Detroit News)

"The native Detroiters, tired of the struggle and lack of change, see problems, while the new Detroiters — armed with energy and excitement — see possibilities."

Chicago Regional Unity? Milwaukee Takes The Lead (Richard Longworth)

"Milwaukee already has set itself up as the freshwater capital of the world with its Water Council and the new Freshwater School at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Chicago's City Hall and other leaders are just beginning to take notice: water companies in the city have formed a trade group called Blue Tech Alliance. The job now is to get these players around the same table, to enable the two cities to leverage their water-based assets to create a global freshwater center that could be an investment magnet in an increasingly arid world."

"The Power of the Post-Industrial City" (Don Carter, Pittsburgh TED talk)

Chicago Creating more Jobs than Most U.S. Cities (NBC)

"Right now there are 28,000 more people with jobs in Chicago compared to a year ago, and the number of workers looking for a job dropped by almost 20,000.

Houston was the only U.S. city that created more jobs than Chicago."

Visionary Proposals of the Chicago River's South Branch (Chicago Journal)

"Organized by Chicago-based Skidmore Owings & Merrill and the Friends of the Chicago River (the museum’s parent organization), the exhibit is a culmination a semester-long project by a group of Harvard University architecture and urban planning graduate students."

Batman and Gotham (Atlantic Cities)

Image Credit

Drought, Ethanol & Shrinking Airports (Richard Longworth)

It's heresy to say this in the corn-growing areas of the Midwest, but ethanol is a boondoggle. Its long-term viability depends on continued high and stable prices for two of the planet's most volatile commodities, corn and oil.

Chicago Increasing Pedestrian Space with Mini "Parklets" (Architects Newspaper)

"QCDC is a Bronzeville-based non-profit that is partnering with the city to pilot a portion of Make Way for People known as People Spots. People Spots essentially expand sidewalk seating onto portions of the street sometimes referred to as "parklets."

Struggling in the Suburbs (NY Times)

"The suburbs were not designed for the poor. And even now, local governments are not equipped to see, much less answer, a lot of their needs."

New Detroit Farm Plan Taking Root (Wall Street Journal)

"Detroit has more than 200,000 vacant parcels—almost half of them residential plots—that generate no significant tax revenue and would cost more to maintain than the city can afford. Finding new uses for this land has become one of the most pressing challenges for a city that lost a quarter of its population in the past decade."

Love Letter to Chicago (j. harley on Vimeo)

Archeologists Un-Earthing Civil War Prisoner Camp on the South Side (NBC)

Upgraded 95th Street CTA terminal could help put South Side on right track (WBEZ)

Census data shows Chicago's Growing (Crain's)

"Chicago's population grew by 8,800 to 2.71 million residents between July 2010 and July 2011"

Chicago is due for a Manufacturing Comback (the Atlantic)


"The world's three biggest emerging trading markets are Brazil, India, and China. For each country, general and special-purpose machinery (which is Chicago's expertise) ranks as the single most demanded import. That bodes well for Chicago's manufacturing rebound."

A Perfect Summer Day in Chicago

View South from Montrose Harbor 

Montrose Beach looking North

Former gang members discuss the reality of Violence on Chicago's South and West Sides (WBEZ)

Redeveloping the South Lakefront

Bronzville between 26th and 51st Streets, Google Earth

70 years ago the South Lakefront of Chicago was one of the most densely populated areas of the City. Today it is a shadow of its former vibrancy. Massive demolition, "urban renewal" and decades of prejudicial disinvestment have made this one of the most underutilized stretches of real estate in America. Redeveloping this 2.5 mile stretch should be one of the City's top priorities.  If the South Lakefront were to reach the density of the North Lakefront it would provide beautiful, well-connected urban neighborhoods for hundreds of thousands of people.

The city certainly recognizes this and is already taking steps to bring more energy and life to the area. The CTA plans on building a new Green Line station at Cermak (23rd Street) by 2014. The new stop will be immediately adjacent to McCormick Place and the historic Motor Row. Proposals are floating for a relatively large-scale redevelopment of the area. This should help integrate McCormick Place into the City's urban fabric and continue the trajectory of redevelopment that pushed through the South Loop for the last 15 years.

Of course the South Lakefront was very much the center of Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid. Despite losing the Olympics the bid was instrumental in laying the groundwork for future redevelopment - including a new harbor at 31st Street (see below). The new harbor opened this past May and has greatly improved the amenities and physical condition of the surrounding park system.

31st Street Harbor Plan

31st Street Harbor looking North (Photo Credit)

Before the real-estate crash of 2008 Bronzeville was benefiting from significant investment and making important strides toward establishing itself as an upper-middle class African American neighborhood. Redevelopment has stalled some-what since the Recession, but its potential is no less significant. The City bought the derelict Michael Reese Hospital site and has cleared all but the historic Walter Gropius building. Initially intended as Chicago's Olympic Village the City has now asked a hand full of high-profile firms to develop proposals that will likely include some mix of residential and technology oriented businesses.

Proposed 2016 Olympic Village

Clearly such a large scale development will take time and remain subject to market conditions. The most important project that the City of Chicago could pursue in order to facilitate development of the South Shore is the creation of a new CTA "Gold Line" in the already existing Metra Right-of-Way that runs along the lakefront and through the heart of an already vibrant Hyde Park neighborhood. This idea was originally proposed by South Side community groups and was floating around the Internet for awhile before gaining more attention during the City's Olympic bid.

Proposed CTA Gold Line along the South Shore

The "Gold Line" is a transformative idea that takes advantage of existing infrastructure, minimizes cost and links already vibrant areas with the Loop while also bringing much needed transit access to areas of the South Lakefront that have enormous redevelopment potential. It's possible that the "Gold Line" could be realized by simply adding CTA turnstiles to existing Metra stations and running the trains every 10 minutes instead of every half-hour or hour.

The major barrier here is bureaucratic and political, not money or feasibility. Metropolitan Chicago desperately needs to consolidate and integrate its transportation systems. In New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. urban transit and suburban commuter rail are all integrated under the same umbrella organization (MTA, MBTA, SEPTA, WMATA respectively). In Chicago urban and suburban transit are divided between the CTA and Metra. Both organizations capital improvements are supported by the Federal Government. Operating expenses are supported by the State of Illinois and local government taxes. The City of Chicago and its immediately adjacent suburbs of Evanston, Oak Park and Skokie and Cicero support CTA (roughly 3.5 million people). The rest of the metropolitan area (an additional 7 million people, 10 million total) supports Metra. Steps are being taken to better integrate customer fairs across the transit organizations but too many redundancies and inefficiencies remain. Again the barriers are political, not technical.

Creating a CTA line along the South Lakefront would greatly facilitate massive redevelopments at the Michael Reese Hospital site and Lake Meadows at 31st street and King Drive.

Lake Meadows Redevelopment, Draper & Kramer

Until now redevelopment of the South Lakefront has been relatively small scale and piecemeal. For real progress to be made a critical mass of activity and amenities needs to be created. A new transit line along the Lakefront and one significant development project like Lake Meadows would provide this stimulus and inspire more fine-grained urban infill development in the surrounding neighborhoods. The final large-scale proposal for the South Lakefront is the Lakeside Community on the site of the former South Steel Works near the Calumet River (see below).

Lakeside Development

Collectively these developments and the urban infill that they facilitate may create beautiful, high-quality urban neighborhoods for hundreds of thousands of people by 2050. The most important step that the City of Chicago can take right now is the integration of CTA and Metra and the creation of a "Gold Line" along the South Lakefront.