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.

Source

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.

Source

Source

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."