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."

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."