NYC's Luxury Housing Market (Atlantic Cities)

"In New York, luxury ghost apartments have been steadily proliferating, with certain parts of Manhattan especially devoid of life According to a 2011 New York Times article, in the chunk of the Upper East Side where the Chinese woman bought her little girl a future dream home, “about 30 percent of the more than 5,000 apartments are routinely vacant more than 10 months a year.” Census figures from 2010 show that since 2000, there was a 70 percent increase in absentee-owned apartments in Manhattan, which jumped from 19,000 to 34,000, with the wealthiest neighborhoods seeing even more pronounced gains."

... More evidence that Manhattan has become a Luxury escape pod for the World's superweathly and their spoiled offspring.

Chicago tackles the next big challenge in urban ag: Growing farmers (Grist)

"A new, seven-acre urban “accelerator farm” taking root on Chicago’s south side will soon grow one of the Windy City’s most-needed crops: farmers."

CHA residents marginally better off than when living in high-rises (Chicago Tribune)

"Public housing residents in Chicago are marginally better off today than when they lived in the high-rise towers that have since been torn down, though more social services are needed to prevent a backslide, a study scheduled to be released Monday finds."

"Opportunity Areas:" Long-Term Strategic Vision (City of Chicago)

"As part of a holistic and strategic vision to foster and seize upon growth and development in neighborhoods across Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel today announced nearly $3 billion in private and public development projects in seven targeted Chicago neighborhoods through a new “Opportunity Planning” initiative. The neighborhoods include Englewood, Pullman, Rogers Park, Uptown, Little Village, Bronzeville, and the Eisenhower Corridor."

A Short Lesson in Perspective (The SF Egoist)

"The creative industry operates largely by holding ‘creative’ people ransom to their own self-image, precarious sense of self-worth, and fragile – if occasionally out of control ego. We tend to set ourselves impossibly high standards, and are invariably our own toughest critics. Satisfying our own lofty demands is usually a lot harder than appeasing any client, who in my experience tend to have disappointingly low expectations. Most artists and designers I know would rather work all night than turn in a sub-standard job. It is a universal truth that all artists think they a frauds and charlatans, and live in constant fear of being exposed. We believe by working harder than anyone else we can evaded detection. The bean-counters rumbled this centuries ago and have been profitably exploiting this weakness ever since. You don’t have to drive creative folk like most workers. They drive themselves. Just wind ‘em up and let ‘em go."

A Brief History of Suburbia's Rise & Fall (Eric Jaffe, Atlantic Cities)

"All told, these movements resulted in behaviors of avoidance ("the determination to escape the vice, disease, ugliness, and violence of the city") and attraction ("the desire to embrace the virtue, health, beauty, and seclusion of the countryside") that combined to form suburban culture."

Saving Chicago Greystones (WBEZ)

"Greystones are to Chicago what brownstones are to Brooklyn. And while many of these stately, limestone-faceted beauties line the grassy boulevards of wealthy North Side neighborhoods, many others exist in a state of neglect, disrepair or abandonment."

[Down-sizing Baby Boomers] could cause the next Housing Crises (Emily Badger, Atlantic Cities)

"A vast majority of today’s households with children still want such houses, Nelson says. But about a quarter of them want something else, like condos and urban townhouses. That demand "used to be almost zero percent, and if it’s now 25 percent,” Nelson says, “that’s a small share of the market but a huge shift in the market.” And this is half of the reason why many baby boomers may not find buyers for their homes. “Even if the numbers matched,” Nelson says, “the preferences don’t.”

An endangered piece of history beneath Lake Michigan's surface (Julia Thiel, The Reader)

"Today that boiler is still visible from the beach, a boxy metal structure rising a few feet above the top of the water. From the shore it's easy to mistake for a rock or chunk of concrete, and for years I saw it without giving it a second thought. Last August, on a bike ride with a friend, I passed the concrete blocks that separate the beach from the Lakefront Trail and noticed a sign colorfully markered on a dry-erase board: SHIPWRECK TOURS 10:30-NOON, FREE."

Q & A with IIT Professor Marshall Brown (Architect's Newspaper)

"One of the ideas that I hold consistently for myself and for my own practice, but also try to communicate to the students, is that I truly believe, and I try to help them understand, that architecture is a cultural practice. It’s a discursive practice that sometimes, if we’re lucky, results in building. Exploring the implications of what that means is really important for me."

Can Chicagoans save the waterway that made their city great? (Matthew Power, On Earth Magazine)

"In the alternate vision, however, the river meets all of these demands -- and more. Its proponents seek nothing less than to turn the Chicago River into a civic treasure, its newly cleaned banks lined with parks and homes and restored ecosystems, its very presence a clear and shimmering symbol of a great city built on making, trading, connecting: a symbol of American history’s inexorable flow toward progress. And in the bargain, they seek to make the river a living -- and flourishing -- example of environmental innovation and ecological stewardship, one that generations of Chicagoans will cherish."

The Area: A Vanishing Corner of Englewood

Why do we keep anointing "it" cities? (Chuck Thompson, The New Republic)

"It starts with the local brewpub. Always with the goddamn local brewpub, located in some renovated craftsman schoolhouse or 1920s fire station with the locally sourced Czechoslovakian-style hops and the brewmaster with the certification from the Golden Barley Council or whatever governing body oversees alcoholic hipsterdom."

Why We Love Beautiful Things (Lance Hosey, NYTimes)

"Yet, while we are drawn to good design, as Mr. Hamel points out, we’re not quite sure why.

This is starting to change. A revolution in the science of design is already under way, and most people, including designers, aren’t even aware of it.

Take color. Last year, German researchers found that just glancing at shades of green can boost creativity and motivation. It’s not hard to guess why: we associate verdant colors with food-bearing vegetation — hues that promise nourishment."

This American Life: Harper High School, Part One

Illinois Adopts New Energy Efficiency Standards (Chris Bentley, The Architect's Newspaper)
"On January 1, Illinois became the second state, after Maryland, to adopt the nation’s strictest energy-efficient building code to date. Mandatory blower door and duct tests and mechanical ventilation are among the provisions now required for new commercial and residential buildings in the Land of Lincoln."

Anatomy of a Heroin Ring on Chicago's West Side (Mick Dumke, The Chicago Reader)

"The DEA estimates that 80 percent of the heroin and cocaine sold in Chicago originates with the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico. Distributors here extend the cartel's reach by connecting with street gangs. The gangs, in turn, hasten the decline of distressed communities into open-air drug markets through their skillful use of product promotion, their ability to offer job opportunities where there are few, and their willingness, when necessary, to use violence to stay in business."

U of I to Open Chicago Manufacturing Institute (Greg Hinz, Crain's)

"Gov. Pat Quinn will announce today in his State of the State speech that the Urbana-Champaign school, in partnership with its National Center for Supercomputing Applications and private companies, will be forming an Illinois Manufacturing Lab likely to be located in the central area of Chicago.

The facility will be a somewhat smaller, more applications-based version of the UI Labs tech-research center that was announced in January by U of I President Robert Easter and others. The prime goal will be to make the state's manufacturers more competitive, something that has become increasingly challenging as overseas firms take control of many of the world's factories."

Can Chicago Become America's Next Great City for Artists? (David Zarley, Atlantic Cities)

"Broadly categorized as a performance artist, Duguid obtained her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has lived and worked in various locations across the U.S., including New York City. Duguid is a firm believer in Chicago as a place for an artist to flesh out his or her work. "You have a better opportunity of building a richer portfolio," Duguid explains. And there are an abundance of small scale, DIY apartment galleries which allow artists a freedom that may be hard to come by in Gotham."

Chicago & America Divided By Race, Economy & Violence

In the last month, as the gun control debate has become the focus of our national attention, Monica Davey of the New York Times has written a couple of important articles about the epidemic of violence on Chicago's South and West Sides. These articles have included excellent supporting graphics. Whet Moser of Chicago Magazine has added a local perspective as well.

In a Soaring Homocide Rate, A Divide in Chicago (Monica Davey, NYTimes)

More than 80 percent of the city’s homicides took place last year in only about half of Chicago’s 23 police districts, largely on the city’s South and West Sides. The police district that includes parts of the business district downtown reported no killings at all. And while at least one police district on the city’s northern edge saw a significant increase in the rate of killings, the total number there still was dwarfed by deaths in districts on the other sides of town, and particularly in certain neighborhoods.

Homicide, Social Efficacy & Poverty in Chicago (Whet Moser, Chicago Mag)

Strict Gun Laws in Chicago Can't Stem Fatal Shots (Monica Davey, NYTimes)

Chicago’s experience reveals the complications inherent in carrying out local gun laws around the nation. Less restrictive laws in neighboring communities and states not only make guns easy to obtain nearby, but layers of differing laws — local and state — make it difficult to police violations.

Chicago Gets Its Guns Where it Used to Get its Blues (Whet, Moser, Chicago Mag)

This is an extremely complex and frustrating issue. To begin, it should be noted that Chicago does not even crack the list of America's top 25 most violent cities. The City's murder rate is half of what it was twenty years ago. Last year not withstanding, the murder and crime rate has consistently declined since about 1992. There are a lot of reasons for the overall decline in the city's murder rate, including demographic change, gentrification, improved medical technology and improved policing strategies.

To put things in perspective, deaths by automobile accidents and suicide both outnumber death by murder in the United States by a rate of more than 2 to 1. Last year 32,310 people died by car accident, the lowest since 1949. By contrast there are around 13,000 murders a year in the United States.

Nevertheless, Chicago's murder rate remains significantly higher than what we would like to consider our "peer" national and global cities - places like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. The murder of Hadiya Pendleton a mile from President Barack Obama's Kenwood residence has personified the tragedy and self-destruction that the City's gang violence has caused.

American Violence and Southern Culture (Whet Moser, 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."