The World Cup is underway and Chicago is not part of it. Why not?
Former mayor Rahm Emanuel rejected FIFA’s proposal to play games in Chicago.
Chicago was a host city during the last men’s World Cup played in the US, which came back in 1994.
It seemed like an ideal place to host games, not only because of that history, but also due to the fact it boasts an iconic stadium in Soldier Field.
However, Mayor Emanuel rejected FIFA’s proposal for two reasons. One because he did not feel like his city was getting a fair deal, and the other because there was a chance the sport’s governing body could put a roof on Soldier Field.
It sounds like Emanuel thinks he was protecting the city. However, it is a missed opportunity for the nation’s third largest city which is a global city, has a busy airport that can handle all the visitors, great sites and neighborhoods, and plenty of soccer fans. And it has happened before: Soldier Field has home to five games in the 1994 World Cup, including the opening game.
Could a new stadium like the Bears are seeking have made this possible? Soldier Field is smaller in comparison to other American football stadiums hosting World Cup games. A number of the host stadiums have been built more recently. Whether in Arlington Heights or Hammond, wouldn’t a new stadium have been exactly the kind of venue to help fans experience the Chicago area?
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The Illinois Tollway board is in the process of implementing a 45-cent toll increase for I-Pass users, meaning a 70-cent toll today could become $1.15 in 2027.
And the toll hikes won’t stop there. Starting in 2029, the proposal to be considered by the Illinois Tollway board sets up CPI-indexed toll hikes every two years.
Wait a minute.
Transit fares aren’t being indexed to inflation. Why tolls? Even if this is allowed by the state, ongoing toll hikes should not be part of the tollway’s plan right now.
Tolls may not be a favored funding method in general but even worse in Illinois is the original promise that highway tolls would go away once the bonds that helped fund construction were paid off.
The editorial also mentions the gas tax which helps fund roads. But with high gas prices, having a higher gas tax in Illinois compared to other states is not popular.
How about funneling more road money to mass transit? This is a popular idea among some who argue mass transit can more efficiently move larger numbers of people and reduce the need to drive. But the American public tends to drive and not use mass transit.
Should driving be free? Are tolls offensive because they make obvious that driving is costly? Drivers know their personal costs for driving – gas, insurance, maintenance – but may not think much about infrastructure costs. Drivers may not like tolls, particularly ones that increase in price, but they will likely pay for roads one way or another.
Downtowns are citywide reputation engines. They anchor the tax base, centralize economic growth, and can determine whether a city feels dynamic or stagnant. Our research suggests that improving downtown experience is one of the most effective levers for strengthening a city’s brand, building a thriving economy, and retaining residents. Great downtowns — whether called a Central Business District (CBD), city center, or financial district — make their cities more competitive for talent, businesses, and investments.
Revenues. Business activity. Vibrancy. Status. Defining a city.
What are downtowns in the United States today? Are they more vacant than in the past, perhaps stuck in urban doom loops? Are metropolitan regions now where more people live and conduct their daily business?
The report goes on to suggest that downtowns can thrive if they pursue a mixed-use approach:
Urban vibrancy is generated by dwell time, not solely by how many people visit downtown. Cities that understand this move from prioritizing throughput to experience, creating spaces vibrant enough to turn an errand into an afternoon stay. In this way, the CBD can evolve from a business district into a living room for the entire city. Mixed-use density, activated ground floors connected to the street, and safe, walkable pedestrian areas create the conditions for urban vibrancy. Downtown design choices are never purely local decisions; their benefits extend across the entire city. The most successful cities of the future will be those that invest in their CBDs to foster an environment that encourages residents and businesses to stay.
This would require some major changes in American cities. This is not the first expert suggesting that downtowns need to change. However, the old model has been around a long time. People and systems are used to it. What might be a reasonable timeline for a big city to significantly change their downtown from a business-first model? How does a city pursue this across the board as opposed to a development here or a development there?
Different cities pursuing different versions of this could be useful. There likely is no one size fits all solution. The biggest cities or the superstar cities might have very different options compared to other cities. Or the local context might matter quite a bit.
I recently saw another unique outdoor basketball hoop arrangement. Here is what the court used to look like: a blacktop surface (not quite regulation court size) with a hoop at just one end. It looks like this on Google Maps satellite view:
With this setup, basketball players can play a half-court game. There are even a full set of half-court lines. We could ask why there is not a full-court setup but a decent half-court offers possibilities for those who want to play basketball. .
So imagine the same surface then gets a second hoop. Where would it be best to place to the hoop for basketball purposes? Directly opposite the other hoop, right?
Here is where Google Streetview shows the second hoop existing today:
The second hoop is not opposite the first one. It is at a right angle to the first one. It does not enable a full-court game. It does not enable two half-court games played back to back. It permits two half-court games played at an angle to each other. And the second possible half-court does not have painted lines.
Ben Norquist and I wrote Every Somewhere Sacred: Rescuing a Theology of Place in the American Imagination and it is out today! Find the book here and read an excerpt here.
Writing a book does not just involve putting words on a page, or, more accurately, typing letters into computer software. It involves thinking, discussing, doing. I find it hard to write something without first turning it through in my mind over and over as well as living out the ideas and the questions. Here are two examples from the process of creating Every Somewhere Sacred.
First, I live in the suburbs of the United States. These are unique settings with particular histories. A majority of Americans live there, including many American Christians. (Read Sanctifying Suburbia for more on this.) What does difference, if any, should it make to be Christian and live in the suburbs?
Thinking about this is important. It is easy to live a suburban life, including doing Christian things as part of this life. Doing is also important: Christians are to use their minds and their bodies as they live out their faith.
Second, lots of American communities are home to Christian congregations and organizations. How do these Christian groups shape places and land? Are they primarily focused on their own internal activities or do they contribute to the flourishing of communities and places?
I ask this as I live and work in a suburb partly known for its religious character. In addition to being home to a known evangelical college, it is home to 40+ churches and many evangelical organizations are in the suburb or nearby. Does this mean the character of the community is different in terms of how people interact (interpersonally and collectively) and how land and creation are treated?
I hope the years spent working with Ben on writing this book also influenced how I act. My question about living in the suburbs or Christians meeting together in certain locations could apply to any place and setting. We address both thinking and doing in Every Somewhere Sacred. We argue we need new tools, metaphors, and lenses to help us recognize what is going on in lands and places and to see what God is doing. We want to act with these lenses, listening to others, open to what we might have missed, and acting in ways that are consistent with God’s mission. If we can see land and place as a gift, sacrament, kin, or home, it can prompt us to better participate in what God is already doing in these settings.
I enjoy looking out the windows on one side of my house and seeing a pond. It was created during housing development in the early 1970s and likely helps with water drainage and stormwater issues. It also is home to fish and hosts numerous birds, including egrets, cormorants, and ducks.
If I had a concern about the pond behind my house, who would I contact? I could get in the touch with the homeowner’s association that owns the property. I might connect with my municipality. Perhaps there is a communityy group interested in local water and wildlife concerns.
Many decisions about the immediate land and places around us are made at the local level in the United States. National issues and politics often dominate discussions. It can be hard today to find information about local matters given changes in media. Yet, local politicians, government staff, and local organizations all regularly address our local built environments. They often have oversight of the land and places we interact with every day.
Some people know about this at the local level and get involved. Loud and resourced voices at the local can often get the results they want. Some others may not know about the local effects on land and places and other may know and not respond. For example, social scientists have argued that in recent decades people in the United States are less involved in civic organizations compared to the past. These may be national groups but they act at the local level, bringing people together to address local issues. Or, there are elected local officials who working with property tax money and other revenues see to address local concerns. Where I live, voter turnout for these local elections is quite low.
As Ben Norquist and I write in Every Somewhere Sacred, God cares about and has plans for land and places. And he invites humans to participate in and help carry out these plans. We can do things as individuals but we can and should also act collectively, working in communities to care for land and places. This work should extend beyond our own interests – such as common NIMBY responses – to consider how people and places can flourish together.
For Christians, this should involve churches caring for land and places, developing and acting on their imaginations within their communities and with other nearby groups. Why not get involved with local concerns? Address local issues? Collectively work to help Creation flourish? Connect theology and practice, worship and service, people and land.
Back to the pond just beyond my property line. If there was a major concern, I would hope I would do something constructive for the good of the community and not just for my own property interests. One common solution in our world – let others take care of it – should not be the option Christians take. May we work together to see and act on land as gift, kin, sacrament, and/or home.
The yard for my suburban house is 0.26 acres. On all four sides, the house is surrounded by grass, bushes and trees, and wildlife. This is part of the American Dream: a suburban single-family home for a family framed by green grass and attractive landscaping. All that nature in the yard allows space for kids to play in a private setting free from threats. Or perhaps it is about keeping the lawn extra green and finely trimmed and completely free of weeds and leaves so that the nature around the home leads to a higher return on investment.
What could it look like for Christians to expand their imagination about the nature around them rather than defaulting to American land stories and half-truths? In Every Somewhere Sacred, Ben Norquist and I consider better ways to engage with God’s plans for land and places.
What might that mean for my yard? It is certainly not “wild” land. Humans have been in this area for a long time, including Indigenous people and white settlers starting in the 1830s. This particular plot of land was farmed for decades before a developer started putting up houses in the early 1970s. As they put up houses, they shaped other features of the land, putting in a pond that some of the homes back up to, leaving numerous older trees along the main road through the neighborhood, and situating other homes to back up to a public park.
The land is not there just to serve my financial interests or the specific needs of my household. My yard is connected to other yards and it part of a broader ecosystem. Some animals and plants thrive in suburban settings. Others do not. I regularly see rabbits and have occasionally spotted foxes. Chickadees, robins, cardinals, red-tailed hawks, cormorants, and Canadian geese can be seen and heard. Insects are around. We have a small, simple garden that requires weeding and watering. I do not fertilize my yard or use weed killer. We occasionally trim the bushes and trees.
I want the nature around me to flourish. I am created, nature is created. My yard presents a small opportunity for me to learn from and with Creation about God and the world. We can tend, cultivate, plant, tear up when needed. We can work with nature rather than just extracting value from it.
In our book, we describe four different lenses different Christians have developed to help us better understand the physical world around us: land as gift, sacrament, kin, and home. If I took time with each of these and applied them to my own yard, what could I see differently? As I retrieve a basketball from the rose bushes next to the driveway planted by previous occupants of our home or when I drag the hose to the backyard to water our garden or when I put down mulch in the flower beds or when I hear a woodpecker in a nearby tall tree, how might I better see God and the world?
Last night, I drove home from church over a stretch of road I have traveled hundreds of times in my life. The road passes by suburban low-rise office buildings and businesses, houses, and open fields. On this warm and humid night, I drove with the windows open, smelling the different contexts as air flowed through the car.
This common driving experience may be how Americans regularly experience places. At speeds from 25 mph to 75 mph, we use a network of roads and highways to get where we want to go. We see driving as offering independence and we advertise it as an enjoyable experience.
In Every Somewhere Sacred (out June 16), Ben Norquist and I discuss how Christians can exercise our imaginations to tell better stories about land and places. And I’m not sure driving does much to further our imaginations of how God has acted, is acting, and will act in and through places.
That is why I would recommend walking as a great means to get to know a place. Using the bipedal locomotion humans have used throughout history, we can better see, hear, touch, and smell places. Walking limits our speed. It pushes us to consider our own physical bodies as we interact with other physical creations. it gives us space and a rhythm to consider what is happening around us. It gives us the same opportunities that many before us have had, including Adam and Eve walking through the Garden of Eden or the freed people of God walking out of Egypt or Jesus walking the shores of the Sea of Galilee or in Nazareth. Before people wanted to get in 10,000 steps a day or stuck in their ear buds while walking, they used their feet to move in and near their homes and communities.
I did not always like walking. As a kid, I would have preferred to be inside reading or watching sports compared to being outside. But not only is walking necessary at times (even in our car-dependent society), it can be enjoyable. For example, I walked to and from my high school numerous times. Often I had headphones on, listening to new music I discovered or to a Cubs game. The walk took about 20 minutes. As I walked the same route over and over, first around 7 in the morning and later around 3:30 in the afternoon, I started noticing things. How one big field next to the railroad tracks changed over the course of the year. I observed people and houses as I passed. I could see differences between neighborhoods built in different decades.
I try to walk regularly now. I have some set paths near my house as well as around my work. I enjoy walking in big cities, suburbs, and more rural or wild areas. I have walked alone, with people, in crowds, and with dogs. The simple, repeated action of walking has helped expand my imagination for what God is already doing in and through land and places.
According to CBRE data cited by the Journal, nearly 40 percent of office space in Denver’s central business district now stands vacant, creating concerns that the city could become trapped in the same urban ‘death spiral’ facing other struggling downtowns…
Denver’s economy historically benefited from growth in technology, telecommunications, finance, energy and professional services. Those sectors, Odell said, have also proven among the most receptive to hybrid and remote work arrangements.
As workers stopped commuting into the city center five days a week, demand for traditional downtown office space evaporated…
The question now is whether Denver can transform itself quickly enough to avoid becoming a permanent symbol of urban decline.
Big city downtowns are important for a number of reasons with the foremost in the last century or so being the center of office-based activity. Could they still be influential with less office activity (such as the housing-based mixed-use activity suggested in this article)?
Maybe. Upon rereading Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities again this semester, I was reminded of her suggestion that cities are networks of neighborhoods. She speaks of Downtown and Midtown Manhattan but is more interested in somewhat dense neighborhoods connected to other similar places.
Or many places in the United States are already used to sprawling places where there are not centers but nodes of activity scattered across the landscape. Not one major center, many smaller centers that suburbanites travel to for work, entertainment, school, and more.
I cannot imagine downtowns as we know them from recent decades disappearing soon. The buildings still have some value to someone. But it is also hard to picture a different kind of center to regions with millions of residents.
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