Tag Archives: Chicago

Exploring the meanings of Chicago’s underground Pedway

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A Chicago artist and teacher has spent years exploring and analyzing Chicago’s large underground Pedway:

You want to know the best thing about the Chicago Pedway? It’s not that, despite this Polar Vortex winter, you can cover almost 40 city blocks on the Pedway without ever stepping foot outside. It’s not that the Pedway began modestly in 1951 and now stretches through the North Loop, jogs beneath Millennium Park and ventures as far east as the mouth of the Chicago River. It’s not that the Pedway could be regarded as a kind of yardstick of municipal progress, always seeming as though it might extend just a little bit longer someday. It’s not even that the Pedway’s generally mundane, charm-free hallways offer little to see — look, another “For Rent” sign! — and therefore it works perfectly as a daily treadmill for ambulatory meditation…

Where you see putty-colored corridors leading to a job in a cubicle farm, she sees dreams of the American frontier. You pass convenience stores selling gum; Tsen, 38, a native of Cambridge, Mass., passes through a long, winding metaphor for a Chicago never realized — “the by-product of projected futures,” she writes in “The Pedway of Today,” her new, perversely compelling guidebook/consideration of the Pedway’s cultural meanings.

Indeed, Tsen, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and photography/video teacher at Wilbur Wright College on the Northwest Side, has come to see the longtime walkway as her canvas. About four years ago, the Chicago artist — and former Wendella Boat tour guide, who says travel and The Path Not Taken have become the preoccupations of her art — began offering tours of the Pedway (she has since stopped). But she never charged her audiences, she said, because the tours would also quietly double as performance art, as free-associative strolling lectures in which your guide (Tsen) would dole out not dates or landmarks but thoughts on Jules Verne, revolving doors and how the Pedway is like Florence…

Eventually she stumbled across an entrance to the Pedway in the back of the Renaissance lobby, the path itself so low-key that you can see it every day without quite recognizing it. “The Pedway struck me not as the frontier that I had been looking for but a reminder of the glamour of early cities and a promise of future frontiers.” At this point in her guide Tsen asks readers to imagine that it’s 1893 and — though the Renaissance was built a century later — they are relaxing in the lobby before returning home from the World’s Fair, where they “attended Frederick Jackson Turner’s fabled lecture ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’ … still pondering his words: ‘The frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American History.”

Sounds like a very interesting and interpretive tour. All sorts of large infrastructure and urban projects would benefit from people who know them well enough and are enthusiastic about what they offer to share it with others.

If Chicago tried to advertise the Pedway more, would regular users complain that too many tourists are clogging the passages a la New Yorkers and the subway?

Chicago’s race and class differences on display in fight over Obama Library

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Six groups are vying for the Barack Obama Presidential Library in Chicago:

The library is “such a prize that nobody is going to yield power to anybody else,” veteran Chicago political analyst Don Rose said.The squabble also puts Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, in the difficult position of trying to present a single, unified bid, lest the feuding weaken the city’s odds against rival campaigns to put the library in New York or Hawaii…

The main point of tension is between the University of Chicago, where Obama spent 12 years as a constitutional law professor until his 2004 election to the U.S. Senate, and a group advocating for Bronzeville, the city’s historic center of black culture, business and politics.

“They think that they can get whatever they want,” Bronzeville organizer Harold Lucas said of the university. “If you compare the cranes in the sky and that opulent growth of this university to the surrounding, predominantly African-American community, it’s a travesty. It’s a clear tale of two cities.”…

There are also two potential bids on the Far South Side, one led by Chicago State University and the other by a group promoting the historic Pullman neighborhood. It was in those areas that Obama established his earliest roots in the city as a community organizer in the mid-1980s, setting up job training programs and defending the rights of public housing tenants.

The University of Illinois at Chicago, on the Near West Side, is also taking a shot, as is a real estate developer pushing the former U.S. Steel Corp. site on the southeast lakefront.

Lots of interested actors and a number of them could make a good case that the library would help economic development – even the University of Chicago says their plan would be to build the library off-campus so it would help a neighborhood. This seems like a classic situation for some backroom deals and a growth machine perspective where those with more political and business power will end up calling the shots.

Is this a true test of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s abilities as a mayor? It will be interesting to see how he moves among all of these options.

Adding the Chicago Spire to the Chicago skyline

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New tall buildings may be exciting but they can dramatically alter a skyline. See what the revived Chicago Spire would do to the Chicago skyline:

The supertall skyscraper’s hasn’t quite had a Cinderella story, as the project has gone through name, design and ownership changes since it was conceived in 2005. If completed, the 2,000 foot building would become the tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere.

The various proposals are quite interesting. Two things to note, beyond the proposed height:

1. The Spire has a unique location that helps it stand out from other buildings in the skyline. It is positioned in front, closer to the lakefront and Navy Pier than other tall buildings in Chicago which are closer to the business district or Michigan Avenue.

2. The design helps it stand out as skinny, unusual because of its twists, and unusually tall.

Contrast this with the last major addition to the Chicago skyline, the Trump Tower:

TrumpToweronChicagoRiver

While the Trump Tower dominates the approach in and out of the Chicago River, it is near a bunch of other taller buildings and it has a more traditional design (glass and steel in stacked sections). In contrast, the Spire stands out in front of other skyscrapers and has a more unique design.

If built (and this is still a big if), how long before the Spire becomes a “normal” part of the Chicago skyline? How will it actually cohere with the rest of the skyline?

Building Chicago its first “true backlot” as filming days grow

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Cinescape recently announced plans to expand their Chicago backlot which is featured on several current shows:

Cinespace, the soundstage complex on the West Side that is home to TV shows such as NBC’s “Chicago Fire” and ABC’s upcoming midseason drama “Mind Games,” plans to expand its filmmaking options by building a backlot on its existing 58-acre campus…

“We’re going to put the facades right on the existing buildings,” says Pissios. “One street will be a row of New York brownstones. One will be Chinatown. Another will be a restaurant, a bank and a courthouse.

“So this will help TV and film productions when I can say, ‘This will save you money.’ We have a solid film (tax) incentive but it’s not the best in the country. And there’s big costs when you shoot on location — moving all the trucks, setting up catering, closing streets off, which requires security people. So how about when you’re here, I give (you) the option to just shoot everything on our 58 acres? Instead of going to 19th and Michigan Ave. to shoot those brownstones, they could shoot it right here…

L.A. is currently the only U.S. city with true backlots, so one in Chicago would be unique. Pissios plans to start the project in the fall, with work expected to be completed about a year later. “And if everything goes well, we would love to somehow, down the line, make this a little tourist attraction, where buses could come in and we give people a tour.”

It is a little bit funny that the expanded backlot would help provide settings for other cities. Why not a full backlot of Chicago scenery? At the same time, Chicago has had more film and TV shooting in the city so perhaps this doesn’t matter too much, particularly if the alternative is for people to go to Toronto or Vancouver to shoot “Chicago.” The city set a record in 2013 for the most filming days in the city:

The number of film and television projects filmed in Chicago, jumped 20 percent in 2013 to 2,198 filming days, according to the Chicago Film office.

City officials said it was a new record high, trumping 2012’s 1,808 days.

The filming hours include six simultaneous full-time TV series, three studio features shot back-to-back and 137 commercials…

TV series shooting in Chicago during 2013 included ABC’s “Betrayal” and “Mind Games” as well as NBC’s “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago PD” and “Crisis.” USA’s “Sirens” also shoots in Chicago.

Studio features filmed in Chicago in 2013 included “Divergent,” “Jupiter Ascending” and “Transformers 4.” All three will be released in 2014.

Good for business but how Chicago are these movies/shows/commercials anyway? Are there lots of shots of iconic Chicago buildings or more of a Chicago culture or not much at all?

Chicago’s annexations through the years

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Watch Chicago expand through annexation here.

Maps at the Chicago History Museum show that in 1837, city borders were:

  • Lake Michigan to the east
  • North Avenue to the north
  • 22nd Street to the south
  • Wood Street to the west

In the Great Fire of 1871, much of the city was destroyed. The most significant annexation in Chicago history came almost two decades later, in 1889.

That’s when Hyde Park, Lake View and Jefferson and Lake townships became part of Chicago. The annexations were the result of an election and added 125 miles and 225,000 people to the city, making it the nation’s largest city by square mileage at the time…

“One of the reasons annexation stops […] in the early 1900s is because the city really doesn’t want to annex any more territory,” said Chicago historian Ann Keating, who wrote Chicago Neighborhoods and Suburbs: A Historical Guide and co-edited The Encyclopedia of Chicago. “Our vision is suburban communities wouldn’t want to join in to the city, but the fact of the matter is the city kind of hits a point where they can no longer extend services.”

This is a common trait of most American big cities: they started relatively small and then annexed quite a bit of territory. However, Chicago’s experience mirrors cities in the North which essentially couldn’t annex much past 1900. While suburbs prior to this point had been willing to join the city to gain from the big city’s services and the city’s prestige, by around 1900 these local services were cheaper to build themselves and cities had different reputations. But, annexation was still quite common for Sunbelt cities, most of whom were able to continue to annex through the 20th century. David Rusk tracks these annexations in his book Cities Without Suburbs. Here is one chart:

RuskCitiesWithoutSuburbsTable1.5Quite a big difference which Rusk argues allowed Sunbelt cities to capture more of the suburban growth and benefit from a wider tax base and more diverse population.

“Chicago’s RIverwalk To Be the Next Times Square?”

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The City of Chicago just announced what it desires for its Riverwalk:

In the Mayor’s attempt to turn the Chicago Riverwalk into Times Square Jr. or Hong Kong Lite, the city may soon be installing some new lights. A lot of lights. The Mayor wants to boost tourism in the city by 10 percent, or attract 55 million annual visitors by 2020 and thinks that adding a light show to the city would be the key. The lights are intended to highlight Chicago’s architecture and skyline, but also to open up tourists’ wallets by extending the day into night.

This “bright” initiative, headed up by the president of Broadway In Chicago, will start with an international call for submissions. Plans show that the lights won’t only be noticeable in the loop, as the Mayor’s vision is to expand the project into the neighborhoods. Perhaps some think Chicago’s world famous architecture can’t speak for itself.

More on the plans:

“It will make nighttime in Chicago an experience unto itself. It will make us North America’s city of lights. People will come from far and wide to see what we’ve done and enjoy our city,” Emanuel told a clout-heavy audience at the Museum of Science and Industry.The light-up Chicago initiative is being spearheaded by Lou Raizin, president of Broadway in Chicago.

If artists, architects and engineers “work together as teams,” Raizin said he’s certain they will find ways to use Chicago’s world-renowned architecture, the city’s iconic bridges, Lower Wacker and the river itself as a “canvas” to “imagine lighting in a unique and different” way.

“It’s about creating a spectacle that winds up allowing us to be sensitive to the assets that we have, but making a pivot that takes the old guard to the vanguard. It’s not just washing a building with light. It’s about creating theater. It’s about engaging. It’s not just color. It’s three-dimensional. It’s really creating events in light,” Raizin said.

One can only hope this is done tastefully and doesn’t turn out to be garish. But, there is a lot of potential with the riverwalk and I’m still surprised it has taken this long to do much. This may seem particularly odd since since Chicago has a long history of protecting land along Lake Michigan. Yet, the city has never quite respected the river in the same way as the lake. The river has always been much more functional: a connection to the Mississippi or a place to dump sewage. Perhaps the lights indicate a new era might soon begin…

Nice graphic on Chicago’s relative position as a global city

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The cover story in today’s Chicago Tribune on Chicago’s status as a global city includes a nice graphic showing how Chicago matches up on a variety of dimensions.

This sort of multi-dimensional graphic is becoming more common. Its biggest advantage is that it can display a lot of information across a variety of dimensions. This graphic shows 10 different aspects of being a global city. It is also relatively easy to compare ranks of cities, if you know what you are looking at – the further out the area or the more area a city covers on the graphic means a higher ranking. Of course, the biggest downside is that is takes a little bit of time to figure out how to read it. Is a city better if it is closer to the middle or further away on each dimension? (It is is better to be further out – higher ranking cities cover more area.) It can also be a lot to take in at once.

It is a nice addition to add the seven comparison cities at the bottom with Chicago’s mass overlaid on each diagram. Just having Chicago’s rankings graphed would provide some information but do so without any context.

CNN’s Chicagoland reality series featuring Rahm Emanuel premieres at Sundance

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Here is some activity regarding the upcoming Chicagoland series on CNN:

The William Morris Endeavor clients decided to ask that their agency not represent them in the deal so as to avoid a conflict of interest when covering Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, brother of WME co-CEO Ari Emanuel. The agency agreed with the decision…

The filmmakers tell The Hollywood Reporter that the project is an evenhanded look at the mayor and the city, which was rocked by a bitter teacher’s strike and has grappled with a high murder rate. “The teacher’s union thought we were with Rahm, and Rahm thought we were the teacher’s union,” Benjamin says.

The pair gained extraordinary access to Rahm Emanuel, which was facilitated by David Axelrod, the Chicago-based former campaign adviser to President Barack Obama. Rahm was Obama’s first chief of staff and helped him get elected in 2008. Ari was instrumental in mobilizing the Hollywood donor community to back Obama.

Levin and Benjamin shot footage over an eight-month period in which the murder rate did go down, but they say they were prepared to cover the city’s story however it unfolded. “We expect criticism,” says Levin. “So long as it’s from all sides, we’ll be happy. If someone says we’re too kind or too critical to one side, that wouldn’t be good.”

In a series like this, I imagine there will be plenty of unhappy viewers. Regardless, it should be interesting to see how Chicago and its mayor are portrayed. City effectively responding to 21st century challenges or superactive mayor needed to help a city escape its own troubles? Additionally, I think it will be difficult to convey the complexity of a global city like Chicago in eight episodes and by focusing on its leader. Leaders are important but they don’t dictate everything happening in a city of nearly 3 million people.

Chicago innovation #14: Consumer preference research

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A cousin of social science research, consumer preference research, got its start in Chicago:

It was 1928. Benton was working at Chicago’s Lord & Thomas advertising agency when owner Albert Lasker told him to land Colgate-Palmolive by impressing the outsized toiletry powerhouse with market research. Benton worked night and day for two months to record housewives’ preferences for the products of each company.

The firm used the pioneering survey in its initial Colgate-Palmolive campaign and landed the account before the survey was completed.

This drew criticism from an early sociologist:

Sociologist Gordon Hancock hated the idea. It was tantamount to cheating.

In a statement that must have brought grins to the faces of that up-and-coming generation of ad men, Hancock decried in 1926: “Excessive scientific advertising takes undue advantage of the public.”

This was, of course, the point.

This tension between marketing and sociology still exists today. The two areas use similar methods of collecting data such as surveys, focus groups, interviews, and ethnographies or participant observation. However, they have very different purposes: marketing is intended to sell products while sociologists are trying to uncover how social life works. The tension reminds me of Morgan Spurlock’s documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold that questions the marketing complex.

This comes in at #14 on a list of the top 20 innovations from Chicago; I highlighted the #5 innovation, balloon frame housing, in an earlier post.

 

Planning for the first “truly urban” presidential library

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Plans for the Obama Presidential Library to be located in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago note that such a location would be the first urban presidential library:

A helpful tipster has provided Curbed Chicago with a 32-page PDF full of renderings for a future Obama Presidential Library from the office of architectural critic/design studio leader Michael Sorkin. Who paid for said thing to be designed? We cannot say. What we do know is that the document makes the case for ” the first Presidential Center to be truly urban,” and located in Chicago, in the Woodlawn neighborhood. The document argues that Chicago, not Honolulu, is the better city to host, because,

“it is the city where the Obamas will presumably live post-presidency” and it is “where Obama made his first deep contributions in public service and the place to which he returned to begin and advance his political mission.”When it comes to a neighborhood, Sorkin argues that

“my own sense is that – far and away – the best choice would be Woodlawn, on the city’s South Side, and that several large vacant sites on 63rd Street most perfectly fit the bill.”

There are 13 presidential libraries so far, dating back to Herbert Hoover. Several are located in big cities: Dallas (Bush II), Austin (Johnson), Atlanta (Carter), and Little Rock (Clinton). But, these are Sunbelt cities which have more square mileage and are more sprawling (due to an ability to annex more land compared to Northeast and Midwest cities where annexations stopped around 1900). So, I presume the argument here is that the Obama library in Woodlawn would be in a true urban neighborhood, in Chicago, the “city of neighborhoods,” rather than a gleaming suburban-like setting.

Would Sorkin consider the former Michael Reese site, another possible option in Chicago, similarly “truly urban”?