Tag Archives: Chicago

What the future Navy Pier might look like

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Navy Pier is in for a redesign and here are quick summaries of the redesign plans from the five competitors:

•AECOM/BIG — The Crystal Gardens would become a “vertical urban farm” to supply produce to restaurants at the pier. A grand staircase would sweep over a proposed addition to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and offer uninterrupted skyline views. On the pier’s far east end, a tiered platform would create a “lifted corner” that would rise above the Dock Street promenade, providing another lookout. A tier on the other corner would descend directly to the water.

•Davis Brody Bond/Aedas/Martha Schwartz Partners — A series of boardwalklike extensions on the pier’s southern edge would include a variety of features, among them slips for tour boats, an outdoor theater, fishing areas and a beach. A “flyover” ramp would connect Pier Park to the boardwalks. A gondola would carry visitors to the pier from Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive.

•!melk/HOK/UrbanLab — Curved platforms would extend over the pier’s southern edge, providing lookout points. Boardwalks at the pier’s eastern end would let visitors get closer to the lake; below the platforms, and visible to the visitors, would be underwater “fish resorts” where fish would congregate. The towering structure called the Glacier would rise out of the lake off the pier’s eastern end.

•James Corner Field Operations — Undulating steps would join Pier Park with the Dock Street promenade. The plan also suggests turning the interior of the Crystal Gardens into a striking display of hanging gardens and putting oval-shaped cabs on the nearby Ferris wheel. A swimming pool with a sand beach would run along the pier’s southeast corner at lake level. A stepped amphitheater would lead down to the eastern end of the pier, where a platform would extend into the lake.

•Xavier Vendrell Studio/Grimshaw Architects — Circular arrangements of trees and plants would be installed to soften Pier Park. They would enliven the South Dock with pocket parks, terraces and kiosks. A wedge-shaped “horizon walk” platform would extend outward and upward from the pier’s east end, creating another vantage point to gaze over Lake Michigan and providing another reason for people to walk the entire length of the pier.

The images give you some ideas of the interesting ideas in play here. Check out “The Glacier” that would jut out of the water at the east end, various ways of expanding into the walkways into the lake, and a raised eastern corner paired with a depressed eastern corner (image 6 and 10/12 and 13, respectively, in this gallery). The idea that looks the most interesting to me: images 14 and 15 show a grand staircase that would really transform the “roof” of the structure.

At the same time, I can’t imagine that the City will allow anything too crazy, particularly something that might mar the lake views. After saving Grant Park from major changes with the proposed move of the Children’s Museum, I think Chicago will play it relatively safe while trying to offer more consistent recreational opportunities along the pier. I imagine there is more room to play with the walkways/promenade along the lake though this still has to appeal to a broad swath of residents and tourists. Perhaps the best way to do this is to make the promenade greener while also better utilizing the existing structures.

I do like the fact that this process has been made public. While some of these ideas are quite unique, it gives the public a larger vision about public spaces and what is possible. We could benefit from thinking bigger about what these types of public spaces could be like and how we could all benefit.

When Aon leaves for London, is Chicago still a world class city?

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With the news this week that Aon Corp. is moving its headquarters from Chicago to London, a familiar question arises: will Chicago take a hit to its image as a world class city?

“It is appropriate to ask that question, not as a general hand-wringing kind of thing, but in the classic 120-year or more tradition of Chicago,” said urban strategist Paul O’Connor, a former deputy director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development who was founding executive director of the 13-year-old World Business Chicago.

“You do have a special case here in Chicago insofar as the business leadership has for at least 120 years been intimately involved in the strategic growth and development of the city as an international center,” O’Connor said. “This is a phenomenon you don’t find historically in any other big American city. So the capabilities of the leadership of Chicago business to affect long-term outcomes of global competitiveness and whether this remains an easy place to attract the top level of talent, that’s the core issue.”…

“There are underpinnings that matter,” O’Connor, now with architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, said from China, where he’s working on a project. “You look through the board of Aon. These people were like the college of cardinals of Chicago boosters. So if you’ve got a good explanation that you can pick up (more money) by doing this, great. But if those college of cardinals of Chicago boosters don’t stay on it and make sure that you are a competitive business environment, then things do erode. … You’ve got to stay hungry.”…

“The thing you have to look out for is that you don’t slip (as a city in the world’s eyes),” O’Connor said. “That’s why everybody should be saying the rosary to make sure everything goes nicely at the NATO/G-8 (meetings set to bring international leaders and protesters to Chicago in May), so you don’t send bad messages. On the one hand, you have reality, which really matters. On the other, you have perception, which also matters, but I’d rather have reality over perception.”

The issue here seems to be perceptions, not the reality that Chicago still contains a number of headquarters. The reality is that Chicago truly is a world-class city – one 2010 ranking had Chicago at #6 in the world. The moves of highly visible companies might be problematic for politicians who have to create and defend a record on jobs but Aon moving to London will not knock down Chicago a notch unless multiple companies follow suit.

At the same time, perceptions are important. Maybe the better question to ask here is why Chicago needs to keep reaffirming its status as an important city. Perhaps it goes back to that “Second City” nickname that put Chicago behind New York but is also a reminder that Los Angeles has zoomed ahead in population (and status?) as well. Perhaps it is because Chicago knows it is part of the Rust Belt and has been a rare city that has been successful despite the loss of many manufacturing jobs. In the end, why doesn’t have Chicago have more confidence in its standing? The nervousness might motivate Chicago to pursue greater things but it also looks silly at times.

My verdict: Chicago will be fine. That doesn’t mean the city shouldn’t continue to try to woo new corporations or help encourage new start-ups. At the same time, Chicago should operate from a position of strength, selling the better aspects of Chicago, rather than a posture of weakness where any move might topple Chicago from the circle of great cities.

A slowed-down Plan for Transformation in Chicago

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The Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation is taking longer than expected:

Since 2000, the CHA has been slowly working to transform how poor residents are housed. The $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation was developed to take poor residents out of crime-ridden, dilapidated, mismanaged high-rises and place them in mixed-income communities where they can thrive.

In its agreement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the CHA committed to restoring or replacing 25,000 units for public housing residents…

Officials blamed lulls in the economy, the collapse of the real estate market and other mishaps for slowing the Plan for Transformation, originally slated to be finished by 2010, reports show. Now the plan is scheduled to be completed by 2015, but some officials have said it could take 10 years beyond that.

This year, officials plan to deliver 845 housing units, which will bring it to 22,008 units completed. And officials expect to complete the master planning process for redeveloping Lathrop Homes on the North Side this fiscal year, reports show.

If you know the history of public housing in Chicago, this should be little surprise, recession or not. The most visible signs of public housing have been torn down, like the Cabrini-Green project and the Robert Taylor Homes, and yet it might take more than a decade to complete the Plan for Transformation. A cynic might wonder if this is all just a public relations matter. It would be interesting to know some more of the details about why exactly this Plan has been slowed down.

For what it’s worth, there is not much talk about public housing these days.

Chicago Tribune suggests the University of Chicago is the birthplace of sociology

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In a column about how Chicago could better market itself to the world, there is a bit about sociology at the University of Chicago:

Chicago’s reputation has consistently lagged behind reality. Who among us traveling abroad hasn’t mentioned his or her hometown only to hear: “Al Capone! Bang, bang!” It happened to me in Beirut, while the Israeli army and Yasser Arafat’s forces were battling in 1982. Lebanon’s capital has been fought over so many times that keen-eyed inhabitants would point to pockmarked walls, dating them as “old damage” or “new damage,” depending on how recently tanks had shelled them…

Perhaps an image consultant can give us a municipal makeover. Chicago’s motto, “Urbs in Horto” — City in a Garden — is too namby-pamby. It doesn’t inspire anyone to grab the next flight to O’Hare.

Gilding the lily doesn’t work either, as the University of Chicago found when it hired a hotshot adman who pitched it as a “fun” campus. You can’t sell the birthplace of atomic energy and sociology with an “Animal House” image.

The birthplace of sociology is at the University of Chicago? A few qualifiers might be in order:

1. Perhaps the birthplace of American sociology. Other schools might want to debate this.

2. Perhaps the first academic department in sociology. Again, I don’t know the exact history here.

But to suggest that sociology was founded at the University of Chicago misses a lot of the early thinkers, like Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Spencer, that helped make that early department possible. Of course, the U of C department has had a large impact on sociology but the founding claim is off.

Side note: this reminds me of some of the international visitors my dad used to host in Chicago. They, too, were very interested in Chicago’s mob past and wanted to see places where Al Capone and others had been.

Quick Review: Bertrand Goldberg retrospective

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The Art Institute of Chicago currently has a Bertrand Goldberg retrospective, the first of its kind. Goldberg is well known in Chicago for several works of architecture: Marina City on the north bank of the Chicago River as well as the Prentice Women’s Hospital, which has been in the news lately because of a discussion about whether it should be preserved.

Here are a few photos from the exhibit:

A few thoughts about Goldberg’s work:

1. His primary design form, concrete cobs or wavy walls around a circular core, are quite unique. However, I can’t imagine any building today being built in this style. This has definitely aged.

2. The exhibit portrayed him as a visionary because of his interest in reviving the city through large, self-contained developments. This sort of sounds like New Urbanism but the scale is quite different as are the aesthetics with large concrete surfaces. This reminded me more of Le Corbusier or the arcologies found in Simcity. The self-contained nature of these developments might stop people from fleeing to the suburbs but it wouldn’t necessarily push them to interact with the wider city.

3. Goldberg is known for a few high profile works but also designed a number of other things as well including lots of hospitals, some houses, public buildings, and household items like chairs.

4. My biggest critique of the exhibit: the buildings and designs are given without context. Take Marina City. It definitely is iconic and interesting. Yet, how did it get built? How was the land acquired and the project pushed through the city government? How did it affect the surrounding neighborhood? What is its legacy beyond its walls? For example, the developer for the project was Charles Swibel, a man well-connected to Mayor Richard J. Daley and an unsavory character when it came to things like public housing. While the exhibit suggested Goldberg was trying to help the city, did he really do so in the long run? What was needed was the perspective of an urbanist who could provide some commentary about the overall effect of these buildings. While the exhibit mainly focused on design elements, it really is also an opportunity to assess how Goldberg’s design helped or hindered American cities.

When Chicago’s highways were new

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In a flashback, the Chicago Tribune takes a look at the effects of the major highways that first opened in the region in the late 1950s and early 1960s:

Expressway construction changed the cityscape more than anything since the Great Fire of 1871. The fire gave builders a clean canvas. But the expressways had to be threaded through labyrinths of factories and bungalows. Those in the way were sacrificed: While expressways were still on the drawing board, they were expected to cost 9,000 families their homes, probably an underestimate…

Those concrete and asphalt ribbons provided a one-way ticket out of town. Even before the Congress (now Eisenhower) Expressway reached there, a developer was chopping up west suburban farmland for a development named in its honor. The Tribune noted Arthur McIntosh deliberately put Congress Highlands’ southern boundary on “a Du Page County feeder to the expressway.”…

Local movers and shakers had long envisioned freeing traffic from congested city streets. Yet some ordinary residents couldn’t believe it even when the bulldozers began to roll. “One man forced us to get an eviction order from the court because he said he had been reading about superhighways for years and thought the whole thing was a dream,” said Chicago’s housing co-coordinator in 1949…

Only the Southwest Expressway (today’s Stevenson) didn’t displace Chicagoans, being built atop an abandoned waterway, the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The Dan Ryan not only dramatically reduced the population in its route, but by paralleling a line of public housing, it reinforced segregated neighborhoods on the South Side. The Kennedy was rerouted around the backside of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, when Chicago’s Polish community complained the original plan would have placed it at the church’s front door.

This article illustrates the major changes that happened in many major American cities when highways that linked downtown areas to the future suburbs. But, the article hints that this wasn’t necessarily easy to do: people were displaced, neighborhoods were changed, political corruption occurred, and people battled about exactly where the highways should go. Today, they seem natural. In the 1950s, they were a big change.

This piece also seems to support the political economy view of urban growth and development. Highways didn’t just happen because people were clamoring to get to the suburbs for the cheaper land and houses. Rather, the fate of these highways were decided by wealthy businessmen and developers as well as politicians who saw opportunities. If people needed to be displaced, so be it. If highways could be used to separate the Black Belt from Bridgeport, so be it. If the jobs building the highways could be peddled into votes and connections, so be it. The example here of the DuPage developer is classic: now suburban land close to the highway was valuable.

Perhaps stories like these resonate more in Chicago since transportation plays such a big part in the city’s history and current makeup. Between being a railroad hub, having two busy airports, a port that connects the Great Lakes to the Mississippi (still a fairly large port though no longer as important), and a number of major interstates that run through or near the city, the effects of transportation changes matter.

The racial disparities in the Chicago blues scene

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An article in a series about the blues in Chicago explores how the white, downtown clubs are thriving while the older, black clubs on the south and west sides are struggling:

Two clubs, two worlds, one music: the blues. That’s how it goes in Chicago, a blues nexus crisply divided into separate, unequal halves. A sharp racial divide cuts through the blues landscape in Chicago, just as it does through so many other facets of life here, diminishing the music on either side of it.

The official Chicago blues scene — a magnet for tourists from around the globe — prospers downtown and on the North Side, catering to a predominantly white audience in a homogenized, unabashedly commercial setting. The unofficial scene — drawing mostly locals and a few foreign cognoscenti — barely flickers on the South and West sides, attracting a mostly black, older crowd to more homespun, decidedly less profitable locales.

Not all the grass-roots places are dying as quickly as the music room at the Water Hole. Some, such as Lee’s Unleaded Blues, on the South Side, attract a small but steady crowd on the three nights it’s open each week.

But how long can this go on? How long can a music that long flourished on the South and West sides — where the blues originators lived their lives and performed their songs — stay viable when most of the neighborhood clubs have expired? How long can a black musical art form remain dynamic when presented to a largely white audience in settings designed to replicate and merchandise the real thing?

Lots of interesting history. Additionally, the conversations about authenticity and tourism are intriguing: why doesn’t Chicago promote its music and culture more and would a major push in this direction water down the product?

It would probably be very interesting to talk to Chicago and suburban residents about blues music. How many of them know its an available option and if they do know this, how many would choose it over other entertainment activities? How many students in the region know that the blues has such a rich history in Chicago? How many colleges teach about American music (blues and jazz and their contributions to the development of rock ‘n’ roll) as opposed to classical music? How much does like for the blues cut across racial lines? Is the blues most acceptable to educated whites (in more sociological terms, cultural omnivores)?

Rahm Emanuel says Chicago is “the most American city”

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In announcing that a prestigious conference will be held next year in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel made an interesting statement about the city:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced today that Chicago will host the 12th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates this spring…

The event is expected to attract high profile leaders from around the globe. All former Nobel Peace Laureates will be invited to attend. It will be co-chaired by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Walter Veltroni, the former mayor of Rome. Emanuel will serve as an honorary co-chair.

This event “has been held in Paris, it’s been held in Berlin, it’s been held in Rome,” Emanuel said. “And they picked, in my view the most American city in America, Chicago.”

Chicago was chosen “due to its rich heritage and international profile,” organizers said Thursday.

What exactly makes Chicago “the most American city”? Several reasons come to mind:

1. Chicago came to prominence during the late 1800s as Americans were expanding to the West Coast, the railroad became really important, and America became a larger player on the world stage. In these changes, Chicago helped lead the way as a major port connecting the Great Lakes to the Mississippi and becoming the railroad hub of the nation. Chicago was the boomtown of this era, growing from just over 112,000 people in 1860 to nearly 1.7 million in 1900.

1a. In comparison, the older cities of the Northeast, Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia are too dependent on the colonial era.

1b. However, one could make the case that Los Angeles (or maybe even Houston) is the quintessential American city of the 20th century with a rise of the suburbs, highways, culture industries, and a population shift to Sunbelt and West Coast. At the same time these things were happening, Chicago was also changing: its suburbs have continued to grow (and also experienced growth in high-tech/white collar jobs) even as the city has experienced the Rust Belt problems of white flight and the loss of manufacturing jobs.

2. Chicago embodies some of the best and worse of America. It’s skyline is beautiful and it features miles of parks along Lake Michigan. The downtown and Michigan Avenue area is relatively clean and full of tourists. Chicago is a prominent world city because of its finance industry. On the flipside, Chicago is well known for its segregation (bringing MLK to the city in 1966), corrupt politics, and crime/gangsters.

3. Chicago is middle America, not the more educated or stylish East or West Coast. It embodies American values of hard work and grittiness alongside success and entrepreneurship.

A side note: it will be a busy spring in Chicago with the G-8 and NATO meeting in Chicago not too long after this Nobel gathering.

Verdict: very limited baby boom in Chicago due to Feb 2011 snowstorm

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It is a common story that natural disasters lead to baby booms as residents have little else to do except spend “quality time together” (a perhaps unintentional euphemism from the story cited in the next sentence). But the academic research on the topic isn’t so clear – here is a quick review from Friday’s front page story in the Chicago Tribune:

Udry’s [negative] finding [regarding a lengthy 1970 New York City blackout] is frequently viewed as the final word in “disaster babies” — the popular debunking website Snopes.com cites it in declaring the phenomenon a myth — but more contemporary research suggests there might be something to the idea.

A 2005 study of birth rates following the Oklahoma City bombing looked at 10 years of data and found that the counties closest to the site had indeed experienced higher than expected numbers of births after the attack…

But perhaps the most intriguing evidence supporting the idea of disaster babies was published last year by Brigham Young University economist Richard Evans. He and his colleagues looked at hurricane-prone counties on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and compared birth rates that came nine months after the announcement of impending storms.

They found that while the rates went up after the mildest expected disruption (a tropical storm watch) they went down after the most serious (a hurricane warning)…

If Evans is right that the blizzard would only produce a 2% increase in the birth rate, this is not a huge jump. In fact, Evans is cited later in the story saying that this would only be a difference of a “few dozen births” throughout the Chicago region of 8.3 million people. So if there is an effect, it is minimal. But urban legends have lives of their own – another example is the recurring issue of tainted Halloween candy that sociologist Joel Best gamely tries to stamp out.

What about other data regarding the February blizzard like a rise in heart attacks or back injuries or other medical traumas? I can think we can be pretty sure that there was a lot of shoveling that took place.

Even with a small drive, it took quite a while to clear all that snow.

Emanuel floats $2 congestion tax, parking lots fight back

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Chicago’s Mayor Emanuel this week floated the idea of imposing a $2 congestion fee for commuter parking and parking lot operators are not happy:

Parking industry executives said the mayor’s strategy, which City Hall officials said is intended to reduce traffic gridlock in the central business district and River North and encourage increased public transit ridership and investment, fails to address congestion issues across the Chicago region. They said Emanuel’s plan would create more problems than it would solve.

“We think highlighting parking taxes as a fix to a regional problem is missing the point,” said Marshall Peck, chief executive officer of InterPark, a major owner-operator of parking properties downtown. “The congestion of Chicago is primarily on the highways. Once you get off the highways in the morning, traffic is really not problematic.”

Many commuters and numerous traffic studies, however, would challenge the suggestion that downtown traffic flows well.

InterPark and other members of the Parking Industry Labor Management Committee have posted placards in their facilities showing the current taxes and how the top tax would increase 67 percent, from $3 to $5, under Emanuel’s plan. The companies are also distributing fliers to their customers encouraging city residents to tell their aldermen to vote against the proposed new fee.

There are some interesting ideas floating around here:

1. While a number of cities have looked into congestion taxes, they are still not widespread. In an American context, I presume this is due to their unpopularity.

2. This is just one possible idea among many others the City of Chicago is looking at in order to increase revenue.

3. Having parking lot operators suggest we need more regional solutions to traffic is laughable. The whole system as it is currently set up in most American regions privileges automobile traffic. So they want more people not to drive, potentially reducing their business? Additionally, many regions, such as Chicago, don’t really have metropolitan bodies that can enforce metropolitan solutions to congestion. To solve the problem in the Chicago region, the RTA, CTA, Metra, City of Chicago, State of Illinois, and dozens of municipalities would have to be involved and agreeable.

4. A number of people have argued that parking is way too cheap and this encourages driving. Congestion taxes then do two things: (1) raise revenue (2) reduce traffic by discouraging driving.

5. The parking industry is an interesting one as the long-term prospects for many surface lots is to make money while the company waits for a company to come along and make an expensive offer for the land.

6. Just how much are motorists willing to support the parking lot operators? Would companies and businesspeople really leave the city over a $2 charge?