Tag Archives: Chicago

Sears appliance circular does strange things to the Chicago skyline

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It is not too unusual for cities to be misrepresented in movies or television shows but this takes place in other areas as well. A Sears advertising circular from Friday, September 9, takes some interesting liberties with the Chicago skyline. Take a look:

Perhaps this looks fairly standard: the Sears logo in the top left, a “big price drop” balloon coming down from the sky in the upper right corner, six appliances on sale, and then a picture of the Chicago skyline at the bottom. While this may be just pandering to this metropolitan region, it also hints at Sears’ history: the first Sears store opened in Chicago in 1925 and their headquarters are still in the region.

But if you look more closely at the skyline picture, two strange things pop up. The first: a green lawn. Here is a close-up of the bottom left of the circular:

This green view is pretty much impossible. To get a wide view of the skyline from this angle, one needs to be at the Adler Planetarium promontory. From there, one needs to stand either on a hill sloping down, meaning the lawn is difficult to get into the shot, or from the concrete steps or walkway that go around this point. Plus, the grass is pretty high here relative to the height of the buildings. So why include the grass? It would make some sense if the circular was advertising lawn mowers – but it is not. Perhaps the “big price drop” balloon needs a safe place to land. Or the circular needs a touch of pleasing green. Or a focus group suggested the green lawn invokes images of home life, the need for beautiful appliances, and the American Dream.

In addition to the strange grass, there is something odd going on at the right (east) side of the skyline. Here is a closer view:

Even looking closely at the circular, I have a hard time figuring out what is going on here. It appears to be a hill sloping up from the lake with some buildings on the hill. Why was this added to the picture? I really have no good idea – to fill up space?

Here is what the view of the Chicago skyline looks like from my own camera near Adler Planetarium, sans verdant lawn or black hill:

If this was the starting point for the Sears image, one could crop and play with it in such a way that the added blue from Lake Michigan could be removed but adding the lawn and hill is not necessary. It would still be a very nice and useful shot.

Quick Review (recent reads): The Social Animal, Love Wins, Connected, In the Garden of Beasts, Heat Wave, Travels with Charley

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As the summer ended and school started, I was able to get through a backlog of intriguing books. Here are quick thoughts on this varied collection:

1. The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks. I thought I might not like the “story” that Brooks uses to convey research findings but I found it a helpful way to think about the growing body of research about how our brains and emotions affect our lives. Overall, I like Brook’s argument that we should pay more attention to the British Enlightenment than the French Enlightenment emphasis because of how much humans are truly influenced by their emotions and subconscious and not just reason and rationality. I’m not quite sure what Brooks wants us to do with this information in the end (and why use the term “the big shaggy” to describe our subconcious?) but I do enjoy Brooks skewering certain groups in hilarious paragraphs that mirror some of his commentary in earlier books like Bobos in Paradise. And perhaps I’m required to say this as a sociologist but I think Brooks gives short shrift to the role of culture plays in shaping the subconscious. (See a preview post about the book here.)

2. Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived by Rob Bell. This book created quite a stir in evangelical circles earlier this year as some, like John Piper, essentially kicked Bell out of their circles. On the whole, I would say the book is uneven: some chapters are quite orthodox in their understanding of God, love, and evangelism while other chapters stray and Bell is not as careful with his words as he pushes boundaries. Also, the book seems aimed less at the general population and more at disaffected evangelicals, an interesting group to address, who can’t come to grips about their beliefs about hell rather. Taking a broader view, the book and the debate around it illustrates several interesting sociological issues: subcultures and drawing symbolic boundaries about who is in and out as well as the how theology and culture influence each other. As a follow-up, I ran into these two videos: MSNBC’s Martin Bashir asks Bell some tough questions (considering the issue of media types asking people about religion, Bashir’s Wikipedia profile includes a quote saying he is a “committed Christian”) in contrast to a fluffier interview with George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America.

3. Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas Christakis and James H. Fowler. This text could serve as a general audience introduction to the study of social networks. Many of the examples in the book are physiological as these researchers are known for their work on how things like obesity, emotions, and diseases are spread throughout social networks. The takeaway of the book: three degrees of separation is what connects us (those are your friends of friends of friends) and the actions and emotions of those people trickle down to us. I like the emphasis on how people seemingly beyond our immediate control have an influence on us.

4. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and An American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson. This book provides a look at Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s through the eyes of American ambassador William Dodd and his daughter Martha. The story of Germany is of course fascinating: Hitler consolidates power while hardly anyone inside or outside the country challenges him. However, Dodd and his daughter figure it out but they are marginalized, Dodd because he won’t live the opulent lifestyle most US ambassadors were accustomed to and Martha because of her romantic forays and developing ties to the USSR. Even though you know the outcome of the larger story, the story is still interesting as an American academic tries to sound the alarm about the rising tide of Nazism.

5. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago by Eric Klinenberg. I’ve been meaning to read this for some time as it concerns the 500+ deaths that occurred as the result of a heat wave in Chicago in 1995. Klinenberg performs a “social autopsy,” looking at the various factors and institution involved in the situation. The elderly who were alone were susceptible, particularly in neighborhoods without much street life, the morgues were unprepared, the media was behind in covering the story, and the City of Chicago and Mayor Daley tried to pass the blame. A lot went wrong in this situation, leading to one of the most deadly natural disasters in American history. (Perhaps this book was ahead of its time in looking at the sociology of disasters.)

6. Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck. I like Steinbeck and regard The Winter of Our Discontent and East of Eden as two of the best books I have read. However, this travelogue seems the opposite of his best novels: Steinbeck rambles around the country and offers some disconnected commentary. It seemed like he was trying to not do what he does in his novel: offer sweeping stories with big points about American life and culture. The only part that really grabbed my attention: Steinbeck passed through New Orleans during protests against the integration of New Orleans’ schools in 1960 (immortalized in a Norman Rockwell painting President Obama recent selected to hang in the Oval Office) and talked with some of the residents.

Looking for Chicago in movies and television

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This Chicago Tribune piece reviews some movies and TV shows that have used Chicago as a setting.

Here are a few takeaway points:

1. Movies and TV shows like to draw upon Chicago’s colorful police and politics.

2. Many film elsewhere. Interestingly, the creator of Against the Wall says, “you can’t fake Chicago as well as you can fake other cities.”

3. Many focus on known quantities, like the Chicago River or the El. The writer suggests this ignores Chicago’s real side.

And a few questions:

1. Compared to other American cities, is Chicago over or under represented? If so, why?

2. What are the best movies and TV shows for making use of their setting? It is one thing to have a backdrop (think of the credits of Family Matters which clearly shows Chicago) and another to really anchor the action within a particular place.

New proposal for “bus rapid transit system” for Chicago

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A new proposal calls for a “bus rapid transit system” in Chicago:

That’s one reason to like a new proposal by the Metropolitan Planning Council (pdf) that outlines a major bus rapid transit system for the city of Chicago. The system would be pretty expansive. Its 10 routes would wind through roughly 95 miles of windy city. It would link up to Chicago’s existing transit lines and thereby increase transit trips throughout the region by 3 percent, with as many as 7,000 daily drivers converting to public transportation…

More importantly, the proposed system would also be relatively inexpensive. Whereas light rail can often cost around $35 million a mile to build, bus rapid transit can be done for about $13 million, according to the council’s report. Still, modest as the plan is, it might not be modest enough. Currently Chicago has plans for only three fast bus lanes, with another three to come in the future — “BRT light,” as one official put it. A spokeswoman for the city’s transit authority told the Tribune the money for more lines just isn’t there:

“Given the funding constraints, our plan for three routes is an aggressive, reasonable and workable plan,” CTA spokeswoman Molly Sullivan said.

This looks like an interesting proposal, including the livability scores calculated for each bus route. If I had to sell someone on this, I would say that the proposal argues that these buses deliver light-rail like performance without the additional infrastructure costs. The proposed routes seem to be targeted at areas that are not easily served by the El, particularly along several key north-south corridors.

Several questions come to mind:

1. The proposal includes several small case studies of BRT (bus rapid transit) in action in cities like Portland, Johannesburg, and Las Vegas. Is it reasonable to ask that such proposals include city systems that were not terribly effective?

2. Could this find its way to the suburbs? Suburban buses always present difficulties due to limited service over a wide areas and consistent funding issues. But rapid buses that cover well-trafficked routes might be worth considering.

3. The funding issue is a big deal. Is the City of Chicago in any position to approve new mass transit considering its financial state? The proposal suggests this would be beneficial because it would encourage development, improve mass transit, and make the city more livable but would this also provide cost savings? It would be interesting to hear from a panel of experts as to whether Chicago “needs” light rail or BRT. In other words, is this a luxury or a necessity?

More on MLK in Chicago in 1966

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After reading about Mayor Richard J. Daley in American Pharaoh, I learned more about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s time in Chicago in 1966. His time in the city was short but very interesting. Here are the things that stuck out to me:

1. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had quite a debate about whether they should bring the Civil Rights Movement to Chicago or not. Several issues were at play: they had won legal battles in the South eliminating legal segregation but it was unclear whether they could win against informal (yet very established) segregation in the North. Also, Daley’s reputation was well-known. King decided to come to Chicago anyway over the arguments of others.

2. King based his movement out of the West Side of Chicago, living (though not all the time) in a tenement apartment in Lawndale. The West Side was a newer ghetto created when the population of the Black Belt became too large and other parts of the city were closed off to blacks. King set up there in part to avoid the black politicians who always supported Daley on the South Side. These politicians were willing to support Daley and the machine in return for being able to control their own wards. Thus, King was not fully supported by the black community when he operated in Chicago.

3. Daley played both sides successfully in 1966 and throughout his career. While Daley became known for supporting police brutality against anti-war protestors at the 1968 Democratic Convention, he tried to co-opt many of King’s efforts. Even though he came from an ethnic white neighborhood, he never fully came out and said blacks couldn’t move into such neighborhoods. At the same time, the city’s policies were aimed at avoiding this (particularly decisions about public housing). Daley controlled enough of the black vote on the South Side that he never had to support Civil Rights. Interestingly, his son gave a similar response to a question about segregation in Chicago earlier this year: he started talking about how Chicago is a city of neighborhoods and immigrants and they all move around and seek a better life.

4. King and his followers tried to reach out to Chicago’s gangs, not really a concern for the movement in the South, but this proved difficult. By this point, more gang members and others thought violence was a better response.

5. Daley met with King several times with a number of other interested parties present. These meetings didn’t go anywhere fast.

6. At a march in Marquette Park on August 5, 1966, King was struck by a rock in the head and knocked down. Others yelled, “Kill him, kill him” while “another heckler threw a knife at King.” After escaping the scene, King said, “I’ve been in many demonstrations all across the south, but I can say that I have never seen – even in Mississippi and Alabama – mobs as hostile and hate-filled as I’ve seen in Chicago…I think the people from Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate.” This is one of those stories (and there are many others) that should disabuse people of the notion that the North had racial harmony).

7. Jesse Jackson was involved in this process as he had been attending seminary.

8. The final summit between the city and the Chicago Freedom Movement began August 17, 1966. After the first day, both Daley and King were unhappy about the outcome. After Daley asked for and got a moratorium from a judge on marches in Chicago neighborhoods, the Freedom Movement marched outside the city and threatened to march on Cicero on August 28. After more negotiations, the final meeting was held on August 26 and both Daley and King claimed a victory with the final agreement.

9. Ultimately, King and the Chicago Freedom Movement saw little change in the actions of Daley and the city. From my own view, it appears like Daley was able to outlast King: he said just enough without really promising big changes. King, perhaps caught off guard by the differences between Chicago and the South, could only force Daley to negotiate (and marching in Cicero was the big lever King had – one can only imagine if a major march had occurred) but not to capitulate.

Fascinating reading.

Read my earlier post about this from MLK Day 2011 here.

Attracting legal talent to the Chicago suburbs

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Apparently Kane County wasn’t paying assistant state’s attorneys enough to keep them around until recently:

“This is a significant (economic) downturn historically, but at the same time we have to be aware the failure to pay a competitive wage will lead to our talented and experienced assistant state’s attorneys going to other counties. I want the best and brightest to work here in Kane County. That has a direct impact on public safety,” [Kane County State’s Attorney Joe] McMahon said.

It does seem that Kane County was out of sync with the rest of western Chciagoland:

McMahon said the current starting salary for a Kane County assistant state’s attorney is $40,000.

He is proposing to raise that to $53,000.

In surrounding counties, McMahon said, starting salaries are $51,600 in McHenry; $54,100 in DuPage; $53,700 in Lake; and $51,600 in Will.

Brian may have some additional insights on this, but it strikes me that most of this previous disparity in salaries could be explained by different costs of living in each county.  Still, if Kane wasn’t able to keep experienced prosecutors around, these proposed salary increases might be money well spent.

Using the Dave Matthews Caravan to help sell former US Steel Works site

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The Dave Matthews Band has a proven track record for selling albums and filling large stadiums but now they are being asked to do more: showcase the 600 acre former US Steel Works site in south Chicago.

Early next month, in the first real use of the enormous lakefront land parcel since the plant finally closed in 1992, tens of thousands more will walk through a different set of gates. Instead of lunchboxes, they’ll be clutching tickets to a three-day, multiband rock event, the second stop of the Dave Matthews Band Caravan. The worker who checks their ticket may well be a volunteer, paid not with wages but with a ticket to the show…

Having the show there, in open space roughly centered on 83rd Street, was a risky choice: Land needed clearing, logistics needed developing, transportation needed planning. But to Jerry Mickelson, the partner in Chicago-based music promoter Jam Productions who brought Matthews and the old mill grounds together, it was a risk worth taking…

Where there were once 160 buildings, the only structures left on the property — which covers the lakefront from 79th Street on the north to 87th Street on the south — are massive masonry retaining walls once used to hold raw materials and a former clock house now used by a development company to show off its plans to turn the area into a bustling urban jewel…

What McCaffery wants to do, detailed in drawings and videos in the company’s on-site showroom, is dramatic — creation rather than a mere makeover.

In his plan, malls will be built, lakefront parkland donated, the city’s largest marina constructed, entire neighborhoods erected on ground that used to produce the raw materials of construction. It’s a $4 billion, 30- or 40-year plan, carved up into separate phases.

It sounds like this concert idea is a stepping stone to a larger plan for this sizable parcel and the article suggests most people, including local politicians, are happy with these concert plans. It sounds like a reasonable idea: the site is being clean, the concertgoers will only be there for a few days, the influx of people will presumably provide some boost to nearby businesses, and all of this could show off the viability of the site for more permanent uses.

But I would have a few questions about the long-term proposal for the site:

1. How does this concert and the big plans for future uses fit with the existing area? I imagine traffic could be a concern to some people.

2. The large long-term plan is contingent on extending Lake Shore Drive – who will pay for that?

3. Is there a need in Chicago for such a large mixed-use site, particularly this far away from the city center? If it is built, will they come?

Regardless of what happens in the long-term, this is a unique music festival site in Chicago and we’ll see if the Dave Matthews Band can also help sell real estate development.

Chicago beats out competitors: not on list of America’s 10 Dirtiest Cities

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I heard a joke years back: Chicago may be corrupt but at least it’s clean while Philadelphia is both corrupt and dirty. On a new list of America’s dirtiest cities, Chicago isn’t in the top 10:

While such sentiments don’t appear in tourist brochures, that glorious grit has landed Baltimore in the Top 10 dirtiest cities, as chosen by Travel + Leisure readers in the annual America’s Favorite Cities survey. Of course, visitors gauge “dirty” in a variety of ways: litter, air pollution, even the taste of local tap water.

This year’s American State Litter Scorecard, published by advocacy group the American Society for Public Administration, put both Nevada and Louisiana in the bottom five—echoing the assessment of T+L readers who ranked Las Vegas and New Orleans among America’s dirtiest cities.

The top 10 dirtiest cities according to Travel + Leisure readers, starting with the dirtiest: New Orleans, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Memphis, New York City, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Miami, Atlanta, and Houston.

The top 10 dirtiest states according to the “2011 American State Litter Scorecard,” starting with the dirtiest: Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Alabama, Indiana, Georgia, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Montana. The best states: Washington, California, Iowa, Maine, and Connecticut. I like the conclusion on the slideshow: “Scorecard not definitive: Contributing inquiry into poorly probed matter.” Somebody should study the issue…

Having been to many of these places, I have always thought that Chicago’s tourist area, including the Loop and River North, was quite clean and attractive, as far as cities go.

Class I railroads converge in Chicago region

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Chicago continues to be a critical transportation hub in the United States. A recent short interview in Chicago said 70% of American rail traffic moves through the Chicago area and 6 of the Class I railroads in the United States run through the region. Here is a description of Class I railroads from the Department of the Interior:

There were 554 common carrier freight railroads operating in the United States in 2002, classified into five groups.

Class I railroads are those with operating revenue of at least $272 million in 2002. Class I carriers comprise only 1 percent of the number of U.S. freight railroads, but they account for 70 percent of the industry’s mileage operated, 89 percent of its employees, and 92 percent of its freight revenue. Class I carriers typically operate in many different states and concentrate largely (though not exclusively) on long-haul, high-density intercity traffic lanes. There are seven Class I railroads ranging in size from just over 3,000 to more than 33,000 miles operated and from 2,600 to more than 46,000 employees.

Here are the seven Class I carriers: “The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe (BNSD); CSX Transportation (CSX); Grand Trunk Corporation, which consists of the U.S. operations of Canadian National (CN), including the former Grand Trunk Western (GTW), Illinois Central (IC), and Wisconsin Central; Kansas City Southern (KCS); Norfolk Southern (NS); The former Soo Line (800) owned by Canadian Pacific (CP); Union Pacific (UP).”

Of course, this can lead to a number of issues:

1. The Chicago region has a large number of at-grade crossings and long freight trains are a nuisance for many drivers, particularly in denser areas.

2. This requires a lot of space to transfer cargo. In recent years, the newer intermodal facilities have moved further out from the city of Chicago with new facilities in Rochelle (west of DeKalk, south of Rockford) and the Joliet Arsenal.

3. Freight tracks closer to the city can be congested, delaying passenger trains.

The trick for the railroads (and others?) is to remind residents of the Chicago how important railroads are for transporting goods. In recent years, there has some more advertising about this, particularly touting the greener use of fuel compared to trucking. But more could be done within the region to provide evidence that Chicago continues to be important partly because of this traffic.

“Missionary work” selling new mixed-income neighborhoods in Chicago

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In the 1990s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Chicago Housing Authority, and the City of Chicago developed plans to tear down the public housing high-rises in Chicago and replace them with new mixed-income neighborhoods that would include units for public housing residents as well as market-rate units. Recently, it has been difficult to sell some of these units and the neighborhoods:

“Every single Plan for Transformation (community) is in exactly the same predicament,” said Ziegenhagen, vice president of operations. “They’re looking at their pro forma and they’re looking at a huge loss. The lenders have been more willing to work things out with these developments because they invested in them knowing they were really community development, and we were all assaulted by the same economic development.”…

Even in the good times, Williams said, buyers in a development like Oakwood Shores, on the site of the former Ida B. Wells housing complex, had to be what he calls “trailblazers.”

Now, those trailblazers aren’t happy because the price cuts of 25 to 35 percent have negated their equity, while their property tax bills have increased. Newer buyers need to be trailblazers who are much better educated about just what it is they are buying into at a Plan for Transformation community, Williams said…

“If you believe in real estate, you just have to believe that you keep building a neighborhood. Otherwise, you’ll continue to have a decline in the values of the existing neighborhood. These transformation sites are hard work,” Williams said. “This is missionary work. I didn’t start out thinking this is missionary work, but that’s what I think I’m doing now.

Some of this is certainly due to a depressed housing market. However, this also sounds like it is part of the growing pains of these new mixed-income neighborhoods: even though the units might be on in desirable locations, particularly at the Cabrini-Green site, some homebuyers might be turned off by the idea of living near public housing residents or being part of a newly-formed neighborhood and having to be “trailblazers.”

It will be interesting to see down the road whether this is just a blip in the development of these neighborhoods which were supposed to be transformational or whether they hint at deeper issues that are exacerbated by this economic crisis. I assume time will help take away some of the stigma of these neighborhoods, particularly their historic connection to notorious public housing projects, but this will still be a process.