Archeologists Un-Earthing Civil War Prisoner Camp on the South Side (NBC)

Upgraded 95th Street CTA terminal could help put South Side on right track (WBEZ)

Census data shows Chicago's Growing (Crain's)

"Chicago's population grew by 8,800 to 2.71 million residents between July 2010 and July 2011"

Chicago is due for a Manufacturing Comback (the Atlantic)


"The world's three biggest emerging trading markets are Brazil, India, and China. For each country, general and special-purpose machinery (which is Chicago's expertise) ranks as the single most demanded import. That bodes well for Chicago's manufacturing rebound."

A Perfect Summer Day in Chicago

View South from Montrose Harbor 

Montrose Beach looking North

Former gang members discuss the reality of Violence on Chicago's South and West Sides (WBEZ)

Redeveloping the South Lakefront

Bronzville between 26th and 51st Streets, Google Earth

70 years ago the South Lakefront of Chicago was one of the most densely populated areas of the City. Today it is a shadow of its former vibrancy. Massive demolition, "urban renewal" and decades of prejudicial disinvestment have made this one of the most underutilized stretches of real estate in America. Redeveloping this 2.5 mile stretch should be one of the City's top priorities.  If the South Lakefront were to reach the density of the North Lakefront it would provide beautiful, well-connected urban neighborhoods for hundreds of thousands of people.

The city certainly recognizes this and is already taking steps to bring more energy and life to the area. The CTA plans on building a new Green Line station at Cermak (23rd Street) by 2014. The new stop will be immediately adjacent to McCormick Place and the historic Motor Row. Proposals are floating for a relatively large-scale redevelopment of the area. This should help integrate McCormick Place into the City's urban fabric and continue the trajectory of redevelopment that pushed through the South Loop for the last 15 years.

Of course the South Lakefront was very much the center of Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid. Despite losing the Olympics the bid was instrumental in laying the groundwork for future redevelopment - including a new harbor at 31st Street (see below). The new harbor opened this past May and has greatly improved the amenities and physical condition of the surrounding park system.

31st Street Harbor Plan

31st Street Harbor looking North (Photo Credit)

Before the real-estate crash of 2008 Bronzeville was benefiting from significant investment and making important strides toward establishing itself as an upper-middle class African American neighborhood. Redevelopment has stalled some-what since the Recession, but its potential is no less significant. The City bought the derelict Michael Reese Hospital site and has cleared all but the historic Walter Gropius building. Initially intended as Chicago's Olympic Village the City has now asked a hand full of high-profile firms to develop proposals that will likely include some mix of residential and technology oriented businesses.

Proposed 2016 Olympic Village

Clearly such a large scale development will take time and remain subject to market conditions. The most important project that the City of Chicago could pursue in order to facilitate development of the South Shore is the creation of a new CTA "Gold Line" in the already existing Metra Right-of-Way that runs along the lakefront and through the heart of an already vibrant Hyde Park neighborhood. This idea was originally proposed by South Side community groups and was floating around the Internet for awhile before gaining more attention during the City's Olympic bid.

Proposed CTA Gold Line along the South Shore

The "Gold Line" is a transformative idea that takes advantage of existing infrastructure, minimizes cost and links already vibrant areas with the Loop while also bringing much needed transit access to areas of the South Lakefront that have enormous redevelopment potential. It's possible that the "Gold Line" could be realized by simply adding CTA turnstiles to existing Metra stations and running the trains every 10 minutes instead of every half-hour or hour.

The major barrier here is bureaucratic and political, not money or feasibility. Metropolitan Chicago desperately needs to consolidate and integrate its transportation systems. In New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. urban transit and suburban commuter rail are all integrated under the same umbrella organization (MTA, MBTA, SEPTA, WMATA respectively). In Chicago urban and suburban transit are divided between the CTA and Metra. Both organizations capital improvements are supported by the Federal Government. Operating expenses are supported by the State of Illinois and local government taxes. The City of Chicago and its immediately adjacent suburbs of Evanston, Oak Park and Skokie and Cicero support CTA (roughly 3.5 million people). The rest of the metropolitan area (an additional 7 million people, 10 million total) supports Metra. Steps are being taken to better integrate customer fairs across the transit organizations but too many redundancies and inefficiencies remain. Again the barriers are political, not technical.

Creating a CTA line along the South Lakefront would greatly facilitate massive redevelopments at the Michael Reese Hospital site and Lake Meadows at 31st street and King Drive.

Lake Meadows Redevelopment, Draper & Kramer

Until now redevelopment of the South Lakefront has been relatively small scale and piecemeal. For real progress to be made a critical mass of activity and amenities needs to be created. A new transit line along the Lakefront and one significant development project like Lake Meadows would provide this stimulus and inspire more fine-grained urban infill development in the surrounding neighborhoods. The final large-scale proposal for the South Lakefront is the Lakeside Community on the site of the former South Steel Works near the Calumet River (see below).

Lakeside Development

Collectively these developments and the urban infill that they facilitate may create beautiful, high-quality urban neighborhoods for hundreds of thousands of people by 2050. The most important step that the City of Chicago can take right now is the integration of CTA and Metra and the creation of a "Gold Line" along the South Lakefront.

Chicago didn't benefit much from the false prosperity of the 2000-2008 years

Another month another highly critical editorial by Aaron Renn that over-emphasizes Chicago's weaknesses in a conservative news source (Second-Rate City, City Journal). To be fair his podcast sounds much more reasonable than the article itself.

I intended to write a much longer reply but Greg Hinz beat me too it (Is the 'Second-Rate City' hindered by a diverse economy?, Crain's). The most interesting part of both of these articles is probably the reader comment section / Internet discussion that it has inspired.

Renn periodically joins Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox as the Three Musketeer's of conservative / "free-market" oriented urban commentary. Kotkin and Cox are too blatantly ideological to be taken seriously. Renn, at least, makes valuable observations - even if he tends to de-contextualize his criticisms and offer little in the way of constructive ideas.

The irony with all of these conservative-leaning commentators is that they invariably praise cities that have disproportionately benefited from Federal policies and massive fiscal subsidies - be they for cheap housing (sprawl in Phoenix and Atlanta), energy (Texas/Oklahoma), financial de-regulation (New York) - or an avalanche of corporate money to Federal lobbying (Washington D.C.). As I've suggested, these pundits completely dismiss the context of most of their observations - the fact that Chicago is basically Detroit on the far South and West Sides. You can't compare that kind of history - which the rest of the country willingly chose to abandon - to places like Renn's hometown of Indianapolis or an Austin, Texas or a lily white Seattle.

Chicago is far too interesting and complicated to characterize it so simplistically. It has far too much potential to dismiss so opportunistically. Renn sounds more and more like he just enjoy's cherry picking the City for some personal reason.

Chicago's greatest asset is reality... which most of the rest country continues to avoid. Despite all of the adversity, Chicago remains one of the most important economic cities in the world. It continues to reinvent itself precisely because it is more self-aware than anywhere else in America. Other cities may boom and bust, but in the long run Chicago is one of the most well position cities in the world.

Insightful Analysis of Chicago's Changing Demographics (Ed Zotti, The Reader)

Life in 2 Chicagos (Mary Schmich, Tribune)

"And then, once in a while, the borders between the two Chicagos blur. The people in the safe city are jolted by an up-close glimpse of what it is to live at risk, on guard."

Downtown location becoming a necessity in competition for Talent (Crain's)


"'I don't know one young person who would think working in Skokie would be cool,' says Helen Tunea, a 30-year-old human resources manager at Ifbyphone who lives in the South Loop.

Although a key selling point of a downtown office for younger workers is being closer to friends after work, Mr. Shapiro found an unexpected upside: Productivity rose as commutes fell."

Happy Birthday Frank Lloyd Wright (Architizer)


"Someone at Google dropped the ball. Today marks what would have been Frank Lloyd Wright’s 145th birthday, and there’s no honorific doodle to commemorate the event, no cutesy homage to Fallingwater, no “lilypad” columns from the Johnson Wax Headquarters (perfect for the ‘oo’ in ‘google’!) or even a stained glass facsimile. Mies van der Rohe got his due this past March, with the search engine posting a Sketch-up-like drawing of Crown Hall on its homepage, prompting an outpouring of halfhearted tributes to the “architect of the future”. Wright, generally considered to be America’s greatest architect, deserves some love, too. In an attempt to right the slight, we’re listing our top 5 Frank Lloyd Wright posts we've covered."

It's a bit of a cliche, but - having grown up in Oak Park, Wright is the reason I became an architect. Wright, Sullivan and the Chicago School were the only uniquely American Architects until the L.A. postmodernists (Ghery and Thom Mayne mostly).

Where Chicago's Vacant Homes Are  (Crain's)

Architects Brace for Major Hike in Student Loan Interest Rates (Arch Record)

"Whether they pursue a bachelor’s or master’s degree, many architecture students are forced to take out loans to cover tuition. With design jobs rarely offering large salaries, architects can spend years, if not decades, paying off that debt. "

A Brief History of Englewood (now one of Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods): (The Chicago Reporter)

"1895: Henry H. Holmes, owner of an 80-room mansion on Wallace and 63rd streets, is arrested and charged with murder. He eventually confesses to torturing and killing 28 people in his home, making him Chicago's first serial killer."

120 years ago: Chicago's first 'L' (WBEZ)

"In 1888 a group of private investors secured a franchise for the Chicago & South Side Rapid Transit. New York was already operating elevated trains over its avenues, but the Chicago group proposed to build their line along the property paralleling alleys. They figured that would be cheaper. The project was soon nicknamed The Alley "L."

Geography of Economic Hardship in Chicago (Chicago Mag)