A tale of two Chicagos

by Kari Lyderson

Chicago is looking good, at least according to Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

“If Emanuel can sell or lease off public assets and bring public unions to their knees in Chicago, odds are it can be done anywhere.”

On Oct. 23, the mayor addressed the city to describe his plans

for the 2014 budget, which was approved Nov. 26 in a 45 to 5 city council vote. During his talk, he waxed poetic on positive changes that have come to Chicago.

“We now enjoy a rapidly growing food truck industry, a nationally renowned bike sharing program, new protected bike lanes that represent around 20 percent of the nation’s total urban network,” Emanuel said. “And a booming tech sector that is bringing thousands of new jobs and hundreds of new companies to the city of Chicago.”

Emanuel also announced this month that alongside the annual Lollapalooza music extravaganza in downtown Chicago next summer, the city will host a summit to bring together venture capitalists and firms seeking their money. The initiative is a part of the mayor’s bid to remake Chicago as a hub of entrepreneurial innovation, a Midwestern Silicon Valley where high-tech startup companies sprout in old warehouses traversed by so-called “hipster highways” (i.e. bike lanes).

But scores of existing residents — particularly African Americans on the city’s impoverished south and west sides — feel that they are not part of Emanuel’s new vision. They do not see the food trucks and bike lanes in their own neighborhoods; they are not planning to launch or invest in start-up companies; they feel there is not room for them on the bullet train that is Chicago’s future.

An exclusionary vision

That Emanuel’s vision for Chicago excludes many residents was driven home by the closing of almost 50 public schools this year, predominantly in those neighborhoods. The mayor was on a ski vacation when the closings were announced. (To add insult to injury, a few weeks later Emanuel announced plans to use $55 million in taxpayer subsidies to build a sports arena for DePaul University on the lakefront.)

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Dorchester Projects

Dorchester Projects, initiated by Theaster Gates, is on everyone’s horizons right now. Among dozens of other things, the artist was awarded a prize last September by the Vera List Center in New York. Okui Enwezor said this about it: “Dorchester Projects layers a meditation on the present African American experience by connecting it to the haunted remains of the past, making links with narratives of race consciousnesses, the Civil Rights Movements, but ultimately probing how the African American experience is enlivened by ongoing processes of testimony.”

You could say that the three different buildings (one of them pictured above) compose a mix between home, sculpture, reading room, event space, archives, cinema and garden. Yet that doesn’t really catch it. What seems to be going on is an experimental approach to material transformation, seeking the forms of a potential institution, yet deliberately holding back any secure or identifiable foundation. The archives range from Black popular culture (records and magazines) to architecture books and an amazing collection of art history slides. The hands-on aesthetic is signified by the work with reused carpentry materials, done largely in collaboration with the energetic and soft-spoken John Preus. Yet everything is hands-on here. Projects is rightly in the plural. Rather than a work, I felt like I’d stepped into an open-ended process where the labor of many hands strives to discover new capacities and new finalities, beyond any of the particular structures or fixtures that are regularly completed and set to use.

The first of the buildings that Theaster bought, to the left of the one shown here, has now been transformed into a gallery/library with precise and polished walls, skylight, spot lighting, etc. Yet with its bowling alley floor and sunken back room carved into the former basement it’s completely idiosyncratic, unlike any gallery you’ve ever seen. Across the street, the Black Cinema House looks from the outside like an extremely elegant remodel of an existing structure. On the inside, a living room full of art pieces transforms into a cinema in just a few minutes, with chairs pulled up from the basement. A large kitchen is ready to serve a collective meal or some conversational drinks. It’s pretty clear that the aim is serious culture and avant-garde art. Yet you’re also in someone’s living space, with no institutional formalism.

My guide for an afternoon visit was Titus Wonsey, whom I met very briefly at Huguenot House in Kassel during Documenta 13, where the Dorchester crew tried their hands at launching a full-fledged rebuilding project in a foreign city. They transformed the entire thing using materials from from Chicago, had crazy good parties and made a mark on a town that’s seen everything. Recently I heard Titus talking about it at a panel up at Northwestern, where Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev had all kinds of Chicago participants reflecting on Documenta. Titus said cool things, we struck up some conversations and finally, after hearing about it for years, I actually made it down to see the place. Some of us are slow off the mark, but I guess everyone can learn something new about the city they live in. Way to go Titus! Thanks for the hospitality.

Chicago is a Union Town

Seen on campus, Nov. 7:

Based on overwhelming positive support for the proposals, and nearly unanimous support for a series of escalating actions, the Faculty Organizing Committee continues to plan for several large-scale events:

1. Early in November, a massive contract rally. Mark your calendars for November 7th from 11:30am-12:30pm for an event outside of University Hall. Everyone should begin working on getting 2 members who were not present at the Oct 7th meeting to commit to attending the rally. Faculty who teach during that time are urged to treat it as a teach-in and invite their students.

2. A one-day work stoppage/teach-in closer to the end of the semester.

3. An action (To be announced) at the UIC Urban Forum on December 5th.

4. At the end of the semester, submitting Supplemental Grade Report (SGR) forms rather than entering grades in the Banner System.

5. Finally, if necessary, a work stoppage until the contract is settled, to begin early in the spring semester.

As an adjunct faculty member I stand with all my colleagues and insist that in addition to personal interests (and why exactly should professors make less than janitors or other honorable professions?) what’s at stake here is the fate of public education, which is being smothered by administration and corporate imperatives, to the grave disadvantage of students among others. What has happened over the last twenty years is an immense education bubble that inflates everything – and first of all tuition – while ignoring the main thing: which is equal and affordable access to the knowledges we all need to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century.

Want to know more? I sure did a couple years ago, so I researched and wrote this.

Open House Chicago

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A Universal Religion by the Lake

I would definitely count it among the 9 Wonders of Chicago. This was the first Bahá’i temple to be built in the West, with donations from the faithful all over the world. Construction of the founders’ dome began in 1922, and the entire edifice, made with a unique cast concrete cladding, was finished in 1943. The Bahá’i religion is a late-nineteenth-century syncretic tradition that accepts all the major prophets as reflections of the one true God. A photo in the crypt (which you can visit) shows early American adherents around the turn of the century, upstanding citizens who seem to have found a creed as enlightened and universal as they undoubtedly conceived their country to be. It’s rather amazing that their belief should have given rise to such a structure. This is the only Bahá’i Temple in North America and one of only seven in the world. It’s surrounded by beautiful gardens, right next to Wilmette Harbor and a pleasant beach, just north of Evanston off Sheridan Ave. A cosmic jewel in our midst.

Balloons over South Chicago

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14,000 new homes plus 17 million feet of consumer excess on 500 prime acres left vacant by US Steel: it’s the future Chicago Lakeside, brought to you (or maybe your wealthier cousins) by the development trio of McCaffery Interests / Skidmore, Owings & Merill / Sasaki Associates, to the tune of around $4 billion. They say what used to be a slag heap will soon be a redux of the Loop. Which makes the brand new extension of Lake Shore Drive into some kind of Yellow Brick Road for the far South Side.

So you want the strategic perspective, right now while the ground is being broken, but you don’t have access to the helicopter view? Maybe balloon mapping is for you!

Laurie Palmer, Sarah Ross and Lindsey French took their SAIC students down to give it a try. I got the chance to tag along for the ride. The place was  the end of 91st Street, a stone’s throw and a bunch of cyclone fences away from the Calumet River. The helium tube came out of the truck; the balloons got fuller and lighter; and before you know it we were airborne. Still cameras clicked away automatically within funny-looking parachutes made out of plastic water bottles; a video camera went up there too; and there was also a sensor measuring the presence of petroleum gases.

Both the cameras actually fell from the sky (blame the carabiners!) but their improvised parachutes protected them, and I hope to post a few aerial photos here soon.

Hope is: Wanting to pull clouds, by Sigmar Polke

Connection Power in Chicago

As the Internet grew beyond government research, Chicago became one of the major connection points for traffic. Inside the former R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. printing plant on East Cermak Road, next to McCormick Place, is the world’s largest, most-connected Internet data center, according to industry website Data Center Knowledge. It’s where more than 200 carriers connect their networks to the rest of the world, home to many big Internet service providers and where the world’s major financial exchanges connect to one another and to trading desks. “It’s where the Internet happens,” Cleversafe’s Mr. Gladwin says.

Image: 350 E Cermak

Chicago is one of the half-dozen key vertebrae in the nation’s digital backbone because it lies at the center of many of the fiber optic cables that stretch between New York and California, the country’s major connection points to the rest of the world via cables under the oceans. Chicago has the third-biggest fiber optic capacity of any metro area in the country, behind New York and Washington. And three of the world’s largest data centers are in Chicago or its suburbs.

The same combination of geography and economics that elevated Chicago into a national center of infrastructure-dependent industries such as commodity trading, transportation and manufacturing in the 19th and 20th centuries now contributes to its pre-eminence in 21st-century digital infrastructure. The city’s digital tubes are tomorrow’s waterways, rail lines, highways and airports.

“Things go to where things are,” says Hunter Newby, CEO of New York-based Allied Fiber, one of two companies laying fiber from the East Coast to Chicago to meet demand from financial services and wireless companies. “Where there is manufacturing and industry, there are power plants and distribution, which cost a lot of money to build.”

“Chicago is by far the center of railroad tracks in the U.S.,” says Chris Gladwin, CEO of Cleversafe Inc., a data storage company based in the West Loop. “If you’re hosting a server, Chicago is near the population center in the U.S. It will have the lowest average latency (lag time) to the rest of the U.S.”

Source: How Chicago became one of the nation’s most digital cities

Fulton Fest Celebrates the Fulton/Kinzie Corridor

This coming Friday, September 13th is Fulton Fest.  The street fair boasts exhibitions and events from many of the 100+ tenants of the Industrial Council of Northwest Chicago (ICNC) Kinzie/Fulton corridor.   The Kinzie/Fulton corridor is part of a larger portion of industrial and mixed-zoning land/buildings called the Kinzie Industrial Corridor.  Stretching north-to-south between Grand Avenue and Washington Boulevard and east-to-west between Kedzie Avenue and the Kennedy Expressway, the area was once heavy manufacturing now turned open manufacturing.  TIF allocations for this district are strongly protected and go towards the following, per The City of Chicago’s Housing and Economic Development board:

“Spanning portions of the Humboldt Park, West Town, East Garfield Park and Near West Side communities, the Kinzie Industrial Corridor TIF district is intended to enhance the corridor as a modern industrial and distribution center that serves the long-term needs of existing companies and attracts additional industrial employers. Priorities for the 1,094-acre area include the provision of economic incentives that stimulate private investment throughout the district, especially within the Fulton and Randolph street market areas, and the reorganization of land uses along the TIF’s western edge to provide improved separation between residential and industrial uses. Funds are targeted for site assembly efforts, rehabilitation projects, public works improvements, environmental clean-up where necessary, and improvements that facilitate vehicular access. Other priorities include job training and readiness programs for nearby residents.” Source

TIF (short for Tax Increment Financing) money could and should be a whole post unto itself, but a very brief overview is TIF’s invest local tax money back into the area. In terms of the Kinzie Corridor, TIFs provide millions of dollars for infrastructure improvements and training for companies and projects which benefit the community.

Fulton Fest is a street fair that brings the businesses and industries of ICNC out of the warehouses and onto the street. It is a way to directly interface with sites of former heavy industry and see how things are now transformed into smaller scale industry.  Bakers, circus performers, clothing designers, web start ups, theater troupes, and many, many more call ICNC home now.   

So come on out this Friday afternoon and see the transformation of industry capital from heavy manufacturing to the advancement of human capital take place right before your very eyes.

Bloomingdale Trail

The most important aesthetic project currently underway in Chicago begins a block from where I live. So I got on my bike one sunny fall afternoon to check it out at length. For decades this elevated railway has been unused, except for the occasional string of freight cars shunted off for a day’s or a week’s wait in the neighborhood. During those same decades, in Paris, in New York and undoubtedly elsewhere, similar elevated railways have been transformed into the contemporary counterparts of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Now Rahm Emmanuel wants to do the very same in our fair city.

No one waited for Rahm to walk the Bloomingdale Trail. I’ve gone up there many times. Only recently did I see some TV anchorwoman doing a spot on the railroad ties. The thing is, Rahm wants to power out and make this a crowning achievement of his first term. The ground was apparently “broken” a couple weeks ago. You would have no idea of this from what I saw, riding though the Logan Square, Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhoods. Nor does any looming change become visible when you go up to the tracks themselves. Yet a plan exists, showing multimillion dollar parks, access ramps and a landscaped trail. There are budgets for heavy infrastructural work, for landscaping and also for art. You will walk a very different Bloomingdale Trail a year or two from now. Undoubtedly the many community-generated murals along the existing walls will disappear, due to structural retrofitting measures. But interesting new works are likely to appear in their place. A project like this offers the city-dweller a fascinating opportunity, when you catch it just before its inception. With a little curiosity and a few free afternoons, you can experience both what was and what will be.

Wicker Park is an epicenter of gentrification. This fall, Logan Square itself (with the column and all) suddenly looks like the new Wicker Park. Hipsters everywhere, I mean. Armitage avenue, a block from where I live in the other direction, suddenly looks like Logan Square did just a year or two ago. Bloomingdale Trail (the project) is universally compared to The Highline in New York, another elevated rail-turned-hanging garden that has performed miracles for the property values around it. That is, ahem, what gentrification is all about. I guess, as a white person in a Puerto Rican neighborhood, I and my likes have been performing minor miracles in this part of Logan Square for years. Well, rents are going up anyway. The old bar down the street (formerly Dorothy’s) now sports double-size bottles of beer for ten bucks a pop. It also sports people much more like myself (more hipster is probably hard to do!) than the drunks and winos that formerly inhabited it (and are still there, to some degree). Do we really understand what happens around us? How to be fully part of what we help to create?

Chicago’s Alternative Policing Strategy

Chicago’s Alternative Policing Strategy

Regardless of one’s own opinions about police or policing, the city’s Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) program is a radical way of citizens and police working together as well as a rare opportunity to understand ones neighborhood on a concerned level.  

In 1993, the Chicago police force launched CAPS meetings in five targeted areas — Englewood (7th), Marquette (10th), Austin (15th), Morgan Park (22nd), and Rogers Park (24th).  Just one year later they expanded it to all districts and have continued strong over the past ten years.   The goal of the program was (and still is) to “bring the police, the community, and other City agencies together to identify and solve neighborhood crime problems, rather than simply react to their symptoms after the fact.”  

Included in this program are monthly to bi-monthly “beat meetings” as well as countless initiatives to increase communication between the city, the law, and the citizen.  In these past five years the police force’s fleet of vehicles has seen a rebranding to include the CAPS star logo emblazoned on every vehicle.  Like a tattoo that spells out the name of one’s lover, the act of this branding has been seen as a outright symbolic reminder that, just as the tagline implies, “Together we can.”  We’ll see how long Chicago stays with this beau, though ten years is a pretty good run all ready.