Humanity - we love it
10/21/2009
This week’s front page features a story about a blog by Printers Row resident Mike Knezovich. Reading with Scissors, Mike’s blog, is riotously funny, worthy of more than a bit of your Web surfing time. Read more...
Saving our students
Your son, your daughter, your neighbor's kid may be one of those on the funding hit list.
10/14/2009
Let me introduce myself. Beginning today, I'll be appearing in this space monthly to comment on politics, from the craziness of Chicago's city council and Cook County government along with what's doing in Springfield. I've written for Chicago Journal in the past, and am glad to be returning to its pages. Read more...
Everybody wants a piece
Chicago answers the corporate call
10/14/2009
Capital is mobile, like water pouring down a stream. Companies can move from city to city, shopping for the best deal, the biggest subsidy. And thus we witness the spectacle of municipalities scrambling over each other to offer up their scarce plates of gold to large, profit-rich corporations. Read more...
Welcome back
10/14/2009
In this week's Chicago Journal, we welcome Dick Simpson, a former alderman who now teaches and researches politics at the University of Illinois-Chicago, back to our pages. Read more...
This park's world class
Park No. 542 gives us reasons to smile.
10/08/2009
In 1999, I was living in Lake View, making $15,000 a year managing the Victory Gardens Theater and working part-time at Michael Reese Hospital to pay the bills. It was around that time that the idea of a park in the West Loop formed. Read more...
Ground rules
Ideas to make the next development debate better
10/07/2009
This week's story about the $20.2 million foreclosure lawsuit hitting the developers backing X/O focuses as much on community process and debate that swirled around the controversial proposal as the developer’s woes. Read more...
Remember Leon
One View
09/30/2009
On September 23, nearly 100 people gathered at the Glessner House Museum on South Prairie Avenue for a program called Leon Despres: A Celebration of His Life. Co-sponsored by the Glessner House, Landmarks Illinois and the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the event brought together a distinguished group of panelists who spoke of Despres’ enormous contributions to Chicago during his twenty years as alderman of the 5th Ward. Read more...
Defining prerogative
A clear answer is needed
09/30/2009
One of the items on the deferred agenda of the September meeting of the Committee on Zoning was a zoning change needed for massive new student dorm proposed for Van Buren and Wabash. Read more...
Make no small obsession
09/23/2009
OK, I admit it. I am totally obsessed with Daniel Burnham. If you live in Chicago in 2009, how can you not be? The Plan of Chicago’s 100th anniversary has a way of drawing even the most blasé no-interest-in-history-or-city-planning types into the life of the man who made no small plans. Read More...
The retail question
09/23/2009
It's nice to see a couple of new small-scale markets opening up along South Michigan Avenue. Sky Grocer and South Loop Market have distinct feels and products. Neither store will replace the weekly trips to the big box grocers, but both are poised to offer residents a convenient option. Read more...