Make no small plans?

                In a city like Chicago we can look ahead in quite a few different ways. We have to estimate how much we will grow and how quickly. And we also have to estimate our costs of renovating buildings that are going to be redone. Most of all we have to watch the politicians.

                The politicians are the biggest problem that we will have. Our track record with politicians is that they are corrupt and LOVE money. Unfortunately this is very bad for us because it causes the city and sometimes state lots of money and this puts us in a worse off place than before. Our city has a very colorful history in out buildings and they are not exactly young. Some dating as far back as the early 1900s we have to fix these eventually. Unfortunately this will cost a fortune. Unlike Las Vegas which had an interesting policy. You want to replace a casino, ok use this dynamite and make the old one collapse. Than just rebuild yours with all new stuff. In Chicago we have plenty of organizations and architectural experts that would not allow us to make the old buildings disappear to create a new Wal-Mart or Target; instead they have to build in these buildings renovating them and fight the city to hang up neon signs.

                The population factor is going to be the hardest to look into the future on, but it will be the biggest impact for generations to come. Rush hour is already horrible, but if it were to get worse and become gridlock in 2020 like it has been predicted you would basically live in your car, and never leave the city for work. Instead working at home or living in your office would be the only way to do it. Immigrants have been coming to this city for decades and it is not going to change overnight. Nor will it change anytime soon. Rather we should start building now for what we expect in 50 years and not what we expect in 10-15 years.

                We may have to try and predict where everyone will move to if they come out to live here in the Chicago area, but we have to figure out where they are going to work. If it is in the city we have to change where pedestrians walk, how they train, L, and bus system works, and where they are going to work, because we can only build so high.  

Urbanism as a Way of Life

Louis Wirth's definition of a city is that it is dense, it is a permanent settlement with a high population, and that it has heterogeneity of people. His definition seems to hold true today but it is a little off when you look at it. The city is a permanent settlement but most of the people that are there seem as if they commute there rather than live there, so it’s a settlement for some but more of a place of work or entertainment for others.  As for heterogeneity it is almost wrong. If you look at it as the types of people that are around you everyone is different in various ways. But if you were to look at them as a whole you would notice that they are all the same. They are all rushing from point A to point B, dodging vehicles and running lights to get there as fast as possible. They all seem to move as one huge amorphous blob.

He fails to mention the fact that the city can change drastically. When you walk around the city the environment and people change with the neighborhood. While at the Harold Washington library the population was diverse and relaxed. But while on Adams street it was the bustle of city life that all the Hollywood movies show.

I strongly agree with Wirth when he mentions that people in the city are more secondary contacts rather than primary. I know that in Naperville you have more friends rather than acquaintances but in the city you are more likely to have acquaintances over friends. This is due to the fact that the environment is vastly different. As you spend more and more time in the city you get the feeling as if you must hurry to get where you are going. As this feeling takes over you do not really stop and get to know those around you. Working in the city you would do what you need to do to finish the day, while in the suburbs the pace is a bit more laid back. Although you stay busy you get the chance to get to know the people around you.

This reading was informative; it made me think a bit differently about Chicago and about Las Vegas, realizing that although I lived in the suburbs in Las Vegas it was more closely related to a city.