Incredible

Just got back from Barack's massive victory rally in Grant Park, here in Chicago. America's first black prez certainly knows how to throw a party; but the really amazing thing wasn't actually the rally itself, which was fairly typical (if nonetheless inspiring) political fare. The mind-blowing aspect of this event was how it completely devoured the city core. As far as the eye could see, down every street in the Loop and well into River North along the Magnificent Mile, hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of supporters jammed the streets, sidewalks, and Mayor Daley's beloved planted medians. Every building with an LED or a floodlight mount was decked out in red, white, and blue. Buildings without such decorative schemes opted for window art, lighting interiors to form an American flag, "Vote 2008," and USA. Miles away from the event, the streets literally rung with the excitement of an entire city. The sense of pride, and of common purpose, was so intense you could taste it.

It seemed fitting that America's first urban president in quite a while should come from here, the most quintessentially American of cities. Obama is an American President, and a Son of Chicago. Tonight, we celebrated both.

Jane

Do people actually read Jane Jacobs anymore, or has she become a misappropriated symbol for old-guard thinking in the same way that she was misappropriated as a symbol for David-vs-Goliath preservationism? Even Kazys now suggests that we throw her out in the face of gentrifying and demographically inverting cities -- things that make her core arguments for variation, limited regulation, and localism more relevant than ever. Her most revered book is nearly 50 years(!!!) old, he exclaims. What good could she be to us now?

Token Jacobsism.

Rankability

WalkScore has taken their delicious color-coded walkability maps, previously covered on Where, national. The results are...well, a bit disappointing. Perhaps I'm the only one, but I'm getting a bit tired of seeing rankings that use central city populations to determine the sample cities when metropolitan populations are far more important in determining the stature of an urban area. It makes little sense that Jacksonville, Tucson, and Oklahoma City make the cut for such rankings while St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh -- the central cities of much larger, more important metropolitan areas -- are left out because they've lost population to suburbanization.

This methodology has been a minor annoyance to me for some time, but the oversight seems particularly egregious in the case of WalkScore's ranking since it punishes densely-built urban centers for falling victim to exactly what the site is supposedly working against, and rewards cities that inflate their population counts through annexation and suburban deveopment patterns. The end result is a bit embarassing, with the overall city scores dropping under 70/100 points before you even get past the top ten on the list. Average everything out and the US gets a big fat F for walkability in its cities.

While there's a long way to go for Americans to become a more pedestrian-minded people, the idea that only a handful of our major cities are walkable is a bit absurd, and seems more like a misrepresentation than useful information. While it certainly shows the damage that suburbanization has done to our cultural understanding of urbanity, it says little about the actual state of walkability in America.

And that's too bad, because the maps look great, and the idea behind the rankings is a good one. If real estate is about location, the mantra for academic study should be "Execution, execution, execution."

Gender Rolls of Cities

Today while taking silly internet quizzes about which Classic Leading Man and Classic Dame most matched my personality (don't judge), I noticed something interesting and, perhaps, subliminal. In the Leading Man quiz, choices for what kind of town to live in and what kind of dwelling were generally urban. The Classic Dame's choices for where to live, however, were exclusively suburban and/or rural.

This reminded me of an interesting contrasting example of urban gender associations. A map created for Richard Florida's new book, Who's Your City, shows the gender imbalances in cities across the United States. In contrast to the urban/rural perceptions associated with classic movie stars, older, grittier, more densely populated cities (aka more urban places) typically have much larger concentrations of women as compared to men. While San Francisco, Charlotte, and perhaps Minneapolis provide notable exceptions, women seem more likely to live in places like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and DC, while men dominate the populations of more auto-dependent places, like LA, Dallas, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.

I wonder where that discrepancy might come from.


Links:
The Classic Leading Man Test

The Classic Dames Test

The Singles Map (Richard Florida)

Integration 2.0

Links:
MoveSmart.org

The Endless City Q&A

After a tiny bit of prodding, the folks at Phaidon sent over a review copy of the recently released book The Endless City, edited by Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic, and containing essays by the likes of Saskia Sassen, Enrique Peñalosa, and the indefatigable Rem Koolhaas. Where will feature a review of the book soon, but first, another treat from Phaidon; the editors were asked a series of questions. The following is a selection of the highlights from the record of this Q&A.

What are the main issues that you think people should be concerned about when it comes to city growth?
The book has a section titled ‘Issues’ that we hope synthesizes the complexities of urban growth. In it, a number of the contributors outline key issues but approach them from a variety of viewpoints. For example, Richard Sennett argues that ‘over determination’ can kill the vitality and growth of urban centers. Cities need to be dynamic and its physical forms and functions need to be endowed with the capacity to respond to indeterminate, unpredictable forces. Frank Duffy applies a similar idea when explaining the urban office, so ‘adaptability’ is the central issue they both cover. Another issue the book clearly prioritizes is sustainable development. The contributions from Guy Battle and Nicky Gavron, along with the Knoflacher, Rode and Tiwari essay, all detail urban growth strategies that respond to the environment and the challenges of climate change. Another central issue summarized by the three essays by Gerald Frug, Enrique Penalosa and Geetam Tiwari is governance and civic participation – cities need to allow for a multiplicity of voices and actors as well as a variety of experiences but there needs to be an agent or authority that can intelligently negotiate this multiplicity and still get something done. Tiwari explains this with particular reference to the forces dominating the informal sector. Both Anne Power and Sophie Body-Gendrot elaborate on this as well as some of the other pressing sociological concerns that urban designers, policymakers and the general public confront in the act of city making. Of course it goes without saying that quality design is the ingredient that delivers a truly remarkable city and allows individual places to flourish. The essays by architects Rem Koolhaas, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, and Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron all contribute various reflections about how to reconcile a variety of factors and perspectives enmeshed within the city’s physical reality. It should be noted that many of the essays in the Cities section resonate with the broader themes in the Issues section as well. The result is a cross-sectional analysis between the six cities [New York, London, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mexico City, and Berlin] and the global world with issues finitely referenced to specific urban conditions.

What world cities do you expect to go through the greatest changes in the 21st century?
The fastest growing cities are in Africa and across Asia and its up to the next generation to make sure their development does not repeat the mistakes of cities in the developed world – this means Lagos and Kinshasa, Mumbai, Deli and Dhaka, as well as Shanghai and Jakarta. It is projected that by 2030, over 4 out of every 5 urban dwellers will be in the developing world so this will have huge implications for the global economy. At the same time, mature cities such as London and New York City, Berlin and Mexico City need to ensure that their future growth reconciles their layered history of planning mistakes and prioritizes sustainable transport and inclusive, contained growth.

The book talks about the importance of cities learning from each other. Can you explain that? For example, what can NYC learn from Shanghai? Can small cities learn from big cities?
There are countless examples of cities looking to other cities when deciding how to invest in their future growth and health. Congestion charging in NYC wouldn’t be a viable option had London not demonstrated how it could be done, and Mexico City’s Metrobús is a stunning success modeled on the Transmilenio in Bogota and of course Curitiba. Ideas must be partnered with implementation strategies and learning often is a matter of scale. So yes, small cities can learn from big, and vice versa. The essay by Knoflacher, Rode and Tiwari describes how small cities can serve as incubators for innovation precisely because of their scale. Understanding how cities implement large projects such as the Olympics in London, doing it with the right amount of investment in public space, has a lot to do with acknowledging how the city and individual neighborhoods have developed over time and how open space serves to socially integrate people from disparate backgrounds. The contributions of both Saskia Sassen and Enrique Peñalosa emphasizes this learning, especially in the latter how urban centers in developed countries are recovering from their love affair with the car, delimiting the access of automobiles in favor of public transport. Cities in developing countries could learn a lot from this. Most importantly, in order for ideas to transfer from one city to another, there needs to be a complementary understanding about how policies, decision making and funding align to facilitate implementation. Frug’s essay explains how the power structures of the six cities vary and what impact permutations to each city’s existing systems could have on local and regional planning mechanisms.

What are the key ideas that you want people to take away from reading this book?
The 34 contributors to the book – along with the hundreds of policymakers, politicians, academics, architects, planners, and urbanists involved with the Urban Age project which forms the basis for The Endless City – all believe that cities can offer a better social and economic life for its citizens. Now that half the world’s population live in cities, there is an urgent need to take stock of the new urban condition and find an approach to dealing with it. City sprawl should be contained and there are innovative strategies for creating high density, highly liveable environments. We want to help those charged with running and making cities understand the relationship between the socio-economic and spatial characteristics of cities – and we want the general public to understand how sustainable urban development can actually improve the physical form of their cities and the quality of their lives.

Are you hopeful for the future when it comes to our cities?
Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, offers an incredible explanation for why we should all be hopeful for the future of cities. Cities offer the potential for ‘quality of life equality’, i.e. access to green, open space and social and economic mobility as well as physical mobility. Across the world, people are moving into cities at an alarming rate – and not just mega-cities but smaller cities comprising an overall urbanized region. Most importantly, the twenty-first century will be increasingly focused on reducing both the overall sum and per capita production of carbon emissions, and as emitters of 75 per cent of the world’s pollution, cities are the battleground on which the future and health of our planet will be determined.

Is there any way for ordinary people to make change in their own cities? Do you have any recommendations for someone who wants to get involved?
Ordinary people make change in their city everyday. They do this by opting for public transport instead of a private car, by holding their government officials responsible for the quality of the built environment, and by advocating for equal access to green, open space. Ensuring that there is investment in sustainable forms of transport, and that access to healthcare, education and community services does not depend on how much money you make or the wealth of your locality. Most importantly, if you don’t know what your community is doing locally to advocate sustainable urban development, then join a forum and find out. Participate.

(Thanks, Faye!)

(Photo from Flickr users thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog and howzey. The original full-color versions can be viewed by clicking the respective photos.)

WEEKEND READING: February 9-15, 2008

Good stuff, good stuff, good stuff. Enjoy some reading this weekend, folks. There's something here for everyone...

ITEM ONE: Deputydog explores Portland's Dignity Village, the "most organized shanty town on earth."

ITEM TWO: Creative class guru Richard Florida, MIT Department of Architecture head Yung Ho Chang, and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybek are just a few of the experts to which Architect Magazine posed the question: "How Would You Spend $1.6 Trillion on Infrastructure in the US?"

ITEM THREE: A pleasingly astute assesment of the Gentrifyer's Guilt from the blog Believe in the Greatest City that Reads in America (which is Baltimore, apparently).

ITEM FOUR: Landscape Urbanism with a great (and well-illustrated) profile of Jean Nouvel as part of the Veg.itect series. (Also check out this review of the Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes exhibit, which opened this week in Minneapolis). (Photo credit)

ITEM FIVE: WorldChanging on how peak population -- and the inevitable decline to follow -- should frame the current discussion of susatinability.

ITEM SIX: Guest blogger Dave Atkins reviews Suburban Transformations over at All About Cities. Where featured a review of this book last month, and if you missed that, make sure to check out Mr. Atkins' post.

ITEM SEVEN: In case you missed it, Science just put out a special issue focusing on cities and the "urban planet" phenom.

See you Sunday for Urbanffffinds!

Brackets

(Photo from The New York Times. The full-size version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Maps, Maps, Maps For All

I had a friend over last weekend and we spent a good chunk of time tooling around several of my favorite map sites on the web (because that's what catrography geeks do for fun, you see). After revisiting the glories of Radical Cartography for the first time in months, I was pleasantly surprised to see the pop up in a recent post over at Tropolism.

While Radical Cartography does indeed contain some of the most interesting maps on the interwebs, I thought it'd be fun to do a rundown of five of my other favorite sites featuring innovative cartography. Heck, I'll even let down this blog's hair a bit and put the links directly in the text of the post instead of at the bottom. Hot damn, are you excited yet?! I sure am. Let's get rolling.

1) Fake is the New Real
As its too-cool-for-skool title suggests, FITNR is so not interested in whether or not you find it interesting. This site offers up a heaping helping of cartography and taxonomy with attitude. If you can't imagine such a mixture, click the link. Trust me -- World Subways at Scale and Chicago MilexMile alone are well worth a visit. The rest is icing on the cake.

2) Paris Traffic Noise
Pretty straightforward, this one: it's a zoomable, 3D, color-coded map of the noise levels of every public street and park inside the Périphérique. The colors are projected onto the buildings that line the streets, which themselves are created from satellite photographs. Even if you don't care much about urban soundscapes, this one is just damn pretty.

3) Stamen Design
Stamen is the design studio behind some of the most resonant online maps in recent memory. First came Cabspotting, which uses GPS technology to track cabs in San Francisco, creating a live, ever-changing map of the most travelled routes in the city. Then Stamen made a real splash several months back with Trulia Hindsight, the real estate mapping site that uses color-coded markers to show houses on the market from different periods of time. The animations on Hindsight show the development of cities and suburbs over time. Watching a subdivision flash-bloom onto the screen in a split second? Very cool. There's more than just maps at this one, but do give it a looksee.

4) Transparent New York
An oldie but goodie, I think I first stumbled upon TNY when I was a freshman in college. The site features an interactive series of layers that allow you to construct your own maps of Manhattan. Want to see if contemporary historic districts correlate at all to the island's original farm plots? You can see that here. How about comparing the island's commercial zones to the locations of all of the city's pre-war skyscrapers? You can see that, too. This one is quite fun to play around with.

5) Zipdecode
Another pretty simple concept with geek-tastic results, Zipdecode allows you to type in any series of numbers to discover what (if any) US municipality claims your numeric ramblings as its ZIP code. Turn on the zoom feature for some fun flyover action.

Happy Monday, everyone. Enjoy some good, old-fashioned nerdy map fun.



(Other) Links:
Tropolism post on Radical Cartography

Radical Cartography, itself!

WEEKEND READING: January 12-18, 2008

Stellar, stellar week, folks. I can't overemphasize the awesomeness of the links below. Do yourself a favor and set aside an hour or two this weekend for some solid online reading.

ITEM ONE: Airoots weighs in on The "S-word" -- Slums -- and, in particular, the clearance thereof. (For more on the subject, check out this Globe and Mail article).

ITEM TWO: Mike Lydon writes a stirring post on Interchange about the importance of teaching urban planning in public schools.

ITEM THREE: In the future, buildings will talk to each other. (Image credit)

ITEM FOUR: Majora Carter is a sustainable urbanism ninja.

ITEM FIVE: New City Magazine tracks the migration of hipsters in Chicago (focusing heavily on Where's new center of operations, Wicker Park).

ITEM SIX: You've heard of designing a better mousetrap? How about designing a better White House?

ITEM SEVEN: Springwise takes a look at a potentially revolutionary new technology that could make entire neighborhoods self-sustaining.

And we'll leave it at that. Adios, compadres.

Chicago vs. Pittsburgh: Conclusion

Tonight's post is the last of three in a blogging debate, in which Jim Russell of The Burgh Diaspora, who guest posted at Where last month, and I will discuss the relationship between Pittsburgh and Chicago, and which city relies more heavily on the other.

After Monday and Tuesday's conversation between Where and The Burgh Diaspora, Richard Florida became an impromptu (but welcome) third party to the debate; responding to my conjecture from yesterday and Dr. Florida's musings on Chicago's inherent geographical disadvantages in the globalized marketplace, Jim Russell came up with the following nugget of vocabularial wonder:

"Pittsburgh's bet on Chicago might be a bad one. The network economy springing from the migration of human capital could result in a cul-de-sac for global connectivity...both cities should seek to diversify their connectivity portfolios. No city is a standalone cash cow. Chicago is not a world onto Pittsburgh, nor should it be." (Emphasis added)

Tonight, we wrap up the "blog duel" with some conclusions; what have we learned from this exchange?

The concept of the "cul-de-sac for global connectivity" strikes me as a key takeaway here. The world has always, to some extent, operated regionally. The size of the regions that we are expected to follow and respond to has changed dramatically over the course of human history; where mankind's regional interests were once tied directly to the changing seasons and animal migration patterns, we now take in news at all times from across the globe. We belong to multiple tribes that move in different directions, at different speeds. We follow our neighborhood, our state or territory, our country, and our specialized circles of interest around the world.

But as cities become more closely woven through globalization, it is regionalism that becomes a threat to places like Chicago. I found Dr. Florida's suggestion that Chicago maintains no global geographic advantage particularly interesting because that very point highlights the exact problem posed by the rise of the global city: it has become very easy, in contemporary culture, to assume the inevitability of places like Chicago, which have in fact gained their prominence for very regional reasons. The loss of importance of physical regions and the diminished need for literal proximity represent a very basic but worldview-altering paradigm shift; Chicago is important in terms of American and especially Midwestern economics -- it rose as the transportation and distribution hub of the country -- but without increased efforts toward economic and connectivity diversity, it might just wind up as the Pittsburgh of the global megacity hierarchy.

Thanks again to Jim Russell for proposing this week's debate. Make sure to check out The Burgh Diaspora -- a must not just for Pittsburghers, but for anyone interested in learning more about diasporic networks in the global urban age.

(Photo found on FFFFOUND!. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Chi-Pitts Globalization (The Burgh Diaspora)

Chi-Pitts, or Vice-versa (Richard Florida and the Creative Class Exchange)

Diasporas, In and Out (Richard Florida and the Creative Class Exchange)

Chicago vs. Pittsburgh: Round 2

Tonight's post is the second of three in a blogging debate, in which Jim Russell of The Burgh Diaspora, who guest posted at Where last month, and I will discuss the relationship between Pittsburgh and Chicago, and which city relies more heavily on the other.

Yesterday and today, in arguing Pittsburgh's heavier reliance on Chicago, The Burgh Diaspora made the following points:

(1) "Pittsburghers are using their extended network and doing all the heavy lifting concerning the connectivity between the two cities. On the other hand, I suspect that a Chicago located firm looking for opportunity discovers Pittsburgh through Pittsburghers, not via transplants to the City of Bridges."

(2) "Chicago needs the talent developed in Pittsburgh...However, Chicago is also an impressive producer of human capital. If Chicago retained all of its local graduates, then would the city need Pittsburgh at all? Like Pittsburgh, Chicago's research universities are world class. Furthermore, Chicago attracts global human capital in ways Pittsburgh has not...Chicago does not actively seek Pittsburgh talent, but Pittsburghers still move there as a result of established migration patterns[.]"

But these two passages, when read together, play off each other in a way that suggests that Chicago's reliance on Pittsburgh and other domestic second-tier cities plays a very major role in Chicago's establishing itself as a global city in the first place.

Let's start by looking at the second statement. Assuming that it were able to retain the talent developed at universities like U of Chicago, Northwestern, Loyola, and UIC, Chicago would indeed be sitting pretty. So would Pittsburgh, if it were able to retail all of the graduates of Pitt, CMU, and Duquense. This is, especially in a fluid global economy, impossible. As sociologists have recently documented, a new phase is being added to the life cycle for young people in developed countries: the odyssey. Young people have a tendency, once they have their diploma in hand, to strike out into the world, seeking their proverbial fortunes.

This creates a diasporic network of people across the country and the world with strong roots in a community other than they one in which they are living. As its title suggests, this is exactly what The Burgh Diaspora covers in depth: Pittsburgh's diasporic population, often considered to be one of the most extensive such networks. This is where cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Milwaukee, traditionally viewed as demographic "losers," gain a foothold. As the process of globalization continues to make centralization less of a necessity and more of a luxury, second-tier cities not only provide the cheaper business climate than their megacity counterparts (though, ironically, Pittsburgh is currently burdened by byzantine economic policies), they also become the default choice for smaller start-ups, making second-tier cities even more important incubators for the kind of talent needed to keep a megacity economy chugging along.

Back to the first of Burgh Diaspora's points: Pittsburgh's network, now, provides it with a unique opportunity to lift smaller businesses looking for a less overwhelming (read: risky) market in which to develop their product. Pittsburgh is able, through its extended diasporic network in Chicago, to earn free word-of-mouth advertising from its expatriate sons and daughters that could potentially drive these smaller companies east to the Appalachians. In the end, the Pittsburgh market is not as important to Chicago companies as the Chicago market is to Pittsburgh companies; I'll concede this. But in a global marketplace, Chicago's larger companies do need Pittsburgh's smaller ones to stay ahead of the international competition.

(Photo from Flickr user scoobyfoo. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
IntoPittsburgh: Chicago (The Burgh Diaspora)

IntoPittsburgh: Chicago II (The Burgh Diaspora)

Chicago vs. Pittsburgh: Round 1

Tonight's post is the first of three in a blogging debate, in which Jim Russell of The Burgh Diaspora, who guest posted at Where last month, and I will discuss the relationship between Pittsburgh and Chicago, and which city relies more heavily on the other.

Nowadays, anyone following urbanism, economics, public policy, or related fields will have certainly heard of the theory that we are entering into an age of global urbanism where cities all over the world will be competing directly with each other for talent. Talent, we are told, will be more and more valuable as society becomes more technologically advanced, shifting even more heavily toward an international information economy. What you know, essentially, will become what you're worth. In this economic environment, megacities like Chicago will no longer merely be competing with New York, Washington DC, and San Francisco for talent; soon (already, many would say) Chicago will have to go head to head with London, Paris, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Mumbai, Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, and on and on.

This is a fairly logical progression of events. The major city has always acted as a magnet throughout its history in human civilization. People come to the city to get a job, to prove themselves, to make their fortune. The individual reasons are myriad, but the inspiration is the same: people come to the city to improve their quality of life. It doesn't always work out that way, but that's the basic impetus. Chicago, then, has long needed Pittsburgh -- and other cities like it -- to sustain itself. The larger the city, the more daunting it is to dream-chasers and immigrants. Medium-sized cities, then, are a prime source of population for larger cities.

Without Pittsburgh, in the literal sense, Chicago would not crumble and blow away; to think so would be naive. But Pittsburgh is a part of a group of cities that, together, have allowed Chicago to experience its recent -- and rather stunning -- revival over the past two decades. As post-industrial Western megacities like Chicago, New York, or London began to try to pick themselves up after losing manufacturing jobs in the 1970s and 80s, they began to rely on what you could call innovation-intensive fields like biomedicine, design, information technology, and (of course) the arts. These are highly specialized fields, and ones that many traditional middle class workers were not trained or educated to particpate in. Megacities, then, needed to draw in new talent from surrounding smaller cities.

Here's where Pittsburgh gets the upper hand over Chicago. As a mid-sized city, Pittsburgh is large enough to provide a genuinely urban lifestyle while not overwhelming the newcomer. As a bonus, the city also happens to be an important center of higher education, with two of the nation's best colleges (U of Pitt and Carnegie-Mellon) located in the Oakland neighborhood of the city. Generationally speaking, this works in the city's favor because it becomes an excellent place for people to move from a smaller city to start a family, where the parents can take advantage of the lower cost of living and provide for their kids, who can then more easily take advantage of nearby educational resources. Pittsburgh is, for all intents and purposes, a creative class factory.

This happens around the country. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Saint Louis -- all of these mid-sized cities have traditionally fed job-seekers into Chicago. Today, the competition is national, and Chicago draws more than ever from Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Birmingham, San Diego, Denver, et. al. As the stakes are raised in coming decades, Bordeaux, Liverpool, Fortaleza, Adelaide, Fukuoka, Busan, Medellin, and Alexandria will all enter the mix. And not in the sense of traditional immigration, which creates ethnic communities, but in the sense of global creative class migration, which could create massive gentrified (or at least economically stable), internationally diverse areas in cities around the world.

Western society already operates as a sort of imperfect meritocracy. As this becomes more true, Chicago will need places like Pittsburgh more and more as it works to maintain and build its competitive creative core. Pittsburghers have the option to stay put; Chicago needs to convince them not to. It has to prove, however possible, that it can provide a better life. The burden lies with larger city.

(Photo from Flickr user -Nicole-. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
The Burgh Diaspora

Mapping the Self @ the Museum of Contemporary Art

At first glance Mapping the Self, the MCA's contribution to the Festival of Maps lineup, takes some serious liberties in how it defines what a map is. But then, as the introduction to the exhibit plainly states, this exhibit is not about maps. It's about how artists use maps, both to define themselves and the physical, social, and emotional spaces that they inhabit and/or experience. In fact the very meaning of the word "map" is derived from the Latin word mappa, for the cloth that maps were drawn on. A map is an exploration drawn out on a physical surface. With the etymology in mind, the pieces at the MCA's exhibit fit the theme a bit more logically.

Save for a few larger pieces spread throughout the fourth-floor atrium (including a clever recreation of John Baldassari's Framed Heights), the bulk of the work in the exhibit is organized into two rooms; the first deals with artists' use of mapping to define and examine themselves, and the second with the way that they use maps to explore and reimagine the world around them.

A piece by artist Patrick McGee is a notable highlight in the first section as it explodes the traditional concept of the map at the same time that it asserts itself as one. McGee took measurements of his head to come up with a new system of units of measurement; the diameter of his head (the Fit) became the measurement of length, its volume (the immersion) the measurement of capacity, and weight (the burden) the measurement of mass. McGee's piece is both entertaining and thought-provoking, especially in the context of this exhibit. It represents, after all, the physical nature of the artist's head, but it also breaks the head down into very basic calculations and reevaluates the rest of the physical world in relation to the artist. It is a philosophical mapping of the idea of physicality; a delightful mindf*ck, if you will.

The second room contains pieces that look more like...well, maps, or at least more like what you might expect maps to look like. There are exceptions to this rule, but even a glance around this gallery will reassure anyone thrown off by the first section. Chicago plays a major role here as the physical place being examined and/or reimagined in many of the pieces on display, adding to the sense of familiarity. Works by Stephanie Nadeau and John Cage are highlights, but again, one piece sort of steals this half of the show. That piece, Paula Henderson's Extended Remix, takes Chicago's 77 community areas, color codes them by their majority racial demographic, and then puts them into alphabetical order. The boundaries stay the same, but the names and colors shuffle around, creating a vivid and rather jarring reinterpretation of this notoriously segregated city's racial landscape. It is a very different Chicago seen in this map; paired with Nareau's photographic piece Redlined, it makes a potent statement about the history of racial politics in the Windy City.

Overall, complaints about this exhibit are of the petty variety. Single plaques often hold the descriptions for multiple pieces, which can be confusing. Some of the work on display seemed to lack label or explanation altogether. The thematic nature of the two rooms gives the exhibit structure, though it can be a bit loose at times; as a result, some pieces feel a bit superfluous. But as a whole, the exhibit does what it sets out to do by providing a solid exploration of the way contemporary artists are using maps in very different (and very challenging) ways to explore what it means to be human, and what it means to be part of our society.

While Mapping the Self takes up a relatively small amount of floor space, don't expect to make it through this one on your lunch break. While that would be do-able in theory, in reality you can't really get much from this exhibit unless you plan on taking your time. With most of the art on display, you'll find your efforts well-rewarded.

IF YOU GO
Mapping the Self is on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art until March 2nd, 2008. The museum is open 10:00am-8:00pm on Thursdays, and 10:00am-5:00pm Wednesdays-Sundays; it is closed on Mondays. The entry fee for the MCA is $10 for adults, $6 for students and seniors (both suggested). Tuesdays are free admission.


Links:
Mapping the Self (Museum of Contemporary Art

Maps: Finding Our Place In the World @ The Field Museum

About a fifth of the way through the Field Museum's Maps exhibit, I started to feel a bit giddy. As a long-time lover of maps, I'd been looking forward to this -- the centerpiece of Chicago's Festival of Maps -- for months, and it was clear early in my time at the exhibit that I knew that I would not be disappointed. Now, after having a day to reflect, I can honestly (and emphatically) say that Maps: Finding Our Place in the World is one of the most impressive museum exhibits I have ever attended.

Those are strong words, I know, so let that be my one burst of enthusiasm. Henceforth, I'll try to be as objective as possible...I'd hate to do that thing where I puff something up so much that it can't live up to my description. Not that I think it's possible to overstate -- oops, sorry. Almost gushed again.

Divided into seven sections, Maps begins by addressing what is probably the most common use of its subject matter: wayfinding. The content of this section is subdivided into two groups, the Itinerary (one route depicted) and the Network (many routes depicted together). The maps on display set the tone for the rest of the exhibit; there is a great variety of mediums, styles, and time periods represented. Highlights include a section of an ancient 60-foot Japanese scroll depicting the road from Kyoto to Edo (now Tokyo), a 1940s road map of America with road trip routes taken by an anonymous family highlighted and annotated, and an original print of Harry Beck's revolutionary redesign of the London Tube map.

The second section of the exhibit displays maps that give structure to the world. While many maps may not be used directly for getting from A to B, they help us to develop a concept of the vastness of the world around us. The exhibit charts the evolution of mankind's understanding of the planet through maps, showing how they were used to record progress and redefine the world as our knowledge grew. The undisputed centerpiece of this area is a set of two large (about 4 feet in diameter, but I'm guessing) wooden globes -- one that depicts the earth as it was believed by cartographers to look (curiosities include the island of California off of North America's west coast and the near-absence of Australia and New Zealand, though overall it's surprisingly accurate) and the other showing the celestial dome above, with full-color representations (i.e. a scorpion for Scorpio) of the constellations.

Maps are also used, as shown in the third and fourth sections of the exhibit, to show important places and "bear witness to and shape history," in the curators' words. These two collections expand quite nicely upon the logic of the first two; the most obvious uses of maps are to chart the world and the routes that people use to move around it, but with a heightened understanding of the larger world, it makes sense that people started using maps to break the larger world down into smaller parts. Privatization and land division become central foci here. Several important names pop up up in a subset of the fourth section focusing on historical maps of the US: Lewis and Clark's map of their route is here, as are land surveys by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Benjamin Franklin.

Even more sophisticated maps make up the fifth section, which highlights maps that make the invisible visible. These are highly detailed creations that detail intangible or hidden details about places. One of Jane Adams Hull House's famous maps of Chicago blocks broken down (and color-coded) by ethnicity and income is on display (a print of the same map is included in the Chicago History Museum's Mapping Chicago exhibit). So is a huge, vividly-colored map of the geology of Great Britain, one of the first maps of its kind. Another first here is a small, unassuming map of northern Italy that is believed to be one of the first uses of shading to depict topography, pre-dating its common use in recent times by several centuries. A closer look at the plaque describing this piece reveals that its creator was none other than Leonardo da Vinci. Another of his quiet pieces, a plan to canal-ize the Arno, is nearby.

The sixth area is a showcase of maps that depict imaginary places. L. Frank Baum's map of Oz is here, along with several of J.R.R. Tolkien's hand-drawn maps of Middle Earth. This section contrasts nicely with the seventh, which shows maps in rather mundane use in everyday life. A RISK board, a needlepoint map of Great Britain, a kiosk showing mapping technology on modern cell phones -- these examples point out the many ways in which maps seep into our daily routines. This last section culminates in an interactive wall of video maps where you can touch cursors on large screens and navigate satellite imagery and zoom in on your hometown. (It can be a bit tricky to get these to work -- try holding your fingers a few centimeters away from the screen).

If there is one opportunity that is really missed here, it's that Maps does not spend any time on the way that the internet is currently democratizing the field of cartography. There is no mention of mashups or group maps or even Mapquest, the launch of which really was revolutionary moment for mapping technology (though Mapquest's prominence in online mapping has since been usurped by Google and Microsoft). In fact, I kept expecting to see this theme threaded throughout the other sections of the exhibit, but it never even made an appearance.

Overall, Maps: Finding Our Place in the World is a suitably rich and creamy center to the FoM's gourmet chocolate. It's an exhibit that keeps you moving, looking forward to the next map even before you've finished reading about the last. If you don't live in the area but you've been looking for a reason to visit Chicago, this exhibit would even make a good excuse to come. If you live within driving distance and have even a passing or newfound interest in cartography, you have no excuse not to make the trip.

IF YOU GO
Maps: Finding Our Place in the World is on display at the Field Museum until January 27th, 2008. The museum is open 9:00am-4:30pm, seven days a week; the entry fee for the museum and the special exhibit is $19 for adults, $14 for students and seniors, and $9 for children under 12.


Links:
Maps: Finding Our Place in the World (Field Museum of Natural History)

Mapping Chicago @ the Chicago History Museum

Mapping Chicago, the inaugural exhibit in the Chicago History Museum's new Skyline gallery, is also one of the inaugural exhibits in Chicago's Festival of Maps. The show, which opened near the end of September, divides the spacious new gallery into three distinct areas, each with its own theme, and shows the city of Chicago in various stages of its history, and from a variety of distinct perspectives. Overall it's a bit of a grab-bag, but certainly worth your while.

Cities are places with vast histories comprised of millions upon millions of stories stretched across hundreds (sometimes thousands) of years. As the curators of Mapping Chicago point out several times in this exhibit (most entertainingly, at one point, in the rather incredulous "voice" of the city itself) it is virtually impossible to create a map of a city that really encapsulates what Chicago is about. Buildings go up and are torn down, streets are widened or erased, demographics shift as people come and go, and all of this contributes to the fact that as soon as a map of a place as dynamic as Chicago is made, it is in some way already out of date.

The first area of the exhibit, then, attempts to piece together a historic portrait of the city. From a detailed map of the area destroyed by the Great Fire to a map of the original settlement showing the original Native American trails that crisscrossed the area, this introductory set makes no attempt to show Chicago as it is. The unofficial centerpiece here, a wall-sized full-color birds-eye view map of the Loop from the early 1900s drawn in exquisite detail, subtly underlines the show's message; of the many large and grand structures that surely seemed as permanent as time itself when this map was completed, only a few are still around today. Even monumental constructions like the old Federal Building or the Masonic Temple (then the city's tallest building) are long gone.

It's in the second area that the exhibit sags a bit as it veers rather noticeably off course to demonstrate by video and through several kid-friendly kiosks how two-dimensional maps are formed into globes. Replogle Globes, a major manufacturer of the objects, is a sponsor of the installation. This middle section is interesting in and of itself, as it answers in careful detail one of those questions that you'd never thought to ask but find yourself very curious about once it's been asked for you. Still, the section can't help feeling like a commercial in the middle of a good show since the subject matter is only tangentially (at best) connected to that of the overall exhibit. At any rate, it's fun for kids, and certainly no reason to skip Mapping Chicago altogether.

The third and final area is separated from the other two by a very unconventional map made up of a cluster of very large, very colorful representations of Chicago landmarks. It is a sculptural creation made of oversized drawings by children from around the city that sets the tone for the area of the exhibit that shows how the diverse and divergent perceptions of the city by its many inhabitants over the years has created some very interesting and unconventional maps of the city. A pinball machine printed with a map of the 1933 World's Fair, a color-coded map of building heights in the Loop in the early 20th Century, large digitally-produced maps of SOM's plan for the city's 2016 Olympic bid -- all of these and more are on display in this part of the exhibit. Together, they bring home the message that a city like Chicago is a constantly-changing thing, exciting and mysterious in the way that it constantly eludes the cartographer. The city is the subject in all of these maps, but ironically this collection, brought together, puts the focus on the map-makers. After all, in the end it is the people -- not the physical environment -- that make the city what it is at any given moment.

IF YOU GO
Mapping Chicago is on display at the Chicago History Museum until January 6th, 2008. The museum is open seven days a week; the entry fee is $14 for adults, $12 for students and seniors, and free for children under 12. Hours vary, so check the website for more details. While you're there, if you are in need of some more map action, don't miss the permanent exhibit Chicago: Crossroads of America, which features a number of detailed maps from the city's two world's fairs. Also on display: gorgeous architectural models of the Chrysler Motors and Transportation Buildings from the '33 Fair.

Links:
Mapping Chicago (Chicago History Museum)

(PS -- Where is back in business! Thanks to all of the fine people at the North Michigan Avenue Apple Store who saved my hard drive and, by extension, my sanity. They are awesome.)

WEEKEND READING: October 20-26, 2007

No good news on the laptop front...the machine is very dead, but whether the files on the hard drive are salvagable or not is a mystery until next week. In the meantime...

ITEM ONE: Built Environment Blog chimes in on the Atlantic Yards megadevelopment in New York with a brief history of the Superblock.

ITEM TWO: The Map Room features João Machado’s colorful map creations.

ITEM THREE: The Affordable Housing Institute highlights a series of articles from the Times of India that illustrate how myriad urban problems in Mumbai are interrelated.

ITEM FOUR: Does Big Development kill the American Dream? The American thinks so (and I agree!).

ITEM FIVE: Richard Florida's new report (with Tim Gullden and Charlotta Mellander), The Rise of the Megaregion, presents us with a whole slew of new opportunities for "BosWash"-esque portmanteaus -- and some kickass demographic images like the one at the top of this post.

Have a great weekend, everyone! Hopefully I'll be able to get my paws on a laptop for Urbanffffinds on Sunday.

Addressing the Sub/Urban Divide

The following post is part of Blog Action Day 2007, in which more than 15,000 bloggers around the world are posting about the environmental challenges that we face today as a society. For more info, follow the link at the end of the post.

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These days, cities and suburbs are locked in a seemingly intractable struggle. Cities are understood to be the dense urban cores bustling with pedestrians and laced with mass transit lines, while suburbs are viewed as the stomping grounds of the wicked and immoral Sprawl Monster that devours land at alarming rates and drives up demand for auto traffic and freeway construction, adding untold millions of tons of carbon into the air and accelerating global warming. It's a typical Western dichotomy: dark vs. light; right vs. left; good vs evil.

What often gets brushed aside as a result of this oversimplification is the fact that urbanity has little to do -- especially in the United States -- with political boundaries. The average densities of American cities and suburbs are almost the same. In fact, if you look at the 43 American municipalities with a density above 10,000 people per square mile, only six of them -- New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and Miami -- are the central cities in their metropolitan areas. (That number rises to eight if you include Trenton and Newark, both in New Jersey, whose smaller metros are usually absorbed into the CSAs of Philadelphia and New York). Granted, some of the suburbs that reach this density are far more auto-centric than some of the less densely populated central cities, but the point here is that questions urbanity cannot be boiled down into easy, diametrically opposed sides. Density, sprawl, city, suburb -- all of these things are involved in the equation, but they don't always line up as neatly as we might hope.

It is often said nowadays that cities produce the majority of carbon emissions (roughly 80%) and therefore these areas must be the solution to the problem. This is entirely true, but we have to realize that "city" in this instance refers not to central urban areas, but entire metropolitan regions. One of the greatest challenges that US cities face, then, is how to undo the damage that poor land use policies and auto-dependancy have done to our suburbs. Many of the suburbs in the 10K+ density range are older places that were established before or during the early years of the automobile age: Paterson and Jersey City across the Hudson from New York; Somerville and Cambridge across the Charles from Boston; Cicero and Berwyn on the western edge of Chicago. These suburbs often have their own commercial areas, neighborhood shops and restaurants, and immigrant communities priced out of central cities. They are densely populated and often less reliant on cars than postwar suburbs. Many are connected to transit systems. In short, these suburbs are very urban places.

In the same stroke, some very large cities can be very sparsely populated places. San Jose, the center of Silicon Valley, is half as dense as Lakewood, Ohio, an historic streetcar suburb of Cleveland. Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC, is twice as dense as Las Vegas. And how about this one: the most densely populated municipality in the US, Union City, New Jersey, has a population density 54.5 times higher than that of Jacksonville, Florida, one of the country's largest cities.

Numbers and boundaries have never been very good ways of defining places. They're too clinical, and they often substitute statistics for the human element. This has led to a critical misunderstanding on the part of the general public in the US of terminology pertaining to the built environment. As a result, people here are having a lot of trouble figuring out how cities should address climate change. There is a consensus that something must be done, but people can't seem to agree on what that might look like. City-dwellers pat themselves on the back and blame climate change on amorphous "sprawl," anti-urbanists twist stats to try to turn the tables on urbanists who are ill-equipped to deal with public perception, and suburbanites guard their turf rather fiercely, fearing that "density" will translate to more hellish commutes and the loss of "local character" that often doesn't exist in the first place. As a result the US plods along slowly toward a drastic change in the coastline with no solution in sight.

There is a near-total lack of vision in how we deal with urbanization and development in this country. However, this is starting to change. Hopefully, a rather damning trifecta of recent reports will give urban planners and civic leaders the tools they need to redirect the conversation.

First, it was revealed by the New York City Department of Health that New Yorkers lived, on average, nine months longer than the average American -- a fact linked to New Yorkers' more active lifestyles and the city's dense, walkable streetscape. Next came a report from Smart Growth America with the claim that "the projected 59 percent increase in the total miles driven between 2005 and 2030 will overwhelm expected gains from vehicle efficiency and low-carbon fuels." Finally, the American Public Transportation Association announced that "when compared to other household actions that limit carbon dioxide (CO2), taking public transportation can be more than ten times [more effective] in reducing this greenhouse gas." It was a three-strike, rapid-fire attack on auto-centric development patterns. The message was made very clear: if we want to seriously address climate change in the United States, we must walk more, improve our public transit infrastructure, and drive much less often. All of this is reliant upon the existence of one thing: an urban environment.

At some point it must be acknowledged by a majority of Americans that if we want to change the way we impact our climate, we have to change the ways that we build and live. Making the switch from regular light bulbs to CFLs is all well and good. But understanding the way that land use and transportation actually work, and accepting the fact that we must be more responsible in these areas, is critical to finding a real solution. If the public is to come to this better understanding, recognizing and explaining the difference between straight statistics (city/suburb, density/sprawl) and genuine urbanity should be the first items on the urban agenda.

(Photos from Flickr users jimheid and mirkob. The first shows Cambridge, MA, rising across the river from Boston's Back Bay neighborhood; the second is an image of Jacksonville, FL's hollowed-out core and the sparsely populated surrounding neighborhoods.)


Links:
Blog Action Day

US Municipalities Over 50,000:
Ranked by 2000 Density (Demographia)

Why New Yorkers Las Longer (NY Magazine) (via All About Cities)

Less Auto-Dependent Development Is Key to Mitigating Climate Change, Research Team Concludes (Smart Growth America)

Taking Transit: The Most Effective Route to Cutting Carbon (WorldChanging.com)

WEEKEND READING: September 22-28, 2007

Lots of good reading for this weekend. Don't miss Item Six if you're a fan of absurd humor.

ITEM ONE: Deputy Dog (photo credit) went all out on this post about where different vehicles go once they are decomissioned. Kind of makes me wonder if there's a forest of defunct CTA train cars somewhere in Chicagoland...

ITEM TWO: According to APTA, "when compared to other household actions that limit carbon dioxide (CO2), taking public transportation can be more than ten times [more effective] in reducing this greenhouse gas."

ITEM THREE: I *heart* Jane Jacobs, but I really strongly do not *heart* how her message has been co-opted and bastardized over the years. This wonderful and succinct piece from New York magazine sets the record straight. (Found via Neighbors Project's excellent daily Neighbor News report -- a must-read for anyone interested in gentrification!)

ITEM FOUR: A trust fund for affordable housing, first proposed in the 1980s, may finally be on its way to becoming a reality. (Here are some more good ideas about the subject).

ITEM FIVE: Wendy Waters speculates about an urban baby boom over at All About Cities.

ITEM SIX: Some guerilla urban art on the CTA trains that'll give you a good laugh. Cut, paste, and try it in your city. The more ridiculous, the better!

ITEM SEVEN: Can Second Life actually improve real-world physical environments? Here's the first compelling argument I've read that says "yes."

Have a great weekend!

(Photo from Flickr user shadeofmelon.)

WEEKEND READING: August 4-10, 2007

It's been humid here like you wouldn't believe this past week, but the weekend is supposed to get a bit cooler. (Note to self: stop starting every Weekend Reading post by commenting on the weather...)

ITEM ONE: The US Affordable Housing Institute's blog is both informative and hilarious. Quite a feat, hey?

ITEM TWO: Milwaukee Magazine has a great article up about the unsinkable Whitney Gould, the architecture critic who has played quite a large role in the development in Milwaukee's attitude (and thus, my own) toward design and architecture.

ITEM THREE: The headline takes care of this one - Asia's biggest slum set to turn into India's Madison Avenue .

ITEM FOUR: One Porteño's commentary on (and photos of) Buenos Aires' new $46 million, 16 block tram. Oy. (Found via the excellent Global Voices Online)

ITEM FIVE: Some good news out of New Orleans -- the city's population has reached 60% of the pre-Katrina level.

ITEM SIX: Great post this week on brain drain at the Burgh Diaspora blog.

ITEM SEVEN: In case you missed it, proposals for San Francisco's Transbay Tower from Richard Rogers (ouch), Cesar Pelli (double ouch), and SOM (actually quite good) were unveiled this week. Life Without Buildings points us to some gorgeous animations of SOM's tower and station buildings on YouTube.


That's all for now, folks. Enjoy your weekend!

(Photo from Flickr user fddi1.)