Category: History
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Great Chicago Places and Spaces 2009, Part 2
Sunday, May 17, 2009 Great Chicago Places and Spaces took place yesterday. While the overall program was shortened (one day rather than two, 100 presentations instead of more than 200) it was very well attended. All three of my presentations sold out. It was beautiful weather, albeit a bit windy at times. Secret Streets of…
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Luncheon with the Consul General of Spain
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 The lunch talk by Javier Ruperez, Consul General of Spain was fascinating – it was a very Spanish view of North America, that Spain was the founding country of the Americas, a viewpoint not necessarily heard in Anglophile circles like mine. Mr. Ruperez has represented Spain in the United States…
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Great Chicago Places and Spaces 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009 The City of Chicago Mayor’s Office of Special Events has just announced the presentations being offered for Great Chicago Places and Spaces this year. I am honoured to have been asked to make three separate walking tour presentations for this event, which will occur on Saturday, May 16. In Secret Streets…
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The Rise and Fall of the McMansion, and other Midwestern Housing Trends
Tuesday, September 5, 2006 In the US market, many sense that the slumping sales of Toll Brothers Builders and Lowe’s are symptomatic of an overall declining real estate and construction market. Has all of the wind gone out of the housing market, as the housing bubble doomsday promoters predicted? Perhaps not. Perhaps the housing market…
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Streetscapes
Monday, June 5, 2006 Successful streetscapes are defined by spaces between buildings. The spaces become successful places; streets where we live out our lives, nooks and crannies that create pleasant oasis, buildings that form backdrops and walls that give meter to time and space….all decidedly urban concepts. Let’s take the flipside to this thought and…
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Parking Lots
Saturday, November 19, 2005 A recent article by Paul Kaihla in BUSINESS2.0 Magazine brought me to think about the parking lot as a prolific, yet endangered landscape feature of the post war era. The article, entitled The Next Real Estate Boom (November 1, 2005) spoke of a coming wave of expansion, growth and redevelopment of…
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Chicago – A Walkable City
Thursday, August 4, 2005 The late British architectural historian Reynar Banham was fascinated with the Industrial Era. He charted the course of various mechanical inventions to show how they changed the architectural environment; he felt Los Angeles was the purely American city of the Industrial Era. Quite like me, he felt an interest for North…
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Urban Infills – The Coming Wave?
Thursday, May 9, 2005 Much has been said about issues concerning development on the periphery of Chicagoland. Sprawl – even the name sounds like a lethargic beast. I’ve oft wondered what sort of commute times we’ve created for folks living in the new tracts. Certainly, sprawl stands to diminish the quality of life by forcing…