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Showing posts from June, 2018

Elon Musk goes to Chicago - does he meet a need?

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Mayor Rahm Emanuel and inventor Elon Musk don't only share memorable first names and national notoriety, they also both preside over troubled organizations: The Mayor over America's third largest city which is reeling from divisions by race, rising crime and a shrinking population, the inventor over  a highly valued company which has not made a profit yet and which is struggling to produce its most successful car model amidst rumors of sabotage . Banter among leaders in a failed subway station in Chicago (Tribune photo) Maybe the two had to find each other. This week the duo stood side by side in Chicago's underworld, specifically in the  mothballed $400 million super-station to nowhere, a silent witness to a transportation dream having gone wrong. Musk and Emmanuel both were clad in tieless white shirts with the top buttons open to praise their deal. The Mayor taps the entrepreneur to build a high speed transit tunnel from downtown to O'Hare airport, a deal that costs

One City - two worlds, two narratives

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“Our Nation Is Moving Toward Two Societies, One Black, One White—Separate and Unequal” (Kerner Report 1968) In April 1968, one month after the release of the Kerner report, rioting broke out in more than 100 cities following the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Sometimes the personal story told from another perspective has the power to cut through the clutter by striking at heart and mind at the same time. This happened to many when  Dr Sharon Sutton , FAIA addressed a packed house in the plenary keynote of the national  Association for Community Design  (ACD) at its annual conference which was organized this year  by the Baltimore Neighborhood Design Center on occasion of its 50th anniversary under the title Reverberations. Destiny Watford explaining Curtis Bay  Sutton (77) went over the familiar territory of the civil rights movement, the 1968 racial uprisings, Whitney Young's speech in front of the 1968 AIA convention in which he famously spoke about