Presidents and their legacy projects: self-aggrandizing or civic-minded? -- Urban design: boom times for cities, but who benefits? -- Architecture: are buildings good citizens? -- Historic preservation: what gets saved and why -- Two mayors, two directions: who can make the city work for all?
Summary:
"Two decades ago, Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin's series "Reinventing the Lakefront" documented the stark disparities between the shoreline parks bordering the city's mostly white, affluent North Side neighborhoods and those along its largely Black, poor South Side. The series, which spurred new civic investments in the south lakefront, won a Pulitzer Prize and signaled Kamin's commitment to activist criticism. That commitment continued through his last column for the Tribune in January 2021. This book collects 55 of Kamin's columns from the past decade, organized around questions of equity that loomed over the built environment as over American society generally: Who benefits from urban development? Are new private and public buildings good citizens? Which historic buildings get saved and why? And how did the polarizing US presidents and Chicago mayors who ruled over this decade play into the larger drama of the city's public realm? Covering major new structures--from the Trump Tower sign to the Obama Presidential Center, the Riverwalk to The 606--as well as the bridges, CTA stations, hospitals, skyscrapers, and other buildings that constitute the everyday fabric of the city, the columns are illustrated with photographs by Lee Bey, former architecture critic of the Chicago Sun-Times. The epilogue, featuring Kamin's farewell column, marks the end of an era in the nation's architectural capital"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.