Urban issues
Here you will find articles about land use, zoning, the City Beautiful movement, subdivision design, parks, and transportation, illustrated mostly by cases in Chicago and Springfield and published mainly in Planning, the Chicago Reader, Chicago Enterprise, and Illinois Times.
I can't remember when I became interested in how cities work. I suppose it dates to the slow death of my home town's downtown (which for eleven years also happened to be my neighborhood) in the 1970s. The perceptive reader will recognize in me the loving son who became a bore about fitness and nutrition after watching a beloved parent die of a heart attack. I fact, I believe that the first opinion piece published in Illinois Times under my own name was about the promiscuous clearing of downtown commercial buildings for parking lots.
My first piece for Illinois Issues, in 1978, was about urban planning, specifically developer exactions being imposed by the Chicago suburb of Naperville. (The piece is of little interest today and is not included in this archives.) Developers raged about how this clumsy manipulation of market forces by government would throttle growth; I take pleasure in pointing out here that in the years since, Naperville grew from 42,000 residents to 148,000.
An occasional contributor to the early Illinois Times was Ruth Eckdish Knack. She moved to Chicago and took a job as an editor at Planning, the monthly published by the American Planning Association, the professional organization for urban planners. Ruth (now a member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners) kindly tossed pieces my way, and I began to acquire an education in urbanism and planning, article by article, my tuition in effect being paid by the APA. I suppose I should have declared that on my 1040s.
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Funny how a freelancer, by stint of publishing a well-researched piece in which he or she interviews experts about a topic about which he is otherwise ignorant, gets a reputation as a authority by virtue of his work appearing in an journal considered authoritative. I got used to it, but I never didn't laugh when I saw a piece of mine on this topic on a university reading list.
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Would Ruin Chicago Ave. Character
Ruining the "park" in Oak Park
Wednesday Journal November 27, 1911
This Space Available
Public spaces in Chicago and cities around the world
Reader January 29, 1993
Cities don’t make floods but they make them worse
"Prejudices" Illinois Times July 21, 1993
Is Springfield ready for Union Square Park? Illinois Times August 6, 1987
Spot zoning nibbles away at the capital city
"Prejudices" Illinois Times December 8, 1988
A 1924 plan for building a new Springfield
"Prejudices" Illinois Times April 28, 1993
Daley's Trolley
Daley's Loop circulator is derailed
Reader October 18, 1991
Springfield’s lazy, hazy, razing days of summer
"Prejudices" Illinois Times July 24, 1981
Flood of Memories
Reflections on Chicago’s Great Leak of 1992
Reader April 9, 1993
The state moves in. There goes the neighborhood
"Prejudices" Illinois Times February 22, 1980
Return to Broadacre City
Frank Lloyd Wright reimagines the city
Illinois Issues April 2000
Will the future of affordable family housing be the 1950s?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times November 23, 2011
Soft alternatives to soft-headed flood control
“Prejudices” Illinois Times July 29, 1993
Why Springfield street improvements seldom were
“Prejudices” Illinois Times August 13, 1992
Building highways out of habit
“Prejudices” Illinois Times November 30, 1979
A bigger, not better, capitol complex
“Prejudices” Illinois Times September 15, 1983
What Can We Do With Block 37?
Undeveloping Loop real estate: A case study
Reader April 19, 1991
Making a new downtown of Springfield's old buildings
“Prejudices” Illinois Times February 18, 1993
Springfield's downtown gets out of bed, walks
“Prejudices” Illinois Times October 29, 1981
The frontier impulse unsettles metropolitan Springfield
Illinois Times June 29, 1979
Tidying up the Lincoln home area by paving it
“Prejudices” Illinois Times June 10, 1977
In which the author’s wishes do not come true
“Prejudices” Illinois Times May 30, 1980
The newest draft city plan is a good one
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times January 4, 2018
Why Did the Children Not Cross the Road?
Kids no longer enjoy the freedom of their city
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times December. 30, 2009
Yielding to Nonsense
The General Assembly makes pedestrians less safe
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times May 13, 2010
Poor Housing
Will enforcement improve shabby housing on Springfield's east side?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times November 3, 2011
How might Illinois towns boost population growth?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times January 12, 2017
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