Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Blair Kamin has long informed and delighted readers with his illuminating commentary. Kamin’s newest collection, Who Is the City For?, does more than gather fifty-five of his most notable Chicago Tribune columns from the past decade: it pairs his words with striking new images by photographer and architecture critic Lee Bey, Kamin’s former rival at the Chicago Sun-Times. Listen to the Unfrozen interview with Kamin, and understand why “city planning is not a game of 2D checkers but of 3D chess.”
Intro/Outro: “Chicago” by Benny Goodman
Discussed:
Maurice Cox, Chicago Planning Commissioner
The pandemic’s effect on rapid urbanization
Spread of crime from poor to rich neighborhoods
The city’s not “out of control,” but it is in need of reinvention
Lower Manhattan’s adaptive reuse of older skyscrapers does present a template
Decentralization of the central business district, ex: McDonald’s HQ in the Fulton Market
Prospects for Lincoln Yards and The 78 – shades of Cityfront Center?
The Chicago Spire pit / 400 N Lake Shore Drive replacement project
DuSable Park and the Riverwalk
“We have to think of the city not as a 2D checkers game but a 3D chess game.”
Buffalo Bayou Park extension project, Houston
AIA design competition for the next bungalow
“Plop” architecture
1611 W Division – look ma, no parking!
“There are those who say ‘who gets what’ is a tired trope of architectural criticism – let me vehemently disagree.”
Chicago as a participant in global economic and architectural design exchange
The City that Works > The City that Plays
Investment of Chinese capital in St. Regis Tower
Listen On
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