A plea for more parks; the historical and political reasons why the West Side is a park desert; why Daniel Burnham is overrated; and a brilliant plan for dock, alley, and railyard parks. Plus: an unsung hero of Chicago landscape design.
This week in Mayor Emanuel: from the light load of big ideas with Michael Bloomberg, Kasim Reed, and Thomas Friedman at Ideas Week… to the heavy lifting of little governing ones with City Council.
A study looks at Seattle’s bus-tracker system, and finds nothing but love. The biggest benefit? Eliminating the mystery of the next bus’s arrival.
My last book was about Bill Clinton’s post-presidency. He was in exile back in 2001, almost broken by the Lewinsky scandal, with his outlandish pardon to billionaire Iran arms trader Marc Rich nearly finishing him off. Today, soaring in mass affection while his onetime nemesis Barack Obama (think 2008 primaries) sinks, Clinton is no longer anything close to an exile; he’s the toast of every town and country he visits. When news broke that he was coming to town for Chicago Ideas…
Photographer Michael Nye spent four and a half years collecting the stories and images of 52 Americans who suffer from hunger. The resulting exhibit is showing through October 30 at St. James Cathedral.
To celebrate Ideas Week and the forthcoming Chicago Humanities Festival, a look back at five advances from the 1893 World’s Fair: the fax machine, the Hoochie Coochie Man, and more.
Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together are stirring up debate on political policies that could help the 99 Percent. One that keeps coming up is debt forgiveness, particularly student debt forgiveness.
On Friday, I posted part one of my interview with Roger Simon. Here, part two, in which he discusses his Chicago roots, his friendship with Roger Ebert, his addiction to Twitter, and what he misses about his hometown.
The columnist and former Chicagoan, who suffered a catastrophic illness that resulted in the amputation of both legs, talks about his medical nightmare and how he bagged an Oval Office interview with the president.
A study by academics at Michigan and Indiana suggests that the election of Barack Obama left the anti-war movement either co-opted or high and dry. What will happen to Occupy Wall Street?
