"Offshoring Audacity," CEOs for Cities :: Blog, View Entry - The Diigo Meta page

• 10 Nov 08
  

  Yule Heibel

  I would love to have attended the Chicago Humanities Festival conference. Carol Colletta's summing up sounds intriguing, with lots of important issues and themes raised. The discussion around high-speed rail and how Chicago could be connected to a bunch of other great cities to maximize each one's potential depressed me a bit, insofar as I'm reminded that my city (Victoria) sits on an island, which leaves us only with ferries and airplanes... <sigh>

  ceos_for_cities conference chicago

  • The morning session had a consistent message:  Chicago must dream big to compete with London, Paris, Beijing and Shanghai. These four cities were mentioned repeatedly, and the clear ambition is for Chicago to compete with these cities.  But what made the first presentation this morning especially exciting was Rick Harnish, who runs Midwest High Speech Rail Coalition.  He makes a compelling, detailed, persuasive case for high speed rail in the U.S.  The coalition is pushing a high speed system for the Midwest that connects Minneapolis to Cincinnati, Detroit to St. Louis, with Chicago at the hub of the "X".  If the increasing calls for federal investment in infrastructure continue, high speed rail could move from plan to reality.  Putting all of these cities within 3 hours of comfortable travel from downtown Chicago will increase productivity, help centralize business in these city centers, likely lead to increased density around stations
  • President-elect Barack Obama has talked openly and repeatedly about his support for high speed rail and, according to Rick, high speed rail also has the support of Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin.  Could high speed rail really be in the near future of America? 
  • 3 more annotations...
  • • Offshoring Audacity was a discussion of architecture as a manufacturer of identity of place.  The discussion picked up on a theme sounded by Saskia last weekend:  Uniqueness of place is what is most valued but our system of global finance (and architecture?) pushes in the direction of sameness.
    • The session's other provocative theme was this:  If it is Western architects designing buildings in the Middle East financed with Russian oil money, where exactly is "offshore"?  Who is us and who is them?  Where is here and where is there?  All of the panelists were under 40 (and several much younger), and it strikes me that the concept of "offshore" has little relevance to them.
    • This echoed the discussion at the CEOs for Cities national meeting and our Friday Creative Cities Network gathering on the increasing challenges to institutions by the next generation. Think about those severely challenged:  newspapers, churches, big arts institutions, old-style nonprofits (instead, we reward "social entrepreneurs").  The question is, is it worth tweaking the existing institutions?  Or will something completely new appear to take their place?

Would you like to comment?

Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.