You can’t run a 21st-century blog network at the speed of a 19th-century newspaper. I wish someone would tell the Chicago Tribune. Here’s how institutional lethargy, inadequate tools, inscrutable navigation, and newsroom pushback make it hard to be a successful ChicagoNow blogger. (This post has now officially become the top-rated Windy Citizen story of all time.)
I don’t have an answer to the question of whether the Chicago Children’s Museum should be allowed to build a new home for itself in the Daley Bicentennial Plaza section of Grant Park. But I do think the possibility deserves to be debated and not cut off at the knees as it seems the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune would have it.
Today, my boyfriend, Devyn Caldwell, was quoted in the New York Times regarding the Homeland Security cameras that he and I helped get removed from their former home–smack on top of Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain in Millennium Park.
Ah, the power of the blogosphere. As of 11:00 a.m. this morning, the City of Chicago has removed the security cameras from the top of Millennium Park’s Crown Fountain. Good riddance. Devyn and I blogged about the offending cameras and got the Chicago Tribune to write an article on the issue–and article that appeared today. You’re welcome, Chicago 🙂
Today, the Chicago Tribune quoted Devyn and me regarding the horrendously misplaced Homeland Security cameras that now sit atop Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain in Millennium Park. We found the cameras over the weekend and immediately contacted the newspaper to complain. Why? Surveillance cameras don’t belong welded to public art.
There are many good places to put security cameras in Chicago’s architecturally brilliant Millennium Park. Smack on top of Jaume Plensa’s hyper-popular Crown Fountain is not one of those places.
If you’ve been in downtown Chicago this summer, you’ve seen them: ten-foot-tall metal pylons containing a glass-encased city map on one side and an ad or cultural announcement on the other. In recent months, 75 of the information signs have been installed on sidewalks throughout the Loop, paid for entirely with ad revenue. So what’s the problem? According to Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin, placing ads on the signs cheapens the public streetscape. I couldn’t disagree more.
I’m no knee-jerk fan of da mare, though I will say he’s finally an out-of-the-closet urbanist. However, the latest affront to the legacy of Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago speaks for itself. At least through the incisive words of Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin.