Offshoring Audacity

The conversations at the Chicago Humanities Festival are always a pleasure.  Last weekend, I heard Saskia Sassen (she of Global City fame), her husband and author Richard Sennett (power couple extraordinaire), Ricky Burdett of Urban Age and Philip Enquist, SOM partner in charge of Urban Design and Planning lecture. 

Today, I had a chance to hear two more programs:  Go To 2040 and Offshoring Audacity.

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 and 

Rick is planning a trip to Madrid and Barcelon in January to show off Spain's high speed rail system.  Last week Californians approved their own high speed rail (although sadly, the referendum to extend BART to San Jose failed by less than 1 percent.).  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? 

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?  Instead of an "either/or" situation, will this be a "yes/and" sort of response?  Questions worth pondering...

  

The Urbanophile, November 8, 2008

Carol, I saw that Sassen, et. al. presentation as well. I was very impressed with the turnout. Chicago needs to do more than just dream big to take on the London's of this world. It needs to replenish its store of ideas. http://theurbanophile.blogspot.com/2008/11/were-out-of-ideas.html High speed rail, for all its allure, it just another imported idea. Chicago has to become an actual innovator again. That means not just having the idea, but figuring out how to make it manifest in the urban context, just as it did for many of the big ideas of the industrial age.

Link: http://theurbanophile.blogspot.com/

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