Events Search and Views Navigation
October 2017
Hunger Incorporated: Why the Alliance between Corporations and Anti Hunger Groups Holds Us Back from Solving Hunger
Food banks and food pantries have proliferated in response to an economic emergency. The loss of manufacturing jobs combined with the recession of the early 1980s and Reagan administration cutbacks in federal programs led to an explosion in the growth of food charity. This was meant to be a stopgap measure, but the jobs never came back, and the “emergency food system” became an industry. In Big Hunger, Andrew Fisher takes a critical look at the business of hunger and…
Find out more »November 2017
Shaping Urban Space in Peripheral Capitalism: Real Estate Investment in Warsaw
Developers are the primary actor shaping the space of large cities in Central and Eastern Europe. The public sector is not present as an investor and has retreated from spatial planning following the policy of progressive deregulation of the economy. As a result, social and political conflicts have sprung up around urban areas and begun to re-affect the process of shaping the space. This is particularly evident in large cities such as Warsaw, which is one of the fastest-rising real…
Find out more »Creative Funding Mechanisms: Paying for Large Infrastructure Projects
In an era of reduced involvement from government at all levels, how do planners get creative to fund major infrastructure projects? This topic will look at how recent and ongoing projects in Chicago, including the Red and Purple Modernization Project and the expansion of the Chicago Riverwalk, were funded and emerging trends of infrastructure funding. Carole Morey serves as Chief Planning Officer of the Chicago Transit Authority, the nation’s second largest transit agency, where she oversees the Service Planning ,…
Find out more »Remaking Rust Belt Cities: Universities, Nationalism and Economic Development in South Africa
Leslie Bank is a Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Fort Hare. He is the recipient of research fellowships from Fulbright, the Ford Foundation and the Oppenheimer Trust to Emory, Oxford and Cambridge Universities. He also served as a research fellow at the African Studies Centre at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. His most recent book is entitled After Car Culture: Industry, Nationalism and Universities on…
Find out more »Out and About with GCI – Union Station: A 21st Century Revival
Join Great Cities Institute (GCI) and the Urban Planning and Policy Student Association (UPPSA) for an Amtrak tour of Union Station. This tour will highlight the history and redevelopment of the facility, as well as its significance in transportation and economic development planning for the Chicago region. Please RSVP below. Tour details and starting location will be emailed to attendees prior to the event. Loading...
Find out more »February 2018
Parks, Plans, and Prejudice: The Environmental Politics of Outdoor Recreation
Beginning with a discussion of the origins and importance of the 1909 Plan of Chicago in terms of open space, Professor Platt will focus on the politics of environmental injustice in the spatial distribution of city parks (and park facilities, maintenance, staffing, etc) on the basis of race, ethnicity and class. This talk will cover the period from the World's Fair of 1893 and the simultaneous Great Migration to Mayor Richard M. Daley's Millennium Park. This approach will allow Professor Platt…
Find out more »The Reversal of the Chicago River: Bridging environmentalism and urban development
The second lecture in the Spring 2018 Real Time Chicago lecture series is ‘The Reversal of the Chicago River: bridging environmentalism and urban development’. The reversal of the Chicago River was as much of an engineering marvel as it was an early victory for environmentalists and public health advocates in the late 19th century. Richard Lanyon, the former Executive Director of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, will take us through the history of the reversal of the…
Find out more »Reflections on the Kerner Report: Race and Inequality in the 1960s
In the aftermath of the 1967 urban ‘riots’, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner, Jr. of Illinois. The 11-member commission examined the conditions of the cities that led to the turmoil and made recommendations addressing the underlying causes. The Commission’s report, released on February 29, 1968, marks a pivotal moment in the changing dynamics of U.S. cities and of critical analysis of the…
Find out more »Documentary viewing – Revolution ’67
"Revolution '67 is an illuminating account of events too often relegated to footnotes in U.S. history — the black urban rebellions of the 1960s. Focusing on the six-day Newark, N.J., outbreak in mid-July, Revolution '67 reveals how the disturbances began as spontaneous revolts against poverty and police brutality and ended as fateful milestones in America's struggles over race and economic justice. Voices from across the spectrum — activists Tom Hayden and Amiri Baraka, journalist Bob Herbert, Mayor Sharpe James, and other officials, National…
Find out more »Documentary viewing – Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson
"This production tells the story of Judge Thelton Henderson's career, from serving as the first African American lawyer in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Dept. of Justice, observing civil rights activities, to his role as Senior Judge of the federal District Court of Northern California. He served as a lawyer for one of the first U.S. legal aid offices in East Palo Alto, using Stanford law students. As a recruiter for the Stanford Law School, he succeeded in…
Find out more »