Premier of “Count Me In” Documentary

“Count Me In,” the first in-depth documentary about participatory budgeting, a burgeoning national movement that started in Chicago, tells a rare good-news story about money and voting, tracking the efforts of regular Chicagoans who are rolling up their sleeves to make an impact in their neighborhoods. A special screening in Chicago will be followed by a discussion of the film and the future of participatory budgeting. The film, produced by Chicago-based Sommer Filmworks LLC, presented nationally by WTTW Chicago and distributed by the National Educational Telecommunications Association, will be available to public television stations in October 2016.

Participatory budgeting is one answer to the question, how do you get citizens, who have become cynical about politics and frustrated with voting, involved in the decision-making process about what government does and how things get done? The film shows residents pitching ideas for a variety of projects, including street repairs, bike lanes and community gardens. Projects get researched, proposals crafted, and at the end, the entire community is invited to vote. “Count Me In” explores the ups and downs of this new tool, offering an engaging, unvarnished look at what it will take to revitalize democracy from the ground up, not just in Chicago, but across the nation.

After the screening a panel will lead a discussion of the film including:

  • Count Me In Director and Producer Ines Sommer
  • Thea Crum, Director of Neighborhoods Initiative, UIC Great Cities Institute
  • Amanda Cortés, Assistant to Alderman Rick Muñoz, 22nd Ward
  • Joann Williams, community activist from 22nd Ward, featured in the film

WHEN:         
Screening
2 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Panel Discussion
3:15 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Saturday, October 15, 2016

WHERE:      
Chicago Cultural Center, Claudia Cassidy Theater
78 E. Washington Street, Chicago, IL

For more information on “Count Me In” go to: www.countmeinmovie.com

The October 15th premier is free and open to the public but RSVPs are encouraged at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/free-screening-discussion-count-me-in-tickets-27415907718

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From worst-case scenario to participatory plan: Lessons from a Mexican village for community development and planning education

TillyKennedy

Marie Kennedy is Professor Emerita in Community Planning, University of Massachusetts Boston, and a former Visiting Professor of Urban Planning at the University of California Los Angeles.  Throughout her academic career she has combined the roles of activist and scholar, working in and writing about community development, planning education and participatory action research.  Over the years, Marie has worked with and/or written about community and worker organizations and social movements in the Greater Boston area, San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Palestine and Nicaragua.  She chairs the board of Venice Community Housing and serves on the advisory committees of Grassroots International and of Planners Network.

Chris Tilly, Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA, studies labor and inequality in the US and global context, with a particular focus on bad jobs and how to make them better.  Tilly’s books include Half a Job: Bad and Good Part-Time Jobs in a Changing Labor Market; Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women’s Work, Women’s Poverty; Work Under Capitalism: Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill, and Hiring in America; The Gloves-Off Economy: Labor Standards at the Bottom of America’s Labor Market, and Are Bad Jobs Inevitable?

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Participatory Planning in Action: Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly

10-11-16 Blog

Please join us this Friday for a talk by Professors Marie Kennedy and Chris Tilly. They have been planning professors for many years, spending much of their time in the Boston area. In more recent years they have been at UCLA where Professor Tilly ran the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and Professor Kennedy, who has always done participatory planning, is now Emeritus.  They were both early and committed members of Planners Network. On Friday, they will share insights from their recent participatory planning project in a village in Mexico.

Marie Kennedy is Professor Emerita in Community Planning, University of Massachusetts Boston, and a former Visiting Professor of Urban Planning at the University of California Los Angeles.  Throughout her academic career she has combined the roles of activist and scholar, working in and writing about community development, planning education and participatory action research.  Over the years, Marie has worked with and/or written about community and worker organizations and social movements in the Greater Boston area, San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Palestine and Nicaragua.  She chairs the board of Venice Community Housing and serves on the advisory committees of Grassroots International and of Planners Network.

Chris Tilly, Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA, studies labor and inequality in the US and global context, with a particular focus on bad jobs and how to make them better.  Tilly’s books include Half a Job: Bad and Good Part-Time Jobs in a Changing Labor Market; Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women’s Work, Women’s Poverty; Work Under Capitalism: Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill, and Hiring in America; The Gloves-Off Economy: Labor Standards at the Bottom of America’s Labor Market, and Are Bad Jobs Inevitable?

From worst-case scenario to participatory plan: Lessons from a Mexican village for community development and planning education will take place at 2 p.m. in the Great Cities Institute conference room, this Friday, October 14. Join us for what is sure to be an intriguing discussion.

Which Chicago is your neighborhood in?

Photo by Thinkstock

Photo by Thinkstock

An independent report co-produced by James Lewis, senior research specialist in the UIC Great Cities Institute, is featured in a Crain’s Chicago Business blog. The report and column detail Chicago census data on income that outlines which neighborhoods fall into three areas – rising, idling, and declining- in recent years and over the past half century.

Though household income is growing smartly in parts of Chicago, a decades-old decline continues elsewhere, with the rest of the city stagnating in an awkward middle.

That’s the gist of some intriguing new data from a pair of veteran local demographers that underlines as well as any effort I’ve seen the continuing transition of Chicago into not two but three different cities over the past half-century—one thriving in the world economy, the second stuck in Rust Belt decline and the third not quite belonging to either.

Full Story from Crain’s Chicago Business »

Englewood hopes Starbucks, Whole Foods create ‘ripple effect’

Hagar Johnson, center, a Starbucks shift supervisor, wipes down the glass of the pastry and foods at the new Englewood Square shopping center in Chicago on Sept. 27, 2016. Starbucks and Whole Foods open Weds Sept. 28 in the new Englewood Square shopping center. Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune

Hagar Johnson, center, a Starbucks shift supervisor, wipes down the glass of the pastry and foods at the new Englewood Square shopping center in Chicago on Sept. 27, 2016. Starbucks and Whole Foods open Weds Sept. 28 in the new Englewood Square shopping center. Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune

A Chicago Tribune story on the opening of Starbucks and Whole Foods in Englewood cites neighborhood unemployment data from a January 2016 UIC Great Cities Institute report on youth joblessness in Chicago.

Some of the new employees at the Englewood store were hired as part of a national initiative launched last year and led by Starbucks to help 100,000 so-called opportunity youth — 16- to 24-year-olds not working or in school — find employment by 2018.

Unemployment among youth, particularly black youth in Chicago, has been called a crisis. In Englewood, 89 percent of 16- to 19-year-olds and 72 percent of 20- to 24-year-olds did not have jobs in 2014, according to the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute.

Full Story from Chicago Tribune »

Wim Wiewel to Attend Great Cities Institute 21st Anniversary Celebration

10-04-16 AnniversaryBlog

We are excited that Wim Wiewel, the first director of the Great Cities Institute, will be able to attend the November 16 anniversary celebration.

Wim was also the first Dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA). Before that, Wim was Director of the Center for Urban and Economic Development (CUED), during which time, CUED produced extensive analysis and reports on the changing economic landscape of the region. Dr. Wiewel is currently the President of Portland State University.

In our conversations with Wim he has emphasized the value and importance of a legacy such as the Great Cities concept. We look forward to his sharing some of his thoughts about why this concept remains important. UIC is notable in its commitment to being an urban university engaged in serving Chicago and its surrounding region.

UIC Chancellor Michael Amiridis will provide the welcome. Former Chancellor and University of Illinois President James J. Stukel will speak. In addition, we will pay tribute to Robert Mier, former UIC Professor of Urban Planning and Policy and City of Chicago Commissioner of Economic Development under Harold Washington. Rob’s sister, Nell Newton, Dean of the University of Notre Dame Law School will join us, as will Joan Fitzgerald, Professor in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University in Boston, who was married to Rob. Professor Fitzgerald will also present her research on green innovation on Friday, November 18 at noon at GCI.

We hope that you will be able to join us on November 16, 4:30 – 7:30 at the East Terrace Room of the Student Center East, 750 S. Halsted. Many of you have already sent an RSVP. Thank you. We are very excited that former members of the original committee that created the Great Cities concept will attend, along with former and current staff, faculty scholars, research fellows and various community and civic partners. We plan for a great afternoon, with good food, of course. Come celebrate, see old friends, and learn more about UIC’s Great Cities Institute.

UTC Event: Policy Impact of Shared Mobility

Managing the adoption and integration of new and emerging mobility innovations to achieve a successful new transportation paradigm is a defining issue of our time. Learn about development of several mobility plans for cities and transit agencies to consider at the first Fall 2016 Seminar Series event hosted by the Urban Transportation Center at UIC. The presentation will be held September 29 and will be led by Joe Iacobucci, Director of Transit for Sam Schwartz Consulting. The event begins at noon and will be held in the Great Cities Institute conference room, 4th floor at CUPPA Hall. Visit — https://utc.uic.edu/utc-2016-seminar-series/.

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Riverdale area suffers highest level of economic hardship in Chicago

The Riverdale community area on Chicago's Far South Side has the city's highest level of economic hardship, according to a ranking released this week. (City of Chicago 2015)

The Riverdale community area on Chicago’s Far South Side has the city’s highest level of economic hardship, according to a ranking released this week. (City of Chicago 2015)

A Chicago Tribune article highlights a UIC Great Cities Institute report ranking economic hardship in Chicago’s 77 communities. Matthew Wilson, an economic development planner at the institute, is quoted on the rankings and local conditions.

With a per capita income of less than $7,500 and an unemployment rate at 40 percent, the Riverdale community area on Chicago’s southern edge has the most economic hardship in the city.

That’s according to a ranking of Chicago’s 77 community areas released this week by the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which used 2010 to 2014 five-year estimates from the American Community Survey to measure hardship based on a number of indicators, including education level and poverty rate.

Full Story from Chicago Tribune »