Crain’s: City to sell 322 South Side lots for $1 each

Source: City of Chicago Large Lot Program

Source: City of Chicago Large Lot Program

Crain’s Chicago Business quotes Phil Ashton, former GCI scholar and associate professor of urban planning and policy, on the city’s plan to sell 322 vacant South Side lots to nearby homeowners and nonprofits who will maintain them and pay property taxes.  Ashton says the plan is pragmatic in the absence of private development or federal funding, but may lack definition as to next steps.

The land transfers are a “pragmatic” strategy for the city since private developers aren’t racing to invest in neighborhoods like Englewood and significant sums of federal dollars aren’t available for broader renewal efforts, said Phil Ashton, an associate professor in the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Urban Planning and Policy Program.

The challenge for the Large Lot program, he added, is ensuring that it’s more than simply transferring property that individuals and groups will be required to pay taxes on and maintain to city code.

“The bigger question here is, what happens next?” Mr. Ashton said. “It’s really laudable to think of ways of bringing civic groups and block clubs and invested homeowners into the neighborhood revitalization equation but the question is, is there going to be anything more?”

Full Story from Crain’s Chicago Business »

Diverse Contenders for the Obama Presidential Library

Source: http://chicagolakesidedevelopment.com/

Source: http://chicagolakesidedevelopment.com/

The process to decide the location for the Barack Obama Presidential Library is currently under way. June 16th was the deadline for official bids for the Barack Obama Presidential Library. To oversee this process and the library’s future, the Barack Obama Foundation a 501(c)(3) was established in January 2014. The four member all volunteer board will spend the next several months reviewing bids and working with the Obamas to pick a group of finalists. The Obamas will then choose the final site from the foundation’s recommendations. A final announcement is expected in early 2015.

Although officially not publically available, there are reports of 12 official bids listed here:

  • University of Illinois at Chicago: UIC has two locations at the university, one on the east campus at Harrison Field located at Harrison and Halstead, and a site on the west campus located at Ashland and Taylor Street. UIC has also worked with the nearby local community of North Lawndale for a third proposed site. The North Lawndale proposal is located on a former industrial site, which could create many jobs for Chicago’s west side.
  • Chicago State University: The university has two sites, which draw on the legacy of the President’s community activism due to its location near the Greater Roseland community. Both proposed sites are located near diverse modes of transportation and are on university owned property. The library on these sites could do a lot to provide jobs to Southside communities that need them.
  • University of Chicago: U of C has three Southside locations at 55th and King, 6220 S. Stoney Island, and 7059 S. Shore Drive at the South Shore Cultural Center. President Obama is a senior lecturer in the U of C Law School, and may return to teaching, post-presidency. Keeping the library close to home may appeal to the President.
  • Columbia University: Manhattanville Campus in West Harlem, New York City: Columbia is where Obama received his undergraduate degree. New York is also a rumored location of a post-Presidential home for the Obamas.
  • Chicago’s Bronzeville: Community stakeholders are proposing the old Michael Reese Hospital site: This location could bring many jobs helping to strengthen the resurgence of the Bronzeville community.
  • Chicago Lakeside Development: Lakeside Development’s Inspiration Point is located at 79th street on the Lake, has one of the most visually compelling sites with lake views and the skyline in the distance. The Obama’s also have many ties to the South Shore community, the location of Inspiration Point.

An underlying commonality of the bids is drawing on the economic benefits that come with a presidential library. According to the AP, the University of Chicago conducted a study finding that the library, “would draw 800,000 visitors a year and create 1,900 permanent jobs.” These economic benefits could also explain why the Chicago locations are all south of Interstate 290 in the South and West sides of the city, areas that could benefit from the library.

WTTW’s Chicago Tonight conducted a panel that included Michael Allen, Professor of American History at Northwestern University, brought on as a presidential library expert. Professor Allen explained that accessibility is the most important factor in deciding a location for a presidential library, not just for transportation, but also for access to library resources for academics. That is why many of the proposed locations are connected to universities. Allen said the site which fits best based on this criteria is UIC’s Harrison Field proposal.

While having a strong research focus at UIC is one advantage, location is another. Michael Pagano, dean of UIC’s College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs, stated Harrison Field is in a central location of the city and the proposed location for a Civic Center, as envisioned by Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago. There is also diverse transportation access to this site, including a soon-to-be newly renovated CTA Blue Line train station, several bus lines, and the nearby Circle Interchange.

With the bids placed, it is now the job of the Barack Obama Foundation to create a short list from which the Obamas choose. The Foundation’s official release has more detail on the criteria for its decision, such as convenience for researchers and the potential for the museum to anchor the surrounding community. Naturally, we hope UIC’s Near West Side campus will be selected, but we will be excited to celebrate with whichever neighborhood the Obamas choose.

About the Author:
Jack Rocha, GCI Research Assistant: Second year MUPP student interested in developing a sense of community under the framework of spatial planning that is guided by its history.

Nik Theodore quoted in the Los Angeles Times

A recruiter meets with employment seekers during a job fair in Philadelphia. (Matt Rourke / Associated Press)

A recruiter meets with employment seekers during a job fair in Philadelphia. (Matt Rourke / Associated Press)

The Los Angeles Times quotes Nik Theodore, GCI fellow and professor of urban planning and policy, on the growing prevalence of a wide variety of temporary, freelance, and odd jobs. Theodore questions whether this is specific to the current economy or a fundamental change in the job market.

It’s hard to track the growth of the gray economy because so many employers hide workers for tax purposes. Experts generally agree, however, that the ranks of the underemployed swelled during the recession — more than in past downturns — and have remained substantial in an unsteady recovery.

“This segment of the labor market is a barometer for the economy as a whole,” said Nik Theodore, an urban planning professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “As employment insecurity spreads across the economy, more and more workers are being forced to turn to the street, to odd jobs, to becoming on-call workers. The question is whether this is a cyclical change, a blip or a signal of something much more fundamental.”

Full Story from the Los Angeles Times »

Isabel Cruz

Dr. Isabel Cruz research areas include databases, geographic information systems, semantic web, information visualization, and security.  Her current topics of research include information extraction and matching, big data (e.g., for geographical and biomedical information), visual analytics, context-aware role-based access control, data linking for urban resilience and sustainability, and crowdsourcing. With her students, Dr. Cruz has developed GIVA, an award-winning framework for the integration of spatial and temporal data.  Her work in collaboration with Dr. Ning Ai for Great Cities Institute will build upon and expand her work on GIVA.

In “Feasibility & Efficiency Analysis of Neighborhood-Based Sustainable Food Waste Management” Professors Ai and Cruz will compare data from previous food waste studies conducted at UIC and across the Chicago metropolitan region, integrating state-of-art knowledge from the distinct fields of urban planning and computer science.  Their comparison will include a consideration of differences in the methodologies of these studies in order to further refine models and parameters for future studies.

Faculty Profile »
Advances in Information Systems »

Lynette Jackson

Professor Jackson is a feminist scholar, activist, and African historian. She is an Associate Professor in Gender and Women’s Studies as well as African American Studies. She is also an affiliated faculty member in the History Department at UIC. Dr. Jackson has completed extensive research with the Pan African Association in Chicago, which is the foundation for her work with GCI.

For her current project, “New African Diaspora in Chicago: Memories, Maps, and Communities,” there are two major objectives. The first is to respond to the paucity of detailed and in-depth studies on Chicago’s growing African immigrant and refugee communities, specifically those coming from the following three regions of the African continent: Northeastern Africa (Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia), Mano River States (Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea) and Great Lake Region (Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.) The second is to interrogate the way in which the protean term African diaspora is deployed, particularly in the media and by various non-governmental, national and multilateral organizations.  This project is within GCI’s Dynamics of Global Mobility research cluster.

Faculty Profile »

Ning Ai

Dr. Ning Ai’s research and teaching interests focus on urban environmental planning and its integration with land use, industrial ecology, and sustainable economic development.  She has worked for the World Bank, the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Co., and the Georgia State Department of Natural Resources.  Her previous work experiences include the application of GIS in environmental protection, urban sustainability indicators, and the socioeconomic impact analysis of natural disasters.  Most recently, Dr. Ai has engaged in the socioeconomic and spatial analysis of material and waste management, with a focus on electronic waste, post-consumer carpet, and municipal solid waste.  Her work in collaboration with Dr. Isabel Cruz for Great Cities Institute will extend this research.

In “Feasibility & Efficiency Analysis of Neighborhood-Based Sustainable Food Waste Management” Professors Ai and Cruz will compare data from previous food waste studies conducted at UIC and across the Chicago metropolitan region, integrating state-of-art knowledge from the distinct fields of urban planning and computer science.  Their comparison will include a consideration of differences in the methodologies of these studies in order to further refine models and parameters for future studies.  In addition, they will expand Dr. Cruz’s framework for spatial and temporal data integration, GIVA, in order to address the unique challenges of this project.

Faculty Profile »

Nadine Naber

Naber is an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a principal investigator of the Diaspora Studies Cluster. She joins GCI to continue work on her book, Ending Violence against Arab Women: Transnational Approaches across Four Cities. Overall, her work illustrates that state violence (poverty and militarism) are themselves forms of gender violence and that state violence and individualized forms of violence magnify each other. The contributions based on her work are more urgent than ever before since gender violence is on the rise in the Arab region. Moreover, Arab women living in major U.S. cities such as Detroit and Chicago have virtually no resources for responding to the problem of gender violence. Dr. Naber’s contributions will assist those developing strategies for ending violence that are actually relevant to the complex realities of Arab women’s lives.

Faculty Profile »
Nadine Naber’s Home Page »
Arab American Studies Association »

Laurie Schaffner

Schaffner is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. As a Scholar she will take a closer look at underlying assumptions about youth, sex, mortality, and the law. She will be analyzing 250 qualitative field interviews with self-identified young people who had ever traded sex for money or survival needs in the streets of Chicago during the time period 2011 to 2013 as a part of a national seven-city study of the commercial sexual exploitation of children, funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of the U.S. Department of Justice. Through this, she intends to decipher popular vocabulary as we seek solutions to the problem of poor youth exchanging sex in the streets, clubs, strolls, and cars in Chicago. Her research captures a rich sociological view of an issue that affects millions of families and communities around the world, across the nation, and here in Chicago.

Faculty Profile » 
Violence Against Girls Provokes Girls’ Violence »

GCI Staff Participate in the Ella Baker Institute

Last week, Sara Agate and Xiomara Pedraza attended the Ella Baker Institute for Organizers, Activists, and Social Justice Believers hosted by the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and Ella’s Daughters.  The purpose of the 6-day Institute was “to explore the organizing tradition of Ella Baker, women of color feminist histories and theories” in order to build the organizing skills of participants. There were diverse participants that came from an array of different organizations, academic institutions, community struggles and geographical locations around the country, which brought a range of issues from gentrification to a free Palestine.

We were welcomed on the first day with an artistic workshop by Climbing Poetree. A talented duo and feminists of color, who travel around the world performing poetry and other social justice oriented creative art projects. Their workshop provided a space for spiritual healing and creative energy.  Before we knew it, we were sharing our experiences, frustrations, triumphs, knowledge, and critical analysis of our involvement with social justice work. Collectively, we contributed to the S.T.I.T.C.H.E.D Project and concluded the day by enjoying lunch at a local neighborhood restaurant.

There were two central themes throughout the Institute – coalition building and inclusiveness. In this light, the program focused on understanding theory, skill- building, strategy, and organizing in the tradition of Ella Baker.  There were opportunities for engagement with local Chicago activist communities, like a mural tour of Pilsen and the Pop Up JUST Art (PUJA) Center and a special tour of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.  Each day we were developing a bond based on respect, love and struggle. We explored current and historic issues and the ways in which they are interconnected by institutions, corporations, policies or unjust practices that operate within global systems of oppression. Each day was filled with workshops, discussions and laughs as each of us, in our own distinct yet united ways, were growing and healing.

On the last day we examined the power of trans-national solidarity for collective liberation. In this session, guest facilitators Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Linda Carty spoke about their experience with Trans-National Feminist Solidarity. In short, it reaffirmed the importance of collective process and spoke to coalition politics. The following quote best describes the impact of their discussion, “acknowledging differences and becoming fluent in each other’s histories” is important because solidarity “cannot be assumed on the basis of shared identity.” Rather, it is created and nurtured within the collective where multiple levels of accountability can exist. In the end, all of the participants brainstormed next steps in continuing efforts for the Ella Baker Institute and ideas of how we may stay connected and work together. In harmony, we closed with Ella’s Song by Sweet Honey in the Rock.

By grappling with new ideas, imagining FREEDOM, redefining our fluid identities and acknowledging history we developed a higher level of consciousness. As two Latina scholars and activists, we feel empowered with the knowledge we gained and the camaraderie we felt throughout the Institute. We are fortunate to have participated.  In the spirit of Ella Baker and all those who live with us in struggle, we will carry the momentum and share it with others. In the coming weeks we will be discussing how we can take the principles of the Ella Baker Institute and apply it to our work and future projects at Great Cities Institute. We extend our gratitude to those we shared the experience with and to UIC’s Social Justice Initiative and team members who made the space possible.

In Solidarity,
Xiomara Pedraza & Sara Agate

About the Authors:
Xiomara Pedraza, GCI Research Specialist, is pursuing her Master Degree in Urban Policy at the New School in New York City.
Sara Agate, GCI Research Specialist, completed her Master of Public Health in Health Policy and Administration in May 2014.

‘Transit-oriented’ development bringing new life to suburban commuter towns

The Daily Herald quoted Rachel Weber, associate professor of urban planning and policy, on the renewal of transit-oriented development of retail, housing and entertainment venues in Chicago suburbs along commuter train lines.

Aided by changing public preferences and government policies, many suburbs along commuter rail lines are seeing people and businesses come back home.

“It’s kind of a back to the future phenomenon,” said Rachel Weber, a professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“We once had this dense urban fabric along commuter rail lines. Then we pulled away to spaceship suburban development … Now we’re coming back,” Weber said.

While some of the revitalization is occurring naturally, suburban leaders are helping accelerate the movement through creative zoning changes and financial incentives, in what falls under the urban planning strategy called, “transit-oriented development.”

“Transit-oriented development is kind of a corrective surgery,” Weber said.

Full Story from The Daily Herald »