Overview

A vividly illustrated collaboration between two of Chicago’s most celebrated architecture critics casts a wise and unsparing eye on inequities in the built environment and attempts to rectify them.   From his high-profile battles with Donald Trump to his insightful celebrations of Frank Lloyd Wright and front-page takedowns of Chicago mega-projects like Lincoln Yards, Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Blair Kamin has long informed and delighted readers with his illuminating commentary. Kamin’s newest collection, Who Is the City For?, does more than gather fifty-five of his most notable Chicago Tribune columns from the past decade: it pairs his words with striking new images by photographer and architecture critic Lee Bey, Kamin’s former rival at the Chicago Sun-Times. Together, they paint a revealing portrait of Chicago that reaches beyond its glamorous downtown and dramatic buildings by renowned architects like Jeanne Gang to its culturally diverse neighborhoods, including modest structures associated with storied figures from the city’s Black history, such as Emmett Till.   At the book’s heart is its expansive approach to a central concept in contemporary political and architectural discourse: equity. Kamin argues for a broad understanding of the term, one that prioritizes both the shared spaces of the public realm and the urgent need to rebuild Black and brown neighborhoods devastated by decades of discrimination and disinvestment.  “At best,” he writes in the book’s introduction, “the public realm can serve as an equalizing force, a democratizing force. It can spread life’s pleasures and confer dignity, irrespective of a person’s race, income, creed, or gender. In doing so, the public realm can promote the social contract — the notion that we are more than our individual selves, that our common humanity is made manifest in common ground.” Yet the reality in Chicago, as Who Is the City For? powerfully demonstrates, often falls painfully short of that ideal.

Full Product Details

Author:   Blair Kamin ,  Lee Bey
Publisher:   The University of Chicago Press
Imprint:   University of Chicago Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.708kg
ISBN:  

9780226822730

ISBN 10:   0226822737
Pages:   312
Publication Date:   21 November 2022
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock  
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Table of Contents

Introduction Part One: Presidents and Their Legacy Projects: Self-Aggrandizing or Civic-Minded? Trump Takes Aim at Design and the Design Press    The Trump Sign, a Poke in the Eye, Mars the Riverfront    Trump’s Sycophantic, Vitriolic Treatment of Architecture Critics    How Should Trump Make Federal Architecture Great? By Ignoring the Ideologues Who Speak for Modernism and Classicism The Obama Presidential Center: No Walk in the Park    Obama Center Design: Promising, Populist, not Yet Persuasive    Obama Center’s Plans Won’t Destroy Olmsted’s Park—They Should Be Improved, not Rejected Part Two: Urban Design: Boom Times for Cities, but Who Benefits? Urbanization on the March—and on Hold Because of the Pandemic    China’s Skyscrapers Are Trophies for the Nation and a Lifeline for Chicago Architects—but Growth Has Its Price    Attacking “Plop Architecture”: There’s a Better, Transit-Oriented Way to Design Our Cities    The Rise of Chicago’s Super Loop: So Much Building, So Little Architecture    The Things We Love about City Life—Public Transit, Urban Hustle—Are the Very Things That Put Us at Risk for COVID-19 Public Spaces: A Burst of Innovation, with Mixed Results on Equity    Maggie Daley Park Is a Seed with Potential to Blossom    Chicago’s Downtown Riverwalk: A New Phase of the City’s “Second Lakefront” Takes Shape, a Model of Waterfront Urbanity    The 606, Two Years Later: As Its Landscape Grows, So Do Concerns about Displacement    Rating Chicago’s Latest wave of Parks and Public Spaces by the Three “E”s: They’re Better on Entertainment and Ecology Than Equity Transit and Infrastructure: After a Bumpy Start, Solid Advances    Signs Uglify Our Beautiful Bridges    First New Loop “L” Station in Twenty Years Creates Curvy Gateway to Millennium Park    Along the Dan Ryan, an Eye-Grabbing CTA Terminal Reaches beyond the Ordinary    On Chicago’s South Lakefront, a Curving Pedestrian Bridge over Lake Shore Drive Also Bends Toward Justice    Chicago’s New “Shared Street” Tilts the Balance in Favor of Pedestrians, Cyclists, and Social Distancing, but It’s Tinkering, not Structural Change Part Three: Architecture: Are Buildings Good Citizens? Tall Buildings: Highs and Lows    150 North Riverside May Look Like It’s Teetering, but There’s a Method to Its Madness    When Bad Things Happen to a Good Architect: The Saga of 151 North Franklin    A Celebrated New Yorker’s New Chicago Tower: The Peak of Urban Luxury, not the Height of Skyscraper Style    The Vista Tower, Now Chicago’s Third-Tallest Building, Brings Stirring Curves and More to a Squared-Off Skyline    Fifty Years Later, Lake Point Tower Is a Singular Achievement—Let’s Hope It Stays That Way Flagship Stores: From Fine-Grained to Flashy    Apple’s New Flagship Store an Understated Gem on the Chicago River    McDonald’s New Flagship in River North: Not Ketchup Red or Mustard Yellow, but Green    In Skokie, an Architecturally Arresting Pot Shop Reveals How Marijuana Has Gone Mainstream Museums: Reacting against, and Reaching beyond, “Starchitecture”    George Lucas’s Museum Proposal Is Needlessly Massive    MCA’s Renovation Is No Hostile Takeover. It Reflects How Audiences Interact with Art and Each Other    The National African American Museum Still Stirs the Soul—and Drops Hints of What to Expect at the Obama Presidential Center Public Buildings: The Benefits—and Limits—of Good Design    Chinatown Library Breaks the Cookie-Cutter Mold and Builds Bonds of Community    A New Boathouse along the Chicago River Transforms the Motion of Rowing into an Instant Landmark    Chicago Shows How Public Housing and Libraries Can Coexist and Be Visually Striking. Now We Need More of These Creative Combinations    A Former North Side Public-Housing Project Is Beautifully Remade, but at What Cost? Part Four: Historic Preservation: What Gets Saved and Why?    Who Should Determine a Building’s Fate—the Experts, the Community, or the Clout-Heavy?    Changes Will Erode Foundation of Landmarks Commission    Evanston Plan to Demolish Harley Clarke Mansion: Public Vision or Hidden Agenda?    A Plaque on Emmett Till’s House Is Just a First Step. Chicago Can Do a Better Job of Preserving Black History Sites    The Despised Pilsen Landmark District Is about to Get a Hearing. Here’s How to Save the Treasured Neighborhood The Struggle to Save—and Better Understand—Buildings of the Recent Past    As Prentice Comes Down, Stakes Rise on Its Replacement    Spare Jahn’s Thompson Center from Rauner’s Death Sentence    The U of C’s Architectural Oddball, by the Designer of the Aon Center, Gets a Vibrant, Energy-Saving Remake    A Different View of the Masterful Farnsworth House—Hers Preserving Buildings of the Distant Past: Yesterday’s Designs, Some Viewed as Radical, Are Today’s Classics    Delayed Restoration of Unity Temple Was Well Worth the Wait    The Robie House Is Again a Full-Fledged Architectural Symphony    Union Station Plan on the Wrong Track: All the Grandeur of a Holiday Inn    With Cubs’ Commercial Excess Mostly in Check, Wrigley Field’s Nearly Complete Multiyear Renovation Is a Hit    Chicago’s Old Post Office, the Nation’s Largest Reuse Project, Delivers the Goods    Once Facing the Wrecking Ball, Old Cook County Hospital Reemerges, Handsomely Remade Part Five: Two Mayors, Two Directions: Who Can Make the City Work for All? Rahm Emanuel: Retrospective and Climactic Battle    Emanuel Thought and Built Big, but Progress was Painfully Uneven    An Incredible Transformation? Not Really. The “Meh” Blocks West of Navy Pier Are a Cautionary Tale for Chicago’s Next Round of Megaprojects    Improvement or Invasion? Lincoln Yards Plan Is Too Tall and Out of Place. The Mayor and City Council Should Slow It Down, and Press Architects and Developers to Rethink and Redesign Lori Lightfoot and Maurice Cox: Detroit Prelude, Chicago Blueprint    Detroit’s Downtown Revival Is Real, but the Road to Recovery Remains Long    Changing Course: Lightfoot’s Top Planner Will Focus on the City’s “Soul”—Its Neighborhoods, not Just Its Downtown “Heart”    Time to Stop Planning and Start Building: It’s Crunch Time for Lightfoot’s Drive to Revive South, West Sides Epilogue: The End of a Journalistic Era—and What Comes Next?    A Farewell to Tribune Tower and a Shout-out to Its Architects    Reflecting on Twenty-Eight Years of Reviewing Chicago’s Architectural Wonders and Blunders—and Why Such Coverage Should Continue Acknowledgments Index

Reviews

It is divinely inspired that the spine of former Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin's new collection of essays is red and bleeds slightly onto the front and back covers. . . The red line of the spine . . . serves as a reminder of the policies, legislation, and rules that have kept Chicago racially and economically separated. In Who Is the City For? Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago, Kamin, with the support of photographs by Chicago Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey, probes just who Chicago serves and how the city can be reshaped and reimagined as a space for all its residents. * Chicago Magazine * [Who Is the City For?] offers plentiful, incisive, and urbanistic vignettes of Chicago. . . . It will be treasured by urbanophiles and architecture lovers alike. . . . Excellent photographs support the collection. In Kamin's masterful hand, architectural criticism is about far more than design. It is a civic project: a public conversation about politics, the public good, and the promise of urban life. * Booklist * A collection of 55 Kamin essays from the past decade, with outstanding photographs by Bey. . . . if you really want to understand what we're missing in architecture criticism today, read (this) new book. -- J. Michael Welton, Architects+Artisans Chicago is one of the architectural capitals of the world, and in this new collaboration from today's leading critics in the field, Blair Kamin and Lee Bey lay bare the inequities that are entrenched in our built environment. Stretching beyond the eye-catching skyscrapers of downtown into the rich history of the city's diverse neighborhoods, Who is the City For? is a necessary and revealing portrait of Chicago with a powerful message on how we can rebuild our public spaces with equity in mind. * Chicago Review of Books, 12 Must-Read Books of November * The essays in Who Is the City For? present Chicago as an analogue for any city and how architecture and urban design have an ability to bolster and transform the lives of individuals and their communities. . . . Coupled with Lee Bey's striking photographs, Kamin effectively shows how architecture and urban design can reframe our lived environment and experiences. . . . He's imploring us to do more than look, he's showing us the power of seeing, examining, and how to ask the right questions. * Brock Kingsley, Chicago Review of Books * For more than thirty years, Kamin's clearheaded and forceful writing has set the standard for American architectural criticism. With this wide-ranging new collection, he steps into the intersection where design, urbanism, and social justice meet, proving once again that the best architecture writing is about much more than the way buildings look. * Inga Saffron, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Becoming Philadelphia: How an Old American City Made Itself New Again * Kamin's remarkable and eminently readable new collection is fresh evidence that the best architectural criticism is ultimately about people, rather than buildings. * Jerold S. Kayden, author of Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience, Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design * No one can match Blair Kamin's sustained scrutiny and deep understanding of Chicago architecture over the last three decades and beyond. In this book, he succeeds splendidly in offering a new collection of his uniformly excellent, interesting, and important writings. Who Is the City For? is compelling reading for anyone interested not just in Chicago, but in significant trends-both good and bad-in contemporary architecture and city life more broadly. * Carl Smith, author of The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City * The book features striking black-and-white photographs of structures like 'Cloud Gate' in Millennium Park. . . (It) reveals how much influence a good architecture critic can have on a city to shape opinion and sound the alarm when something is going wrong. -- Mary Wisniewski * Newcity * Who Is the City For? collects 55 stories by former Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin, focusing on the idea of Chicago as a sort of collective trust-or as Kamin explains, 'our common humanity is made manifest in common ground.' Cleverly, the book pairs its columns with photos from Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey. -- Christopher Borelli * Chicago Tribune * It's a great collection of Blair's columns and also some wonderful photographs from Lee Bey. . . It's a beautiful book, * Bob Sirott, WGN Radio * This is a wonderful book. -- Joan Esposito, host, WCPT 820 AM radio, Chicago [The reviews collected here] capture Kamin's memorable watchdog ethos that had architects fuming or trembling every week. * Chicago Reader * What do you get when you put two of Chicago's preeminent architecture critics together? A thought-provoking book about the city's storied architecture. * WTTW, Chicago Tonight * These engaging and thought-provoking essays remind us of the importance of architecture critics in the daily city newspaper realm and what we stand to lose as they-like many others in the shrinking world of thoughtful journalism-are phased out by the corporate gulping down of newspapers. * OnMilwaukee *

No one can match Blair Kamin and Lee Bey's sustained scrutiny and deep understanding of Chicago architecture over the last three decades and beyond. In this book, they succeed splendidly in offering a new collection of Kamin's uniformly excellent, interesting, and important writings. Who Is the City For? is compelling reading for anyone interested not just in Chicago, but in significant trends-both good and bad-in contemporary architecture and city life more broadly. * Carl Smith, author of The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City *

[Who Is the City For?] offers plentiful, incisive, and urbanistic vignettes of Chicago. . . . It will be treasured by urbanophiles and architecture lovers alike. . . . Excellent photographs support the collection. In Kamin's masterful hand, architectural criticism is about far more than design. It is a civic project: a public conversation about politics, the public good, and the promise of urban life. * Booklist * For more than thirty years, Kamin's clearheaded and forceful writing has set the standard for American architectural criticism. With this wide-ranging new collection, he steps into the intersection where design, urbanism, and social justice meet, proving once again that the best architecture writing is about much more than the way buildings look. * Inga Saffron, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Becoming Philadelphia: How an Old American City Made Itself New Again * Kamin's remarkable and eminently readable new collection is fresh evidence that the best architectural criticism is ultimately about people, rather than buildings. * Jerold S. Kayden, author of Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience, Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design * No one can match Blair Kamin and Lee Bey's sustained scrutiny and deep understanding of Chicago architecture over the last three decades and beyond. In this book, they succeed splendidly in offering a new collection of Kamin's uniformly excellent, interesting, and important writings. Who Is the City For? is compelling reading for anyone interested not just in Chicago, but in significant trends-both good and bad-in contemporary architecture and city life more broadly. * Carl Smith, author of The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City * The book features striking black-and-white photographs of structures like 'Cloud Gate' in Millennium Park. . . (It) reveals how much influence a good architecture critic can have on a city to shape opinion and sound the alarm when something is going wrong. -- Mary Wisniewski * Newcity * Who Is the City For? collects 55 stories by former Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin, focusing on the idea of Chicago as a sort of collective trust-or as Kamin explains, 'our common humanity is made manifest in common ground.' Cleverly, the book pairs its columns with photos from Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey. -- Christopher Borelli * Chicago Tribune *

For more than thirty years, Kamin's clearheaded and forceful writing has set the standard for American architectural criticism. With this wide-ranging new collection, he steps into the intersection where design, urbanism, and social justice meet, proving once again that the best architecture writing is about much more than the way buildings look. * Inga Saffron, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Becoming Philadelphia: How an Old American City Made Itself New Again * Kamin's remarkable and eminently readable new collection is fresh evidence that the best architectural criticism is ultimately about people, rather than buildings. * Jerold S. Kayden, author of Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience, Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design * No one can match Blair Kamin and Lee Bey's sustained scrutiny and deep understanding of Chicago architecture over the last three decades and beyond. In this book, they succeed splendidly in offering a new collection of Kamin's uniformly excellent, interesting, and important writings. Who Is the City For? is compelling reading for anyone interested not just in Chicago, but in significant trends-both good and bad-in contemporary architecture and city life more broadly. * Carl Smith, author of The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City *

Author Information

Blair Kamin is the author or editor of several books, including Why Architecture Matters: Lessons from Chicago and Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age, also published by the University of Chicago Press. The Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic for 28 years, Kamin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1999. Lee Bey is an editorial writer and architecture critic for the ChicagoSun-Times and the author of Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side. Previously former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley’s deputy chief of staff for architecture and urban planning, Bey has had photographs published in the New York Times and Architectural Digest.

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