Economist.com Cities Guide: Chicago Briefing - January 2006

News this month

Voting for Iraq in Chicago

Chicago hosted one of the eight polling stations in America where Iraqi expatriates could vote in their country’s elections, which featured over 7,000 candidates from about 200 parties. Though election day in Iraq was December 15th, polling stations for expats opened two days earlier, in anticipation of a high turnout. About 240,000 eligible Iraqi voters live in America; even those with American citizenship were eligible to vote, provided they retained their Iraqi citizenship. But voter turnout in America was low, estimated at 12%, or less than 29,000 ballots.

Iraqis from all over the mid-west came to vote at Chicago’s polling station, in the traditionally Jewish neighbourhood of Skokie. The sites of other polling stations included Dearborn, Michigan, where the population has the largest share of Arabs of any American city; Nashville, Tennessee; Washington, DC; and Pomona and San Francisco, both in California.

For the love of the game

The renovation of Wrigley Field, home of the perpetually hapless but beloved Chicago Cubs, has been remarkably uncontroversial. No baseball stadium, except perhaps Boston’s Fenway Park, is as mired in tradition as Wrigley Field: in the past, any suggestion of change set off vicious rows among developers, owners and multiple camps of fans. One fight, in 2002, resulted in giant green windscreens at the back of the stadium, added for the sole purpose of blocking the views of obstreperous apartment-owners across the street. Given this history, the current improvement, which seeks to add about 1,790 seats to Wrigley’s famous bleachers, is notable for its lack of rancour.

Developers, seemingly acting out of character, are going out of their way to accommodate the stadium's neighbours: builders have actually removed a section of a metal fence, leaving open a 20-foot hole at street level so that passers-by can peek at the action on the field. So-called “knotholes”—named for the holes in wooden fences in early-20th-century parks—have become a minor trend in modern ballpark design. But the hole may not be a boon for neighbours after all: an architectural consultant for the project says he expects would-be spectators to stake out prime spaces in front of the “knothole” as early as 6am on game days.

Clean water brigade

A coalition of federal, state and local government officials, businessmen and Native American tribal leaders have released a report advocating a $20 billion clean-up effort for the Great Lakes, in the northern American mid-west. The five large lakes provide drinking water for about 30m people and are vital to American and Canadian shipping. With the second largest of the lakes, Michigan, abutting Chicago, Richard Daley, the mayor, hailed the project, saying it would “prevent the need for even larger expenditures in the future”.

The lakes are protected by a confusing morass of about 140 agencies, and, like a broth tended by too many cooks, they are almost spoiled: ridden with invasive species, inhospitable to essential ones and awash with toxicity. The clean-up’s steep price would pay for a major effort spanning 15 years. The plan has garnered much support, but no promise of funding, and with this year's devastating hurricanes, federal money might be hard to come by.

An accident at Midway

Midway Airport’s location in a dense area of southern Chicago became perilous on December 8th, when a Boeing 737 skidded off the runway, crushing a car. Joshua Woods, a six-year-old passenger in the car, was killed and ten others were injured. Conditions that night were snowy and windy; a strong tailwind increased the amount of runway space needed to make a safe landing, but only 82 feet (25 metres) separated the end of the runway in use from the street. Though Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) standards advocate a 1,000-ft safety zone at the end of the runway, only 100 of America’s 400 busiest airports meet that standard.
Midway’s shorter-than-average runways and lack of buffers at the ends of landing strips are now under scrutiny.

The fatal accident was the first involving the 35-year-old Southwest Airlines, and it came 33 years to the day after a far worse crash at Midway, which killed 45 people. Chicago had resisted the FAA’s calls for runway buffers at Midway since 2000, but has invested about $1 billion in upgrading the airport's terminals. Despite the accident, Southwest Airlines officials say they remain committed to expansion plans that could make Midway the carrier’s busiest airport.

Christmas blues

Many are still mourning the last Christmas for Marshall Field's, Chicago’s most famous department store. Although the store’s 113-year-old flagship building, on State Street, won landmark status and will therefore remain virtually unchanged, Field's will become known as Macy’s later this year. Federated Department Stores Inc, which bought Field's in August 2005, claims they will keep the store’s gaudy Christmas decorations, but for Chicagoans, an era has passed: holiday window-gazing at Field's is as much a tradition as, well, Macy’s is for New Yorkers.

The change is part of what some see as an erosion of the city’s character. “Chicago has been chipped away”, lamented Jane Byrne, a former mayor, in December. Though Wrigley Field, the distinctive L and the Sears Tower remain, the city’s steel mills and stockyards have vanished. Another conservationist has berated Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley, for knocking down genuine Victorian buildings and erecting faux-Victorian streetlights.

Catch if you can

January 2006

“I'll Be Home for Christmas”

Until January 8th 2006

Christmas may be over, but there is no escaping the festive spirit at this rather jolly annual exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry decorated in a range of styles. The subsection on “Holidays of Light” provides welcome variety, with exhibitions on Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, Visakha Puja (which celebrates the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and passage into Nirvana), Ramadan and the Swedish holiday of St Lucia's Day. An added perk is the special exhibition on the art of Christopher van Allsburg, a celebrated writer and illustrator of children's books, notably “The Polar Express” and “Jumanji”.

The Museum of Science and Industry, 57th St and Lake Shore Drive. Tel: +1 (773) 684-1414. Entry: $9 (Chicago residents: $8). Open: Mon-Thurs, 9am-4.30pm; Fri-Sat, 9am-5.30pm; Sun, 11am-5.30pm. For more information, visit the museum's website.

More from the Chicago cultural calendar