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. Listen to the Unfrozen interview with Kamin, and understand why “city planning is not a game of 2D checkers but of 3D chess.”

Intro/Outro: “Chicago” by Benny Goodman

Discussed:

INVEST South/West

Maurice Cox, Chicago Planning Commissioner

The pandemic’s effect on rapid urbanization

Spread of crime from poor to rich neighborhoods

The city’s not “out of control,” but it is in need of reinvention

Lower Manhattan’s adaptive reuse of older skyscrapers does present a template

Decentralization of the central business district, ex: McDonald’s HQ in the Fulton Market

Prospects for Lincoln Yards and The 78 – shades of Cityfront Center?

The Chicago Spire pit / 400 N Lake Shore Drive replacement project

DuSable Park and the Riverwalk

“We have to think of the city not as a 2D checkers game but a 3D chess game.”

Buffalo Bayou Park extension project, Houston

O’Hare Global Terminal

Chicago River Boathouses

AIA design competition for the next bungalow

Committee on Design

“Plop” architecture

1611 W Division  – look ma, no parking!

Red Line South extension

“There are those who say ‘who gets what’ is a tired trope of architectural criticism – let me vehemently disagree.”

Chicago as a participant in global economic and architectural design exchange

Chicago Architecture Biennial

The City that Works > The City that Plays

Investment of Chinese capital in St. Regis Tower

Cloud Gate

Crown Fountain