This short book is a family farm history. It's about my cousin Alvin and his family who've worked their farm at Island Grove for four generations. Alvin, now retired, farmed for 60 years and he'll be the last of the family to work the farm. He tells me how he and his father, and grandfather, and great grandfather worked the land across many seasons. It's a good story of family, faith and nature. Please read the book !
Planning Chicago by Jon DeVries and Brad Hunt, calls for a return to big ideas in a city once famous for bold planning. The authors decry the lack of vision and failure to implement that has beset Chicago planning in recent decades. And they show the maleffects of this failure. While Toronto and other global cities take on impressive infrastructure, housing and education programs, our town struggles to come up with cash just to maintain the status quo. My review in New City is called Bring Back the Big Picture. You may read the review...
I am coauthor with Joe Schwieterman of Beyond Burnham, An Illustrated History of Planning for the Chicago Region (Lake Forest College Press, 2009). I began writing the book in late 2004 while on a US State Dept. fellowship in Sâo Paulo, Brazil. It was there, during the fall of '04 (actually spring in Sâo Paulo), that I finally found leisure to begin a book. I was filled with frustration from five years of toil on a regional plan for Chicago that still was unfinished. But, in Sâo Paulo, I was far enough away from all that to reflect...