1/18/2013

CEOs For Cities


BannerIn this Issue: New Years Resolutions: The City Edition • Call for Abstracts: Delft Conference on Using ICT, Social Media and Mobile Technologies to Foster Self-Organisation in Urban and Neighbourhood Governance • Strategies for City Success Webinar: Municipal Leadership for Local Postsecondary Completion Initiatives • Learning and Planning for the Future: The Talent Dividend •Winner Announced!
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New Year Resolutions: The City Edition 


Photo via Sean MacEntee
If your city had a voice, what would it choose as its New Years Resolution?  As we make our way steadily into 2013, we encourage you to explore new ideas for making your city succeed.  We've compiled a few, but would love to hear others on our Facebook or Twitter pages.
  • Share more ideas: Pecha Kucha nights have popped up in hundreds of cities around the world.  At these events, local speakers give six-minute-fourty-second presentations about a topic of their choice.  It could be about their work as a National Geographic photographer to their process of creating thousands of paper cranes.  What a better way to know about the talent in your city than to hear about it from the source?  Find out if your city has any upcoming events here. 
  • Think outside the bench: Bringing life to public spaces may take more than a bench or a tree.  In 2008, Rebar Group in San Francisco came up with Bushwaffle: modular, inflatable street furniture for creative and comfortable use.  Whether or not these inflatables are a fit for your city, the stories behind them will inspire creative thinking.
  • Follow the people: In many cities, getting people to use public transit is an uphill battle.  But what if public transportation offered the same convenience of using your car, but with less traffic and no stopping.  Magic!  This article in The Atlantic Cities talks about the potential of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT).  Heathrow Airport in the U.K. has installed a PRT system, and while it would be unreasonable to install a similar system in a large city, it has great potential in small or medium-sized communities around the world.

Call for Abstracts: Delft Conference on Using ICT, Social Media and Mobile Technologies to Foster Self-Organisation in Urban and Neighbourhood Governance

Lee Fisher, the President and CEO of CEOs for Cities, will be speaking about Change By Us this May at a conference in the Netherlands.  In addition to showcasing the work of three other keynotes, the conference organizers are looking for paper abstracts from people working to use technology to better connect people within an urban environment.  Find more information about the conference here, and if you would like to submit an abstract, click here.  The deadline for submission is January 29, 2013.

Strategies for City Success Webinar: Municipal Leadership for Local Postsecondary Completion Initiatives


Hosted by the National League of Cities
February 1, 2013, 2:30pm ET
Assessing starting points and gauging progress regarding postsecondary completion goals entails sharing data. School districts, community colleges, and four-year institutions, and city planning departments charged with digesting census data all bring key data to the table. Sources such as the National Student Clearinghouse, to which districts and colleges may belong, also play important roles. Representatives of Dayton, Ohio and one other CLIP site will describe how they’ve successfully shared data and reflect on data sharing lessons learned.
Register for the Webinar

Learning and Planning for the Future: The Talent Dividend

If you've been following #talentdividend on Twitter, you know that every day more and more people become convinced of the economic value of higher education. So as more people wake up to the potential of the Talent Dividend, what's next for the project and the competition in 2013? What have we learned so far about what works? And what are the most exciting experiments happening around the country? Mark your calendars and join us for a live chat on the Civic Commons with Talent Dividend National Director Noel Harmon on January 29th from 2-3pm EST, moderated by Dan Moulthrop of The Civic Commons. Visit the Talent Dividend Network for more information. Login instructions will be posted soon!

Winner Announced! 

Congrats to Twitter User @TweetinTams for winning last week's competition, seeking out great #CityIdeas from around the globe:

As promised, a copy of our City Vitals 2.0 Report will be given to the winner. The rest of the entries will be included in a collection of great ideas, which will be coming soon! We'd like to thank everyone who sent an idea, and hope you all look out for additional contests and opportunities to win prizes in the near future! 
CEOs for Cities
Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago, 1155 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637 - 773.795.1409





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McCormick Place Destroyed by Fire 1967



Posts taken from my cityplanningnnews.com blog



The scope of the disaster was hard to fathom. Tribune reporters and photographers who raced to the scene that bitterly cold January night in 1967 sent word that McCormick Place was ablaze, engulfed in flames, raging — destroyed. Back at Tribune Tower, the night editor said, "It can't be."

But it was. The gleaming white convention center, which had opened in November 1960 and was the centerpiece of the city's dominant trade show business, was gone.

The building that was supposed to be fireproof and "outlast Rome's glories" was consumed frighteningly fast. Smoke was reported by janitors at 2:05 a.m. on Jan. 16. By 2:30 a.m., when Fire Commissioner Robert Quinn arrived, he upgraded it to a five-alarm fire. Eighteen minutes later, he ordered the first special alarm.

One person died in the fire, a 31-year-old security guard named Kenneth Goodman, whose burned body was found in the rubble.
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Some bad decisions, clearly. 
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Dialogue below  from Facebook Page Growing up in Chicago

https://www.facebook.com/325488420983547/photos/pb.325488420983547.-2207520000.1453134566./489465334585854/?type=3&theater

Tim DiMasi Sr. I was working there the night of the fire. There was a security guard who was touted as a hero for leading several of us to safety. In reality he lead us to a bank of doors that were chained/locked. Fortunately we we able to break down the doors. I vividly recall seeing the flames crawling up the wall in the NW corner of the 42 level. No more that 45 minutes later it was apparent the building was gone. Housewares Show was going to open the next day. The 20 and 7 levels were looted
LikeReply16January 15 
Troy M. Paul Damn!
LikeReply1January 15
Katherine Morrison Wow! What a story.
LikeReplyJanuary 16
James Green Tim DiMasi, wouldn't that be a violation of fire safety code? Why did they have exit doors chained and kocked? It doesn't make sense.
LikeReplyJanuary 16
Route Sixtysixer It is against municipal fire code to bar the doors. But as to the reason, as stated, levels were looted.
LikeReplyJanuary 16
Tim DiMasi Sr. Ya know, until just now that never crossed my mind. As you entered McCormick Place (42 level) out front near the bus turnaround you could enter the exhibit floor to the left (north) or right (south) through "crash" doors. We were lead to the latter. It were those that were chained. Fortunately there were enough of us to push through.
LikeReplyJanuary 16
Tim DiMasi Sr. W/regard to the looting it was primarily from the 20 and 7 levels. Everything on the main (42 level) was destroyed. Damage on the lower levels was mostly from water and smoke.
LikeReply1January 16 
Evelyn Hampton A friend was a security guard at McCormick Place for the Auto Show and had a picture taken while guarding James Bond's 007 Aston Martin car. This was before the fire. He had the day off and was not at work when the place burned down. I understand the only fire fatality was a security guard.
LikeReply19 hrsEdited
Craig Harlan Hullinger

Write a reply...

Zenobia L Silas-Carson I will try to make this short because I am a long winded Chicago girl in Minnesota where no one cares about my Chicago stories. My mother went back to college when I was a teen and got her Associate of Arts degree in the Arie Crown theater at McCormick Place...the original one. I forgot all about this fire until just now. Made me recall how proud I was of my mother on the night as she crossed the stage.
LikeReply13January 16 at 12:52am

Mary Rickard Luque I remember this so well! My Dad took me down to the McCormick Place --seemed like the day after the fire-- and I vividly remember standing with him, just outside a door, looking inside at the destroyed building.
LikeReplyJanuary 16 at 9:16pm
George Pasztelan I remember they didn't install fire protection.their reasoning was that the building was fire proof,unfortunately the things that they put inside,were not.
LikeReply2January 16 at 8:05am

Mary Patricia Mahieu Moebius remember going to HS first period...teacher a current events buff...everybody talking like crazy about the fire...only the teacher didn't know what had happened...so everybody got an A that class because we knew our current event and she didn't...only ...See More
LikeReply1January 16 at 11:21am
Rob Rife Just another story in a long history of Democrat corruption that started in the Daley era- fire inspectors paid off disaster occurs