Synopses & Reviews
Our traditional image of Chicagoand#8212;as a gritty metropolis carved into ethnically defined enclaves where the game of machine politics overshadows its endsand#8212;is such a powerful shaper of the cityand#8217;s identity that many of its closest observers fail to notice that a new Chicago has emerged over the past two decades. Larry Bennett here tackles some of our more commonly held ideas about the Windy Cityand#8212;inherited from such icons as Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Daniel Burnham, Robert Park, Sara Paretsky, and Mike Roykoand#8212;with the goal of better understanding Chicago as it is now: the third city.
Bennett calls contemporary Chicago the third city to distinguish it from its two predecessors: the first city, a sprawling industrial center whose historical arc ran from the Civil War to the Great Depression; and the second city, the Rustbelt exemplar of the period from around 1950 to 1990. The third city features a dramatically revitalized urban core, a shifting population mix that includes new immigrant streams, and a growing number of middle-class professionals working in new economy sectors. It is also a city utterly transformed by the top-to-bottom reconstruction of public housing developments and the ambitious provision of public works like Millennium Park. It is, according to Bennett, a work in progress spearheaded by Richard M. Daley, a self-consciously innovative mayor whose strategy of neighborhood revitalization and urban renewal is a prototype of city governance for the twenty-first century. The Third City ultimately contends that to understand Chicago under Daleyand#8217;s charge is to understand what metropolitan life across North America may well look like in the coming decades.
Review
“Larry Bennetts ability to convey the essence as well as the particularities—and peculiarities—of twenty-first-century Chicago is truly impressive. That he is also a most engaging writer makes
The Third City not only accessible but pleasurable as well.”
Robert A. Beauregard, Columbia University
Review
and#8220;Larry Bennettand#8217;s
The Third City provides a first-rate account of the ways that the second Mayor Daley has transformed the image of Chicago. Both succinct and wide-ranging, the book strikes an exemplary balance between nuanced observation of the cityand#8217;s political history and deft evaluation of diverse urban development theories that attempt to explain Chicagoand#8217;s trajectory. The result is an engagingly written, ceaselessly questioning, fair-minded tale of urban reinvention. For those wondering how and why Chicago has been able to move past the and#8216;second cityand#8217; Rust Belt decline that has paralyzed so many other former industrial powerhouses, this book is a great place to seek answers.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Chicago is a city that has produced so many grand narratives spun by boosters, writers, planners, and politicians that a historical work, whatever its quality, might easily get lost. That will not happen with this marvelous book. There is a genius to Larry Bennettand#8217;s method. He has sifted through the many interpretations of Chicago to produce his own highly original account of how, over the course of a century, the city has managed to arrive at its latest experiment with a uniquely American brand of urbanism.and#8221;
Review
"Scholars of cities have long recognized the importance of Chicagoand#8212;the and#8216;Americanand#8217; cityand#8212;embodying something of every epoch of U.S. urbanism. In his book
The Third City political scientist Larry Bennett, too, places Chicago in the enduring pantheon of these American urbanism(s). As such, this study takes its place along side the very best on the American city. Just as discussions of Chicago by such luminaries as Mike Royko, Milton Rakove, Arnold Hirsch, and Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor have added indelibly to our understanding of the American city, so too does this contribution by Larry Bennett give us at once a glimpse of the past and, even more important, a fully realized sense of the present and our urban future. In a broad-ranging and highly original treatment of Chicago, Bennett places this city, its past, present and future, very clearly at the forefront of what it takes to understand American cities and the literature concerned with their analysis."
Review
andldquo;Weber gives us a compelling book that cements her reputation as one of the top urban planners in the field of urban political economy. Her sophisticated and nuanced understanding of complex systems like global finance and real estate markets is conveyed easily and accessibly to those both inside and outside of academia. From Boom to Bubble is a major contribution, one that will most certainly be widely read and discussed for years to come.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;A thought-provoking book on modern Chicago.andrdquo;
Review
andquot;Bennett is deep down a Chicagoan and it shows in this book. On the other hand, he is a clear-eyed and objective academic who uses the city not only as the object of his academic affections but also as a lens with which to assess a full range of the urban literature as both tool and critical subject. In short, The Third City is a rich and critical mix of urban study, academic literature, and Chicago experience.andquot;
Review
andquot;
The Third City brings together a lifetime of observation, reading, and discussion about Chicago, theories of urban
life, and the relationship between the two. . . .Bennett should be applauded for advancing our understanding of this great city and for challenging us to move urban theory from the past to the future.andquot;
Review
and#8220;Larry Bennettand#8217;s ability to convey the essence as well as the particularitiesand#8212;and peculiaritiesand#8212;of twenty-first-century Chicago is truly impressive. That he is also a most engaging writer makes
The Third City not only accessible but pleasurable as well.and#8221;
Review
andldquo;Weber offers an innovative and valuable approach, contributing important new insights and understanding to a multidisciplinary audience. From Boom to Bubble will be widely read as it contributes to the long standing and enduring scholarly focus on Chicago as the paradigmatic city and as a timely explication of financialization, the defining moment of the twenty-first century. Weber has an extraordinary depth of knowledge and she writes in an engaging and readable style that explains complex material in an accessible and understandable manner. This book solidifies Weberandrsquo;s position as one of the leading scholars of the urban built environment.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;In her focus on the role of property developers and their interactions with other agents in the construction process, Weber brilliantly shows the determining and indeterminate factors that create real estate booms and busts. A must-read for planners, geographers, urban sociologists, and political scientistsandmdash;and anyone concerned with the forces building and rebuilding cities.andrdquo;
Synopsis
How does a building boom happen? Who inflates a real-estate bubble and why? What causes companies to move from seemingly usable office space into new quarters only blocks away? Rachel Weber digs into these questions and more in her detailed analysis of Chicagoand#8217;s downtown development during the and#147;Millennial Boomand#8221; (1998and#150;2008). Weber shows what happens when the real estate industry, financial markets, and public planning all operate at warp speed to build new structures and destroy older ones. She draws on years of interviews with real estate actors across the country, participant observation in a secretive sector, analyses of financial and development data, as well as the history of the appraisal, brokerage, and real estate finance professions. As a result, Weberand#8217;s book is an unprecedented historical, sociological, and geographic look at how markets and urban change actually happen.
Synopsis
During the Great Recession, the housing bubble took much of the blame for bringing the American economy to its knees, but commercial real estate also experienced its own boom-and-bust in the same time period. In Chicago, for example, law firms and corporate headquarters abandoned their historic downtown office buildings for the millions of brand-new square feet that were built elsewhere in the central business district. What causes construction booms like this, and why do they so often leave a glut of vacant space and economic distress in their wake?
In From Boom to Bubble, Rachel Weber debunks the idea that booms occur only when cities are growing and innovating. Instead, she argues, even in cities experiencing employment and population decline, developers rush to erect new office towers and apartment buildings when they have financial incentives to do so. Focusing on the main causes of overbuilding during the early 2000s, Weber documents the case of Chicagoandrsquo;s andldquo;Millennial Boom,andrdquo; showing that the Loopandrsquo;s expansion was a response to global and local pressures to produce new assets. An influx of cheap cash, made available through the use of complex financial instruments, helped transform what started as a boom grounded in modest occupant demand into a speculative bubble, where pricing and supply had only tenuous connections to the market. Innovative and compelling, From Boom to Bubble is an unprecedented historical, sociological, and geographic look at how property markets change and failandmdash;and how that affects cities.
About the Author
Rachel Weber is professor in the Urban Planning and Policy Department and a faculty fellow in the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Swords into Dow Shares: Governing the Decline of the Military Industrial Complex and coeditor of the Oxford Handbook for Urban Planning. She was appointed to the Tax Increment Financing Reform Task Force by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Why We Overbuild
Part 1 Real Estate Speculations
1 The Rhythm of Urban Redevelopment
2 Fast Money Builds the Speculative City
3 Out with the Old: How Professional Practices Construct the Desire for New Construction
Part 2 Chicago in the 2000s
4 Downtown Chicagoandrsquo;s Millennial Boom
5 Who Overbuilt Chicago?
6 Making the Market for Chicagoandrsquo;s New Skyscrapers
Part 3 Building the Future
7 The Slow Build
Epilogue: Why We Will Continue to Overbuild
Appendix
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index