As Racine has changed, so have its politics. Once, a ritual antagonism for business was a sure vote-getter among Democrats. But Mr. Becker was elected three years ago with a pro-development message, pledging to trim jobs from the public payroll to free resources to attract new residents and businesses.
Racine’s future, Mr. Becker believes, lies in forging stronger links with the regional economy and global markets. Reinvention can be unnerving, he acknowledges, but he says it is his hometown’s best shot at prosperity and progress. “In the past, Racine was a self-contained economy,” he said. “But that is not an option anymore.”
No local economy truly mirrors the nation. But for Racine and its surrounding suburbs, the last few years have been marked by gradually rising prosperity, in step with the national trend. And the recent history of Racine, like that of the nation as a whole, is also the story of how a community comes to grips with the larger forces of globalization and technological change.
Category: Architecture
Pelli’s Minneapolis Public Library
Photo by
Sopheava
Overture Center Architect Cesar Pelli’s Minneapolis Public Library recently opened. Check out the Flickr photo set for a number of perspectives. More on the Library:
The new Central Library features 25 community meeting and study rooms, a state-of-the-art auditorium, an updated children’s library, a center for new Americans, a space especially for teens, and 353,000 square feet of additional access to knowledge-enhancing resources.
With one-of-a-kind architecture, design and resources, the new Central Library is a destination spot for residents, the downtown workforce and visitors interested in experiencing the library’s extensive collection; attending special events, performances and author readings; or simply relaxing with a cup of coffee in a warm, welcoming place.
Well worth checking out as Madison considers a new downtown library (please keep Kenton Peter’s metallic designs away…)
Hauptbahnof Berlin
Germany will next week open Europe’s largest railway hub, a vast glass-and-steel station whose platforms offer panoramic views of the heart of reunited Berlin — from the historic Reichstag parliament building to the modern Federal Chancellery.
The German capital’s 1.9-million-square-foot Hauptbahnhof, or main station, links the north and south of the once-divided city with its east and west for the first time.
$2,489 vs $971 Revenue Per Square Foot
photo by ifoapplestore.
Steve Lohr takes an interesting look at Apple’s retail store initiatives (high end, expensive locations, large open spaces and lots of space to play with the goodies), their inspiration and performance:
“We had to design an experience that was as big as the space,” said Mr. Johnson, 47, who is senior vice president in charge of the stores. “When your product line is the size of a conference table, that is a real risk.”
Taking that risk has paid off handsomely so far. Since it opened its first two stores five years ago today, the Apple chain has become a retailing phenomenon. Necessity and inspiration led Apple to toss out the conventional textbook on computer stores and to ignore the rules of location, design, staffing and services provided.
Revenue for each square foot at Apple stores last year was $2,489, compared with $971 at Best Buy, the big computer and electronics retailer, according to Forrester Research, a market research firm.
This evening, Apple is opening a showcase store in Manhattan that will burnish the company’s reputation for clever design. The entrance to the store, on Fifth Avenue between 58th and 59th Streets, is a glass cube, 32 feet on each side, with a suspended Apple logo inside. Customers walk down a circular staircase — or take a cylindrical glass elevator — to the 10,000-square-foot store below. The store will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week — a first for Apple and an acknowledgment of New York’s status as a round-the-clock city.
The Race to Catalog Sears Homes
Marilyn Raschka spends many of her weekends driving around unfamiliar neighborhoods, knocking on doors and talking her way into strangers’ basements. Once downstairs, she breaks out her flashlight and shines it along exposed beams, hunting for a letter and some numbers that are each no bigger than a thumbprint.
The 61-year-old resident of Hartford, Wis., is part of a small cadre of historians and passionate amateurs on a mission to identify and protect homes made by Sears, Roebuck and Co. About 70,000 to 100,000 of them were sold through Sears catalogs from 1908 to 1940. Distressed that the houses are falling victim to the recent boom in teardowns and renovations, their fans are scouring neighborhoods across the country, snapping pictures and sometimes braving snakes and poison ivy to poke around basements and attics for the telltale stamps that mark the lumber in most of the catalog homes. Because people can be shy about the state of their basements, Ms. Raschka brings along photos of her own messy cellar to persuade them to let her in.
There are some Sears homes around Madison.
Ag Subsidies Revealed
For now, however, these subsidies are here — but who, exactly, gets them?
For that answer, I encourage you to check out the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Subsidy Database. Through many, many FOIA requests, they have produced. an interactive website chock full of interesting facts. For example:
Half of all subsidies go to only 5% of Congressional districts. Four commodities —corn, wheat, rice and cotton— account for 78 percent of all ag subsidies. EWG also has an interesting proposal to reallocate the ag money away from subsidies but towards rural areas where farmers actually generate high value-added goods already.
The New De Young
With its elegant low-slung copper-clad building in a sophisticated garden setting and gravity-defying, twisting tower, the M.H. de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park will achieve every museum’s goal — to educate the public — about art as well as architecture.
Not since Frank Lloyd Wright’s futuristic Marin Civic Center was completed in 1957 has the Bay Area seen a significant new civic structure that does not affect a classical or postmodern pose. For architecturally conservative San Francisco, it’s the equivalent of St. Louis’ 1960s stainless steel arch, a gateway to bigger, more exhilarating ideas in a post-Bilbao Guggenheim age.
Calatrava’s Chicago Skyscraper to be Tallest in U.S.
A proposal to build a new 115-story building by 2009 could give Chicago claim to having the first and second tallest skyscrapers in the country.
The 2,000-foot tower, proposed by Chicago developer Christopher Carley and designed by noted architect Santiago Calatrava, would go up along the city’s lakefront near Navy Pier, northeast of the Loop.
The 110-floor Sears Tower is currently the nation’s tallest building. Carley’s building, minus its spire, would be 1,458 feet high — taller than the Sears Tower by eight feet.
State Architecture Awards
A high-tech Milwaukee high school, a sleek meeting center for local brewery employees, a playful aquatic center near Madison and a sculptor’s studio in Switzerland all won top honors Wednesday for architects practicing in Wisconsin from Wisconsin AIA, a society of the American Institute of Architects.
The awards were among 10 presented at the society’s 51st annual convention, held this year at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in Madison.
“There are moments when a perfect storm happens and you are able to put together a terrific project,” the design awards jury said. “The award-winning projects have been pushed over the edge into extraordinary moments of architecture and design excellence.”
New Local Site: www.urbanmadison.org
This is the Urban Madison web site. It is a home for informations and discussions about preserving the unique urban environment that we have in Madison.
It is for people that live in, work in, shop in, or do just about anything in urban Madison.
Our efforts to Save the Woman’s Building is what brought us together to discuss issues like this. We look forward to your participation in our neighborhoods and discussions.