UofI, City Hall mull opening huge research center in Chicago (Champaign: tech jobs, neighborhood)

[Vlajos]

This could be pretty good.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...ter-in-chicago

[chet everett]

The "on paper" potential of these things is always MUCH rosier than the reality.

The Chicago region is already blessed with TWO major DOE sites -- Argonne National Lab is still a premier facility for researchers in a broad array materials science, advanced imagining, pharmaceuticals, computational biology and several fields. Fermi Lab, despite the cessation of some of its former high energy physics experiments remains THE premier facility for accelerator design and actively participants in efforts to commercialize advanced application while furthering the state of particle research, especially those involveing neutrinos.

Past efforts to commercial research effforts at UIC and other state facilities have been dismal. Illinois is not alone in these disappointments -- a former neighbor of mine found equally challenging hurdles at JohnsHopkins -- Jill Tarzian Sorensen | Hopkins commerce chief quits - Baltimore Sun

There is a classic "phase mismatch" between people like Andreesesen and real academic types. Guys like Rahm are not good at bringing either of those types together, he is just a classic arm twisting money guy and his efforts are unlikely to be appreciated by folks with a more nuanced way to get things done...

[xavier xerxes]

I sure cant blame E. Rham for trying though
tech jobs PAY a whole lot more.

United States of Tech | Marketplace.org

Champaign-Urbana Development News - SkyscraperCity

[chet everett]

I don't know that I would use the word "blame" yet, as the City has not really spent too much on these efforts however I certainly believe it is misguided to assume that an unrealistic and overly myopic focus on "high tech" firms and ivory tower researchers will result in any positive employment for the region. Best case scenario it pulls workers from suburban campus to aging low cost commercial in the Loop as the Motorola deal actually saw a net LOSS of jobs for the region...

The fact that the City of Chicago plays the most vile kinds of political games with every aspect of economic development such as denying permits to firms based not on sane zoning principles but on how the free speech rights of business owners align with the "values" of Chicago's narrow minded "liberal orthodoxy" in the Chik-Fil-A situation is a telling peek into the madness of trying to do business in Chicago. The miserable state of the City's many hellaciously awful high schools directly translates into a "work force" that does not just lack high tech skills but also is fraught with a cavalier attitude toward the most basic essentials of acceptable workplace behavior such as showing up sober, unarmed, and ready to respect the directions of one's leaders. Bizarre cuts in transportation and draconian enforcement policies aimed at turning parking and traffic laws into opportunities to capture revenue to feed a corrupt machine are more important than efforts to get workers to jobs efficiently.

When one looks at scenes from developing countries of their HUGE workforce orderly eating meals in massive cafeterias and routinely adapting to demanding levels of precision assembly of a rapidly changing product mix it becomes clear that the gaps between what educated consumers demand of the physical consumer devices they buy and the deficient mass "work force" in urban areas like Chicago shows a gulf that will likely never be closed. It is even less likely that high skills jobs which require demanding education / training will ever be suited to the massively messed up urban underclass population of violence plagued Chicago.

Rahm should take a lesson from Castro and spend some money on passports and travel to simply allow the dregs to find someplace other than Chicago to live, an effort not unlike the relocation fostered by the CHA's shift from managed housing to housing vouchers. Maybe then he can turn the depoplulated fringes of the city into open tracts of raw land and start over...

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by chet everett

When one looks at scenes from developing countries of their HUGE workforce orderly eating meals in massive cafeterias and routinely adapting to demanding levels of precision assembly of a rapidly changing product mix it becomes clear that the gaps between what educated consumers demand of the physical consumer devices they buy and the deficient mass "work force" in urban areas like Chicago shows a gulf that will likely never be closed. It is even less likely that high skills jobs which require demanding education / training will ever be suited to the massively messed up urban underclass population of violence plagued Chicago.

I cannot imagine a more ominous vision of hell than the one described above. developing countries with huge workforces working their butts off for minimal pay in unbearable conditions for......what? more stuff, more junk that is destroying this very finite planet that we are doing a heck of a job of destroying. all that endless work, doing more and more destruction, and paying off less and less in goods from a depleted planet.

what a way to live.

an awful lot of people are connecting the unpredcented damage that Sandy has done to the northeast corridor with a summer of endless heat, drought, fire, fierce storms and all the other things that mother nature is throwing at us.

the wealthy in this nation, that top 5% of a totally dysfunctional society, have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population. This is, by definition, a banana republic. and yet we seem to be asked to blame those at the bottom of the spectrum, the poor (often minorities) for not working like the worker bees of the rising nations of the world, those BRIC countries those low wages in often slave condition. Do we as a society give these folks a proper education, invest in them, elevate them and the lower end of the playing field which they inhabit?

chet and i disagree here completely. i am not in an argument with him. he is entitled to his opinion and me mine. I certainly will not convince him of anything. so it isn't a matter of right or wrong, but how we see things. and for me, chet's words are sad, a sad commentary of who we are and an unrealistic view of where we are in these later stages of predatory, canablistic capitalism. a finite world that no longer can afford our endless supply for endless demand and endless growth (at all cost).

there by the grace of god go I....think of how fortunate the Winnetkas, Lake Forests, Oak Brooks, and Hinsdales out there in not having to deal with Chicago's poverty (poverty through no fault of its own...it's endemic to all big cities).

I suggested on another thread that Chicago should consider a regional form of government. Of course it will never happen and arguably may well be a bad idea. but regional government or not, we are one here in Chicagoland and these problems, the divisons between wealth and prosperity belong to all of us whether we like them or not. demonize Chicago all you want, but we are all one, and all that wealth in those Winnetkas and Lake Forests won't be there without the city which is the core of our region. unless, of course, those towns wish to be more akin to the suburbs of Detroit and pay the price they do for a metropolitan area that does not work.

[chet everett]

First I suugest you get your definations straight. Here is one to start with: Banana republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia -- clearly the US does not depend on exports nor is our government unstable. I suspect you may be trying to suggest instead that we have a Plutocracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


As for the idea that "slave labor" is the alternative to having morons "do deals" to fill cheap office space as a solution to the failures of education I would suggest instead that something that actually results in a high quality broadly skilled workforce makes a whole lot more sense -- The Myth of the Permanent Working Class - US News and World Report

I have no idea how any of this related to nice residential suburbs, as such places largely have no signficant employment other than perhaps a town like Oak Brook that does have a fair number of office workers... The vast majoity of folks that live in nice residential towns could, in this age of high speed internet connectivity and such could work from anywhere.

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by chet everett

First I suugest you get your definations straight. Here is one to start with: Banana republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia -- clearly the US does not depend on exports nor is our government unstable. I suspect you may be trying to suggest instead that we have a Plutocracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


As for the idea that "slave labor" is the alternative to having morons "do deals" to fill cheap office space as a solution to the failures of education I would suggest instead that something that actually results in a high quality broadly skilled workforce makes a whole lot more sense -- The Myth of the Permanent Working Class - US News and World Report

I have no idea how any of this related to nice residential suburbs, as such places largely have no signficant employment other than perhaps a town like Oak Brook that does have a fair number of office workers... The vast majoity of folks that live in nice residential towns could, in this age of high speed internet connectivity and such could work from anywhere.

hey, chet, i have no disagreement with you. i just see the world in a different way. personally i find it sad that people in developing countries put in long hours of labor under horrible conditions to make junk, much of which is incredibly cheap, much of which is poisoning their communities through the toxins they introduce.

that's a world that makes me terribly sad. that doesn't mean you have to agree with me about it or see it the way i do. i know you don't and never will.

i realize that you and i are from completely different planets on the way we see things.

relating to "nice suburbs like Oak Brook": my only point there is that is easy to be an Oak Brook. It is a wealthy community. It doesn't have to deal with the issues of poverty that Chicago (and all big cities) deal with. Chicago has to deal with issues that communities like Oak Brook do not have to face; I'll be damned if I 'm going to be critical of the city when so much is stacked against it. again: my problem, not yours. you don't see things as I do. and we our perspectives are vastly different.

[urbanpln]

STARTUP HUB EMERGES IN CHICAGO
A startup hub emerges in Chicago | Reuters

[It'sAutomatic]

So which historic neighborhood will they demolish to build this? Maybe they'll have enough sense to bulldoze the UIC campus and start from scratch in that neck of the woods. They could probably fit UIC & 5 research centers on that land.

[Alacran]

Englewood