Chicago slum links part 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Lawndale,_Chicago

http://www.nlcn.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=12&Itemid=132

http://www.lawndale.org/about_nhist.html

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/901.html

http://tigger.uic.edu/depts/ahaa/imagebase/ca/nl/index.html

http://www.timeout.com/chicago/articles/art-design/17791/learning-from-north-lawndale

I haven't read through everything properly yet, just things that looked interesting. I plan on printing it tomorrow at a break or lunch or..

Chicago slum links

...Mostly historical things. Kind of difficult to find something of our specific interest. But the search goes on.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/poverty/origin1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_African_Americans_in_Chicago

More Italo Calvino

One way to get accepted to KTH school of architecture in Stockholm is to do a creative test of three parts.
This text by Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities) was part of one of the assignments in the first part of the test.
It's been haunting me ever since. Especially during the past 3 weeks. Funny that Stephan used it in his motivation letter.
Cities & The Sky 3

Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask "Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?" the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long bruses up and down, as they answer "So that it's destruction cannot begin." And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, "Not only the city."

If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone puts his eye to a crack in a fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams. "What meaning does your construction have?" he asks. "What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?"

Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.