The Chicago architecture film UrbanLab has won the History Channel's City of the Future contest. UrbanLab's plan calls for transforming Chicago into a green city that recirculates all of its water into a "closed loop," pun not intended. By 2106 the city will be a sort of high-tech swamp, which is pretty much how the city began. The main elements of the plan are "Eco-Boulevards," which are not really boulevards--how city planners love boulevards!--but rather canals full of snails and eco-friendly fish in place of those noxious carp-like creatures that currently live in the Chicago River. The Eco-Boulevards will connect Lake Michigan to an "Emerald Necklace," which sounds much lovelier than what we have there now: the Tri-State Tollway. There's also a plan to re-reverse the flow of the Chicago River so that it flows back into Lake Michigan, as the river originally did, so that the Lake Michigan's water will be replenished. (I haven't noticed any drop in the lake's water level recently, but I guess it's a good idea just in case.) Trains will be rerouted to the bowels of the earth, i.e., the Deep Tunnel, a system of tunnels deep beneath the city serving some obscure but no doubt crucial purpose. And where will the cars go? This is 2106, so don't even ask about cars.
Overall, this sounds like a great plan. Ecologically-responsible urban planning has been a tenet of the field for a hundred years, and will become even more important over the next one hundred years. UrbanLab's plan will ensure the metropolitan area has plenty of fresh water in the coming global water shortage, but I don't see any provisions for doing something about the mosquitoes that are sure to thrive in the Eco-Boulevards. Maybe by 2106 mosquitoes will be banished from the earth along with cars.
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