Following Dr. Macek's advice, I am going to attempt the seemingly unthinkable: I am going to make a blogpost that is only 400-something words. The questions posed in this blog prompt appear to be asking us whether or not we feel Chicago's "global city" efforts are worth it or not. While I have visited most of the examples offered in the prompt (Millennium Park, Navy Pier, etc.), I do believe they exist mostly for tourists, and even if it were found that Chicago natives were just as prone to visiting these sites, one needs to consider whether our money is best spent on generating profit when so many other problems plague the city.
I am one of those strange people that believes we should make Chicago a wonderful place to be in for those who have to live here every day rather than some tourist from Helsinki, Tokyo, or Glasgow. To be sure, I recognize the importance of tourism, and I welcome anyone who wishes to visit our fine city, but given the myriad of problems and flaws that are intertwined with the Chicago experience for many of those actually living in it, I believe it would be wise to allocate funding elsewhere.
Millennium Park is a spot in the city that I admit to be fairly interesting, yet I really question whether it was actually worth the millions upon millions of dollars that were spent in the process of its creation. I understand that I am being naive in my saying this, but couldn't the city have invested that money into an initiative that would improve Chicago's public schools or at least something that would be advantageous for Chicagoans? I know the world - or this city, rather - does not work that way, but it is so frustrating to read about the conditions of the city's public schools, with the knowledge that our city spent millions of dollars on a nautical-themed park (yes, I know that is a gross oversimplification, but still) instead.
It probably seems as though I am picking on Millennium Park, but that is only because it is one of the more recent spots that we, as a class, have visited. The reality is, there are many other tourist spots that utilize Chicago funding in an equally wasteful way. With that said, we cannot shut down our tourist economy completely as we are, in many ways, dependent upon it. I just believe something needs to be said of the other problems that Chicago faces. Instead of going on a tangent that triples the length of this post, I will end this blog with this very blunt statement: yes, we need to foster our tourism economy, but we need to find a balance in which those who live here are also receiving an optimal living experience.
I agree that Millennium Park was not the brightest of Chicago's Ideas to bring in revenue. However, from another perspective, the loop for example is another tourist attraction, though we do not perceive it this way. Chicago creates places that will be attractive to wealthy business men, thus in a way becoming a tourist attraction of its own. We simply do not recognize it as such because residents spend a lot of time there, as opposed to areas such as Millennium Park. The fact of the matter is, Chicago is not a place of recreation. It is a face paced environment, so the usage of Millennium Park gets put on hold, and we therefore criticize it's worth.
ReplyDeleteI do have to say, however, that putting that money toward the school systems would have been a much better use. $500 million could have done a number of wonderful things for the school systems.
I think it's a shame that you limited your thoughts to 400 something words, because you had some really interesting thoughts going on with this topic.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you about tourism in Chicago. Chicago is not known very well for these million dollar landmarks, but rather how crappy the school systems are, how corrupt our politics are, how the unemployment rate goes up and the number of jobs available goes down, etc. Had the millions of dollars that Chicago put forth to build a beautiful (but in some ways worthless) area of land been put towards say social programs or the school system, maybe Chicago wouldn't have quite as bad of a reputation. However, I do think I would be less judgmental of tourist areas like Jessica mentioned (such as the loop) that would bring in more jobs and income to the city. Do you think the type of tourist area Chicago chose to go with in Millennium Park impacts how we view all tourist bubbles?