UNFORTUNATELY, WE ELECTED THE WRONG CHICAGOAN:

My Kind of Technocracy (JAMES WARREN, 8/14/10, NY Times)

The old Chicago was largely the handiwork of Mr. Rostenkowski’s political patron, the iconic Mayor Richard J. Daley. Daley’s legacy is largely concrete-filled, including the grimly austere University of Illinois at Chicago, the big expressways, O’Hare International Airport, scores of well-intentioned but now-discarded public housing projects and the Loop’s inspiring skyscrapers.

From his perch on the House Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rostenkowski fed the steel and concrete beast with federal largess. Long past his patron’s death in 1976, he kept the booty coming, via dollars and tax breaks. You can point to the stadium where the White Sox play, a second airport, the mile-long Navy Pier, subways, trains and far more — and find the hand of a truly effective power broker.

Coincidentally, much of the transformation of the city followed Mr. Rostenkowski’s departure from public office after a 1994 criminal indictment and an election defeat. Under his patron’s son, Mayor Richard M. Daley, the city began replacing a dying industrial economy with one built on information. Its exchanges now trade in foreign currencies, insurance risks and other complex uncertainties, not just soybeans, wheat and corn. Not even most Chicagoans understand the vivid symbolism of how the Sears Tower is now the Willis Tower, while the Standard Oil Building, the city’s fourth tallest, is Aon Center. Aon and Willis are the world’s largest and third-largest reinsurers.

THERE remains too much grinding poverty, too much violence and too many pols like Rod R. Blagojevich, the impeached former governor of Illinois. Still, the state has less public corruption than Florida, at least according to the Justice Department. And Saskia Sassen of Columbia University, an expert in the rise of so-called global cities, ranks Chicago as the fifth most important one economically, after New York, London, Tokyo and Singapore.

As someone who has lived here since the late 1970s, I find it pretty easy to see the change. All you have to do is walk through Millennium Park, a 24.5-acre downtown space mixing sculpture, architecture (Renzo Piano, Frank Gehry) and a video-adorned fountain. It’s by far the most democratic space in what remains the most segregated Northern city.

Or take in the remade lakefront, the Lazarus-like downtown (with more high-rises built since 1998 than exist in total in Detroit, St. Louis or Milwaukee), the revival of community through a vast expansion of public libraries.