chicago Civic Media
MAKE CHICAGO SAFE!
Chicago did
AMAZING things in its
INDUSTRIAL AGE
Chicago CAN DO
AMAZING things in its
DIGITAL AGE
SEAL OF INCOMPLETION
THIS SITE OFFICIALLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
But you're welcome to see what's going on.
It changes day by day. Its main pieces
- Chicago SAFE Parts I and II -
are about complete.
See below for the experience.
chicago will
make itself safe only
when it enters the
digital age
in the field of
public safety
we're not there yet.
think about it.
four decades into the digital age
chicago's public safety thinking
is stuck in the industrial age
the city TRies (AND invariably FAILs)
merely to reduce violence WHEN its
only digital-age public safety
option is a citywide commitment to
citywide safety
"BRING THE PUBLIC INTO PUBLIC SAFETY"
the need for this COMMITment
becomes clear when you consider THE
last 100 years OF public safety in chicago
from DIGITAL-AGE (media-based)
PERSPECTIVES on its
Got it? THEn here are some ideas for a
digital-age public safety strategy for chicago,
GROUNDED IN CHICAGO'S PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE:
HE SURE CAN. If we listen to him. Daniel Burnham's celebrated 1909 Plan of Chicago shaped the Chicago we know today. It gave the city its cherished 17-mile public lakefront. And it affirms "GOOD CITIZENSHIP [as] the prime object of good city plan- ning." In the digital age, GOOD CITIZENSHIP is the prime object of good city planning and - as never before - of good PUBLIC SAFETY planning as well.
AT THE CITY CLUB OF CHICAGO
PART I proposes that Chicago replace its ruinously failed, six-decade struggle to merely REDUCE its violence with a media-based, digital-age stra- tegy to make itself SAFE by BRINGING OUT THE BEST in Chicagoans and their leaders. Not the WORST, as Chicago and its media have done ever since the rise of heavily-armed, drug-dealing, youth-victimizing
street gangs in the 1960's.
PART II launches Chicago SAFE with TWO CHAIRS, a three- minute, civic-purposed TV news feature guaranteed to surprise and amaze. It gets Chicagoans and their leaders working toge- ther IN CHICAGO'S MEDIA to make Chicago SAFE. And it launches an era of profitable, safety-generating uses of the mainstream media that set the tone for Chicago's digital-age public communictions system.