My city's islands

I counted 20 burned out and/or boarded up windows in just one of the Robert Taylor highrise buildings once. What happened to those 20 families? The Metra train that runs from Joliet to Chicago's LaSalle Street Station rolls just outside of the public housing's property. I used to sit on that train often, peering out and into what really was your classic textbook big city ghetto. I never saw kids playing basketball on the abandoned courts. Gutted conversion vans and other disposable automobiles sat on blocks rusting out. What were those steel cage-looking vertical stripes that ran up and down the buildings? Elevator shafts, stairwells? When the hotplate sparked and the flames licked up the walls did they climb down through those cages? Or maybe they moved to another wing of the building where the smoke wasn't' so thick.

Thank you dynamite. Thank you cranes with attached wrecking balls. Thanks to bulldozers and trucks large enough to carry all of the rubble off. Pave over the shambles, plant trees, I don't care. Build overpriced condos and butcher shops. Absolutely anything has to be better to look at and to live in than those horrible buildings. Quality of life for Chicago's less fortunate can go nowhere but up from here.



CNN's report