Air Show

It's Air Show Weekend here in Chicago, which means the US Air Force's Blue Angels are "practicing" overhead for the next few days. "Practicing," of course, translating to "flying so ridiculously low and fast over one of the most densely populated areas in the country that the noise they make sets off car alarms and makes pictures tilt on their wall hangars."

Seriously, who thought this up?

Any thoughts on urban air shows? They're a blast to watch, but really...do they have to practice over the 'hoods for three days? Listening to the roar of the jets flying overhead, I feel a bit on edge...I have to wonder if an event like this has some sort of subtle psychological effect on people.

National Geographic's Maps: Tools for Adventure @ the Museum of Science and Industry

If you typed the word "maps" into Google and then visited the first ten sites on the results page, you might get a good idea of what it feels like to walk through the Museum of Science and Industry's exhibit National Geographic's Maps: Tools for Adventure, which is part of the citywide Festival of Maps. That is to say: a nuanced overview of mapping technology, this is not. While the exhibit is kid-friendly, it tries a bit too hard to go after the attention deficit demographic. Thematically, the "tools for adventure" theme is the loose string that sort of ties things somewhat together, almost. In fact, between this, the City of the Future exhibit earlier this year, and the Christmas Around the World disaster that we'll discuss in a minute, I'm beginning to wonder if, perhaps, this legendary museum is just coasting on its historical reputation these days.

But, before a tangent begins, let's get back to NGM. The exhibit is, in plain terms, an awkward hybrid of a video arcade, a preschool classroom, and a museum installation. There are kiosks set up throughout several rooms, as well as a block table (a kid-friendly trick MS&I tried with City of the Future that still feels misplaced) and a large foam-block pyramid puzzle. Add to that a moon rover used for mapping Mars, a fake stargazing setup, and an airplane cockpit with plenty of buttons and levers, and you have an intellectual seizure that can even make the grown-ups a bit dizzy.

If the organization of the content is less than stellar, it should be noted that there are some interesting items on display. A portion of an old scroll map of the Mississippi River makes an early appearance, as does an early map of Disneyland (which is cooler than it sounds). But the overall effect of the topical schizophrenia is that, unfortunately, individual pieces get lost in the muddle. Even for someone used to clicking through a few hundred articles and websites a day, the wide variety of topics covered here was so overwhelming that it got downright boring halfway through. When the brain is presented with too much information, it shuts down. I shudder to think that this is the way the curators at one of the nation's most prestigious museums think that children should be taught (to be fair, the exhibit was organized by the Children's Museum of Indianapolis and the National Geographic Society, but MS&I agreed to host it).

But the real jaw-dropper of the day was not the FoM exhibit, but something tangentially related. Apparently, it is customary for the MS&I to put together a Christmas Around the World exhibit. I haven't been to the museum to see past iterations, but this year the exhibit involves Christmas trees decorated to represent "customs" from countries around the world. This provides the museum with a fabulous opportunity to combat Americans' infamously low geographic knowledge, which it squanders on an embarrassingly simplified version of global cultures.

To wit: Mexico's tree is decorated with dozens of felt-cutout Mexicans complete with sombreros and ponchos, Ireland's is dripping with kitschy shamrocks and jigging leprechauns, and there is a very purple Native American Christmas tree that's decked out in a gazillion of those hexagonal things you make out of yarn in kindergarten. Japan's and China's trees, meanwhile, are both covered in oragami (but the China tree uses fluorescent paper, so it's totally different), and (tellingly) the United States' tree is wrapped in red, white, and blue crepe paper and cardboard cutouts of the 50 states and the US outlying territories. It's as strange as it sounds. In fact, it's worse in person. The entire exhibit has the icky, sticky feeling that comes from seeing or hearing something that you don't quite want to call racist, but can't help admitting is kind of leaning in a generally gross direction. The museum's website claims that the trees are decorated by Chicago's ethnic groups to represent their cultures. And to that I say: whaaaa? If that's the case with most of these, it makes me kind of sad.

So if you are looking to learn about the world and how it was and is shaped and explored, skip the MS&I and check out the Field Museum instead. Or the Newberry Library. Or, you know...Google Maps.

But, just in case you want to see this stuff for yourself...

IF YOU GO
National Geographic's Maps: Tools for Adventure is on display at the Museum of Science and Industry until January 6, 2008. The museum is open Monday – Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m, and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; the admission fee is $11 for adults, $9.50 for seniors, and $7 for children under 11. There is no student discount. Christmas Around the World also runs through January 6. While you're in the Hyde Park area, check out The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome: The Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, the University of Chicago's contribution to the Festival of Maps.


Links:
National Geographic's Maps: Tools for Adventure (MS&I)

Christmas Around the World (MS&I)

The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome: The Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae (U of C)

Festival of Maps

Conscious Urbanism: Slowing Down Our Cities

I grew up in Suburbia, and my mother once asked me, "Why on earth would you want to move to the city? It's so busy and noisy and crowded." To which I responded: "I love it when you answer your own questions."

Still, there are times when the urban environment can get a little overwhelming. While I love it dearly, I'll be the first to admit that the nature of a dense environment can be -- and is -- exploited on many levels. Take, for example, advertising. The high concentration of people in high-density city neighborhoods provides advertisers with a sizable market for visual ads. High-traffic transit lines and highways provide the same kind of mass viewership. Think, for a minute, about how many billboards you pass on your walk, ride, or drive to work each morning. Try actually counting them tomorrow.

This visual noise has been attracting a lot of attention lately, it seems. Beijing's mayor, for example, is speaking out against proliferating ads for high-end luxury goods in the growing Chinese capital. Meanwhile, on the literal opposite side of the globe, Sao Paolo made headlines by enacting an ordinance that forced the removal of all of the city's outdoor advertising. The massive billboards that once formed the city's urban landscape -- even served as its landmarks -- have fallen like scales from the city's eyes, to paraphrase one NPR commentator's description. Now, apparently, the city has been exposed to some of its more unsavory elements; the 'boards dispensed with, impoverished favelas have been exposed along high-traffic routes. (And you'll have to forgive me this indulgence, but knowing the very vertical nature of Sao Paolo, I keep picturing stacked slums sandwiched between office towers. It's a bit fantastical, and neither here nor there, but I wanted to share nonetheless.) According to one reporter from the city, it's like walking through an entirely new city.

The fight against excessive urban ad-age is taking place Stateside as well. Los Angeles' famously commercialized cityscape is littered with illegal ads that were recently legalized due to some shady political maneuverings. Meanwhile many of New York's rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods are seeing their historic charm "draped like a giant burrito in enormous vinyl signs" in the words of Kevin Fry, the president of Scenic America.

This brings us to the issue of visual noise, a highly potent but often overlooked piece of the overstimulation experienced in cities. Many of us take the sinage around us for granted; in a hypercommercial society, it's hard not to. But the effect of all of this sinage is a decreased capacity for independent thought. We are constantly bombarded by images of things that we should want, near-subliminal messages (thanks to the aforementioned taking-for-granted) that hold us in a state of distraction. The mayor of Beijing's argument illustrates the deeper problem associated with this phenomenon: increased advertising, especially for high-end goods and services, increases tensions between social classes, the haves and the have-nots.

Vinicius Galvao, the aforementioned Paulistano reporter, describes the current situation in his city thusly: "It's amazing, because people on the streets are strongly supporting that. The owner of the buildings, even if they have to renovate a building, they're strongly supporting that. It's a massive campaign to improve the city. The advertisers, they complain, but they’re agreeing with the ban." And while it's impossible to say for sure without being there, his description makes it sound like the urban pulse of the city has been calmed somewhat. Perhaps, even, slowed.

Part of the fear of density in people comes from a fear of intensity. Cities are busy, noisy, crowded places. And while some people will always thrive on that, modern cities are large enough to provide a wide variety of different environments. Density, however, is an extremely important part of creating sustainable, high-quality urban environments. Thus, it is inspiring to see support growing for "humane density." Neither Too Slow Nor Too Smart, a paper by Richard Bender and John Parman, calls for a sensible, regional approach to population density. Another quote for you: "[We need to] fall in love again with a region that, for many of us, captured our hearts when we first set eyes on it, tasted its delicious food, savored its wine, walked its captivating streets. We know what it is and what it can be. Something this beautiful demands our indulgence, our generosity, and our commitment. We know how to treat it well, and yet we have so often failed to do so. Time to change."

While these words were written about the SF Bay Area, they can easily be applied (perhaps with a few alterations) to most major cities in the world. People choose to move to cities for many reasons, but they generally have the same reason for staying (given the option to leave): they fall in love with the place. And while there will always be a high concentration of activity in urban centers, cities extend far beyond their cores. Residential neighborhoods could benefit greatly from a general calming; be it through the removal of visual clutter, or just more careful planning. There is no reason that density cannot be calm and enjoyable; we just have to slow it down.

(Photo from Flickr user H111.)


Links:
Beijing mayor blasts billboards promoting luxury (Breitbart.com)

Clearing the Air (NPR)

Billboards vs. A 'Greener' America (Washington Post Writers Group)

City of Panic (Occupied London)

Neither Too Slow Nor Too Smart