Author: Tom Silva

With the U.S. unemployment rate rising to 9.8 percent in November,  the Department of Labor is concerned that economic recovery isn’t progressing as quickly as it would prefer.  For the 19th consecutive month, unemployment has stayed above nine percent — the longest streak on record, beating out previous highs in the 1980s.   Despite optimistic predictions […]

The last residents of Cabrini Green have left the infamous Chicago Housing Authority residential project, long a symbol of the failure of public housing in American cities.   Since the Chicago Housing Authority unveiled its “Plan for Transformation” in 2000, more than 1,700 families have been relocated from Cabrini Green to other housing.  Approximately 50 percent […]

The annual ritual of heading to the local Christmas tree lot or cut-it-down-yourself farm is giving way to the age of the internet and online buying.   Even Rick Dungey, a spokesman for the National Christmas Tree Association, has joined the trend, saying “I point and click and it shows up on my front door.  For […]

The Pontiac – renowned for its muscle cars in the 1960s and 1970s – recently ended its 84-year run when General Motors (GM) pulled the plug on the once-iconic brand.  Pontiacs – which peaked at nearly one million sales a year in 1968 – came to an end due to a combination of bad corporate […]

One of the biggest albums of the year is “The Suburbs” by the Canadian group, Arcade Fire, which exposes the dark side of urban sprawl.  The band, fronted by the husband and wife duo of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne have created a concept album as emblematic of our generation as The Wall was for […]

Celebrity architect Helmut Jahn has created a vision for redeveloping Chicago’s Navy Pier, which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2016.  Writing in the Chicago Tribune about Jahn’s plan, architecture critic Blair Kamin says “Yes, it’s over the top and, in all likelihood, ridiculously expensive.  But it’s full of creative sparks — precisely what was missing […]

Noted Chicago architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s famous maxim “Less is more” should apply to ambitious plans for revamping Chicago’s Navy Pier, the city’s top tourist destination.  Writing in the Chicago Tribune, architectural critic Blair Kamin says “The good news about the latest vision for the pier is that it discards the excesses of […]

That eye-catching new building in Miami Beach is not an avant garde hotel but a unique twist on the utilitarian parking garage, with retail on the first floor. Officially known as 1111 Lincoln Road, the garage designed by the Swiss architectural firm of Herzog & de Meuron has seven exposed concrete slabs supported – at […]

At age 75, mega-billionaire and Chairman of Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., Warren Biffett has likely selected the person who will succeed him when he eventually retires.  The chosen one – who will head a holding company that owns such diverse businesses as Geico and Dairy Queen — is said to be 39-year-old Todd Combs, currently […]

A small, weathered, blue-gray house in Denmark, ME, set off a national uproar about the foreclosure crisis when its owner, Nicolle Bradbury, lost her job and stopped paying her mortgage two years ago.  The family, which includes Bradbury’s disabled husband and two children, lives on food stamps and welfare. When the bank started to foreclose […]