Looking back on nearly thirty years of architecture criticism at the Chicago Tribune , I realize that I have borne witness to a dramatic transformation of Chicago, from a declining industrial colossus to a dynamic yet deeply troubled postindustrial powerhouse, whose favored emblem is a jellybean-shaped sculpture of highly polished steel. The mirrorlike surface of that sculpture, officially titled Cloud Gate but widely known as "the Bean," reflects the striking skyline of the city''s ever-growing downtown, now home to $10 million condominiums, Michelin-starred restaurants, and an elegant promenade that rims the once badly polluted Chicago River. But the Bean does not reflect the reality of a very different Chicago. That Chicago, though not without distinguished buildings and untapped economic potential, is also a place of weed-strewn vacant lots, empty storefronts, and unceasing gun violence. Indeed, Cloud Gate may be the ultimate shiny, distracting object. While the 2020 census revealed that Chicago''s population grew by nearly 2 percent during the previous decade, to 2.7 million, the dramatic disconnect between the two Chicagos prompts the question: Is this a good city, a just city? Absolutely not. Which prompts a second query: Can those responsible for building the city advance the fortunes of neighborhoods devastated by decades of discrimination, disinvestment, and deindustrialization? On that crucial matter, the jury is still out.

This book, my third collection of Tribune columns published by the University of Chicago Press, is loosely framed around a central issue of our time: equity. What can architecture, traditionally the province of the rich and powerful, do to make cities like Chicago more equitable, serving poor, working-, and middle-class people, not just the 1 percent? A related question can be asked of the fields of transportation and urban planning, which in the wrong hands have led to such notorious projects as freeways that divide Black neighborhoods from white ones or sever one part of an impoverished neighborhood from another. The question applies, too, to the field of historic preservation. Whose history gets remembered and whose history is erased, either by bulldozers or by willful ignorance? In short, who is the city for? Let me start by clarifying that I take equity to mean fairness or justice in the way people are treated rather than the term''s economic meanings--a share of stock or the value of a piece of property after debts are subtracted. This emphasis on fairness has significant implications for architecture and the built environment. One side of town shouldn''t have bigger, more amenity-packed parks than the other just because it''s inhabited by the wealthy. If anything, the poor parts of a city should have the prime parks, because their residents live in far worse conditions than the rich. That was among the essential points of my 1998 series of articles examining the problems and promise of Chicago''s greatest public space, its nearly thirty miles of beaches, harbors, and parkland along Lake Michigan.

The series, "Reinventing the Lakefront," documented a shameful disparity in acreage, access, and amenities between shoreline parks bordered by mostly white, affluent neighborhoods on the city''s North Side and those lined by largely Black, poor neighborhoods on the South Side. Since then, city agencies and the Chicago Park District have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the south lakefront, including architecturally ambitious pedestrian bridges and a harbor and marina that welcome parkgoers as well as boats. But any discussion of equity, I argue, should not be limited to apportioning resources fairly or controlling soaring rents. A wiser alternative, in my view, is to expand and enrich the social meaning of "equity" by borrowing from its economic counterpart, so that, when we use the word, we''re talking about the physical environment that we share . Shared spaces encompass all aspects of the public realm, from sidewalks and streets to transit stations, to public libraries and public housing. Private buildings, be they skyscrapers, flagship stores, or museums, do just as much as, if not more than, public ones to shape the public realm. At best, the public realm can serve as an equalizing force, a democratizing force. It can spread life''s pleasures and confer dignity, irrespective of a person''s race, income, creed, or gender.

Shared space suggests shared destiny. Or, to put matters in terms of hard-nosed self-interest rather than empathetic generosity, the recognition that cities are shared ventures--and that the fate of one section of the city is inseparable from another--represents a far more viable long-term strategy than its opposite: containment of the poor, whether in ghettos, public-housing projects, or dysfunctional neighborhoods. The shootings and thefts that have spread from Chicago''s South and West Sides to the downtown and affluent North Side neighborhoods like Lincoln Park make clear the costs of failing to address the root causes of long-festering problems associated with high concentrations of poverty. Gun violence isn''t simply a policing issue. It''s an issue that must be addressed by the community, the polis, to use the term the ancient Greeks used to describe their city-states. Which is to say that rebuilding struggling areas of the South and West Sides is as essential, in the long run, to controlling crime as more effective law enforcement or stricter gun control. No neighborhood is an island, as the shattered glass of North Michigan Avenue storefronts hit by smash-and-grab thieves reveals. To be sure, the notion that Americans can share anything may seem incredibly naive in light of the nation''s deep political and cultural divides, or the way metropolitan areas like Chicago are fractured by chasms of race and class.

Indeed, as the columns collected here reveal, the on-the-ground reality in Chicago often falls painfully short of my ideal of urban equity. But the columns also show the power of architecture and urban design to aid the prospects of both communities and individuals. Revered as the birthplace of modern architecture and for its singular role in the development of modern city planning, Chicago presents a still-relevant stage for analyzing the human impact of the urban drama. Its litany of influential projects spans centuries and has shaped design throughout the world, from the pathbreaking skyscrapers of the 1880s to the triumphant, albeit belated, 2004 opening of Millennium Park. The city''s architecture and urban-design pratfalls, like the demolished public-housing highrises of the Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green, are as notorious as its exemplary buildings are glorious. As I wrote in my first collection, quoting the urban historian Perry Duis, Chicago is "the great American exaggeration," expressing at larger scale--and often in excruciating contrast--design trends evident in smaller cities. It gives us the best of the best and the worst of the worst of American urban life, a role it has reprised of late--heroically, with bold new skyscrapers like Jeanne Gang''s St. Regis Chicago tower, the world''s tallest building designed by a woman, and, tragically, with more than eight hundred homicides in 2021, its highest total in decades.

By comparison, New York and Los Angeles, the nation''s two largest cities, had a combined total of about 980 killings in the same year.