David Partridge of Argent took the BCO to Chicago this week for its annual conference – good choice!
Architects are rock stars here, said our Foreign Office consul in his opening address, and its true, Chicago is home to Perkins+Will (my firm), SOM, Hulmut Jahn and many more. There is great building after great building here, and everyone knows who did what.
But it’s not just the architecture, the planning here is superb too. After the great fire in the 20’s Chicago replanned the city using below grade levels and tunnels for all utilities and deliveries. The result is a great place to be. Sitting by a Great Lake as big as a sea with the Chicago River cutting sinuously through it creating picturesque settings, Chicago is instantly appealing.
We kicked off with a private dinner in Frank Sinatra’s rat pack’s favourite restaurant. What’s not to like? And then on Thursday got stuck into the hard graft of learning what’s going on in Chicago. It turns out, like other places, the campuses are dying as the tech kids don’t want to get on the bus. So everyone is coming back to the city. Those that keep campus offices have a city presence too and have to ration staff’s use of it!
Roy March of Eastdil Secured gave a Niagara of statistics which basically said that we are not out of the woods yet. The most striking was that the UK (aka London) gets seven or eight times the inward investment of capital into property than the US does per capita, because of their taxation regulations. This, along with our housing shortage has produced our perfect storm resulting in sky high London housing prices, and its forecast to get worse.
Robert Guest of the Economist and Professor David Blanchflower agreed that our recovery was fragile, that the Tory government is a good thing and that leaving the EU would be an unmitigated disaster for the UK. The EU is built on three legs; the Euro (a bad thing), free movement of labour (good) and free access to the world’s biggest market (great). So the UK has the best of both worlds.
On to the boat tours and more hard work in the restaurants of Windy City.
Lessons so far? Plan well and support great architects.
Jack Pringle, Principal, Pringle Brandon Perkins+Will
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