Overcoming Olympic Geography

You’ve got to feel for Chicago.  First they lose a prominent model citizen when he decided to move to Washington D.C.  Then, in trying to make things right, he bungles the bid to get the Olympics.  Pruned: (Chicago 2018, or: A Proposal for the First Wholly Urban Winter Olympics) however, sees the whole thing as an opportunity to start thinking about revisioning the winter Olympics as an urban, flat-land event. In short, they propose using the winters with which Chicago has been gifted and building the necessary terrain.

Almost everything is going for Chicago. Its infrastructure is less than perfect for the huge Summer Olympics crowds, but would be more than able to handle the modest attendance at a Winter Olympics and would definitely be unmatched by the usual winter bid cities and their smaller scale public transportation systems. Its gargantuan hotel industry would easily surpass capacity requirements.

For the alpine events, they propose an Olmsteadian Monstrosity, which brings us to the map of the week.

You can't have the luge without topography.

“It’s an Olmstedian park writ large, and it’s going be sited in the heavy industrial Lake Calumet sector of the South Side. Unless the Lakefront is larger, this will be Chicago’s largest public open space, something which this part of the city sorely needs. Moreover, it will provide the opportunity to finally clean up this Superfund site.”