Chicagood is an online magazine launched by The Chi-Town Project. It is a magazine for social conscious Chicagoans that focuses on social awareness issues and those who step up to make Chicago a better place for tomorrow. We also like to have fun and celebrate what it means to be Chicagoan and what is good in our city. Be Chicagood.
We love saying that we live in the greatest city in the world. The beautiful skylines, innovative monuments and strong-willed spirits that dwell within the city gives us more reason to boast about Chicago’s greatness. However, as we progress into a rapidly changing future, many of our great city’s downfalls become glaringly obvious as we strive to become a world class city. Poverty, corruption, education and gang violence are only few of the many social awareness issues that have surfaced within Chicago’s inner walls.
That’s where The Chi-Town Project steps in. We serve as a platform of fresh ideas, as a series of projects with the ability to ignite passion, discussion and action among Chicagoans for the greater good. Together we can strive for one ultimate goal: guiding Chicago to a better tomorrow. As a curation of social goodness, we celebrate not only the city’s identity but also the achievements that define what makes Chicagood.
Join us as we inspIre. dreAM. aCHIeve.
A grassroots movement based on an honor system of “Take a book, leave a book” is spreading all over the United States and even across oceans. These mini-libraries — most hold 20 to 30 books — offer bookworms a way to share their love of books and bring communities together.
Are you familiar with tiltshift photography? It’s a pretty cool technique that allows the photographer to capture anything and making them appear miniature! WGN has a pretty sweet collection for your enjoyment of Chicago! We love it!
A very special Ford Explorer rolled out of the Chicago assembly line. It’s a Ford made of 380,000 Lego bricks! Its destination is the Legoland in Florida. That’s awesome!
We are proud to announce that we’ve launched a Chicagood website. It gives a lot more information about who we are and what we do. We plan to add to our “portfolio” of doing Good in Chicago. We have lots of great things lined up for the summer and beyond! We’re excited and we hope you are too.
Let us know what you think!
On Good Magazine’s Good Maker, rounding out the Top 3 in March’s challenge is a Chicago start up called Truck Farm. During the Month of March, Good readers nominated local woman who makes a world of difference. Truck Farmer, Shari Brown got the nod and deserving so.
The idea is simple. Shari took a biodiesel pickup truck and planted a mini farm in its bed and then toured Chicago connecting over 2700 kids to good food in 2011. This “Garden on Wheels” is a traveling education tool. Shari’s passion for sharing good food and educating people is very contagious. Through the Truck Farm project she was able to teach and empower young Chicagoans to be active, grow food locally, cook and eat healthy. They like to say that what they do shows that good food can be grown anywhere there’s sun, space, and creativity. And we agree. This project is so simple and creative but will be so valuable and effective to our communities!
This has been around since Christmas of ’11, but DENG is this awesome. A beautiful animation of Luol Deng throwing down some authority. Continue Reading →
Bored? Want to learn about doing your own craftbeer? Want to learn how to code html? What about cooking or painting? Yea we know, it’s something we’d all love to learn someday but signing up for classes is a big commitment, time and can get pretty costly.
What if there was a website where you can find classes in just about anything for a low price of $20 that’s near you. Heck yea, SIGN ME UP!
From red to green, Chicago’s “The Plant” goes from being a meatpacking plant and slaughterhouse in the Union Stock Yards to Chicago’s first self-sustaining “vertical farm”.
The former mass meat producing brick building has been re imagined to become a green space for urban farming without waste!
Visitors to www.chicagood.com will be greeted with a surprise. But dont’ worry our magazine is still up and running at www.chicagood.com/blog.
Yup. Something Good is coming to Chicago. What could it be?
The warm weather is here in Chicago meaning the annual spring cleaning rituals are kicking into full gear. This year why not do some spring cleaning with purpose? There are several ways you can ensure the items you don’t need find homes and be put to good use.
Awhile back we’ve talked about Steve Shanabruch and his awesome The Chicago Neighborhoods project where he will be tackling each and every one of Chicago’s neighborhoods and be giving them a logo.
You can’t applaud Steve without applauding Chris. Chris of StudioChris is also tackling each of Chicago’s neighborhoods but will be doing a poster that represents an iconic landmark of that particular neighborhood. Now that’s Chicagood!
Nike has been known for some bold and daring uniform designs of late. So when the NFL announced that they will be passing the torch from Reebox to Nike as the uniform provider for the NFL, many held their breathes.
Luckily for Chicago, Nike decided to play it safe and make a nod to the classic Bears look. The redesigned uniforms makes subtle changes. The most obvious being the material and numbers moving up much higher onto the shoulders because the sleeves are shorter. It’s nice to see Chicago keeping its history in tact and representing its roots. There won’t be too many doing so as many of the uniforms have gotten bolder and more modern looks.
No alternate uniforms have been announced and who knows what Nike may have up its sleeves.
Google has provided beautiful maps for many of our devices. But they’ve missed out on our favorite NES system. Fear not. Google has worked hard to bring us google maps for the NES system with beautiful 8 bit graphics. Retro is in and Chicago looks great!
Oh, and Happy April Fools Day.
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We love Chicago in all sorts of weather. In the sun, in the cloud, in the rain, in the dark and in the fog.
This past Sunday on March 25th, Craig Shimala captured some beautiful foggy afternoon shots of Chicago. Check it out!
Today is a special day for Chicago and designers. Today would be Mies van der Rohe’s 126th Birthday. Mies van der Rohe is arguably one of the most influential designers for me and many other designers. Pioneer of the modern design style of architecture, Mies left many lasting legacies right here in Chicago where he lived the later part of his life. After escaping his home country of Nazi ruled Germany, he settled in Chicago and would later design several would be landmarks and iconic architectural designs. From his Illinois Institute of Technology architecture program and campus design, to his IBM building in the Loop and to his post office design in the loop, Mies contributed much to Chicago’s cityscape and atmosphere.
Open City is a great civic startup. Periodically they release a new app that aims to bring open gov and open source apps to your hands that make our city work better. A few of their past apps includes:
Vacant Building Finder- an app that locates all vacant buildings in Chicago.
ClearStreets- see where snow plows have been patrolling
Chicago Lobbyist- aims to bring transparency of how government and lobbyists interact
Look at Cook- explore Cook County’s budget from 1993 to 2011 and learn how the money is being spent.
Metra Schedule- a look at how trains and schedules are effected by Metra’s budget cuts
Now they are introducing a new App called Chicago Public School Tiers which simply lets parents know what tier they live in, information they need when applying for one of Chicago’s top selective schools. Selective schools in Chicago are required to reserve the same number of spots for the students from each of the four tiers that the Chicago Public School divides the city up into. Tier 4 areas make more money and have more education. Tier 1 areas make less money have less education. This is a great and simple app that Open City has added to their list of great apps that makes information and our lives better in Chicago.
____________ is Chicagood.
Tell us who deserves to be recognized!
Chicago is a great city and has a lot of great people, ideas and organizations making our city the greatest. We want to celebrate them all and we need your help finding them!
Know of anyone or any ideas that is Chicagood? Is it you? Your friends or coworkers? Let us know. We want to know!
Walgreens, the nation’s largest drug store chain headquarted in Deerfield, IL is piloting a program to hire cognitively and physically disabled employees in its retail stores across the country.
Home to one of the largest and oldest transit systems in the country, the Chicago metropolitan region has long been a national transportation hub, moving 2 million bus and rail riders each day and 2.31 billion tons of freight each year. GO TO 2040, the regional plan of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning(CMAP), is guiding the area toward affordable and innovative ways to increase transit, fleet and freight efficiency, earning the region a place among the top 15 Smarter Cities for transportation.
Chicago was named one of 15 cities for Transporation in the 2011 Smarter Cities, a project launched by National Resource and Defense Council. Chicago was also named a smarter city for Energy in 2010.
Home to the world’s first skyscraper, today Chicago is rising to the forefront in green architecture, boasting more Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified buildings than any other city in the U.S.
Smarter Cities highlights 3 of Chicago’s transportation innovation that has helped it be named the honors of 2011:
Steve Shanabruch is a designer from Chicago. He loves both, so he decided to bring them together into an ambitious but awesome project, called The Chicago Neighborhoods. Steve will be branding every one of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods with a logo. He plans to release one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until he covers them all.
He describes the project as, “One designer’s take on Chicago.” My vision might not match yours, but I hope that we can agree that a neighborhood with a logo is better than a neighborhood without.
“Buy a Shoe, Build a Community.”
If you haven’t heard about the latest and hottest social conscious footwear that’s headquartered right here in Chicago, listen up cause these guys are getting our stamp of approval of being Chicagood!
The votes are in for the White House’s Campus Champions of Change Challenge, a competition for college students addressing social awareness issues, like homelessness, hunger, sustainability concerns, and more.
Voters had until March 3 to choose from 15 final candidates. The top five vote recipients, who will attend a White House event and host an episode of mtvU’s signature program Dean’s List. One of the 5 winners a University of Chicago project, Moneythink.
What do skyscrapers, twinkies and softball have in common? All have their origins in the great city of Chicago. Chicago celebrates 175 years of being incorporated and during those 175 years, Chicago saw a huge share of firsts and innovations that has become a part of American culture and history.
Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun Times celebrates 175 years of inventions and innovations born in Chicago.
Here’s a glance of some notable contributions Chicago made to the world.
This Sunday, March 4th marks Chicago’s 175th year of being incorporated as a city. Chicago is of course much older than that but that doesn’t take away from this significant day. Chicago Sun Times has a comprehensive list of 175 ways to celebrate our great city.