MarySue Barnett

This morning the Chicago Sun-Times published a fairly solid editorial with some interesting thoughts on the task ahead for whomever takes the reigns of the Chicago Department of Transportation after Commissioner Gabe Klein steps down later this month. “Too often in the past the city’s transportation chief has focused more on potholes and snow removal than on a vision of a city in which the streets work for everyone,” the paper states. Actually, Streets and Sanitation handles almost all snowplowing, but the sentiment is spot-on. “Gabe Klein… broke that mold. His replacement should be someone who follows through on Klein’s foresighted initiatives while addressing long-neglected problems.”

In conjunction with this week’s American Planning Association conference, which brought 5,000 urban planners to Chicago, last night the Chicago Architecture Foundation hosted the roundtable “No Small Plans: The Chicago Infrastructure Trust.” Approved by City Council in April 2012, the trust is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to raise capital from private investors for large-scale public works projects that might be too expensive to be paid for by public funds. It has a five-member board of directors appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.