By the time he left office on May 11, 2011, Mayor Richard M. Daley (1989-2011) had served six terms and more than 22 years at the helm of City Hall, making him the longest serving mayor in Chicago’s history. This session focuses on Daley’s role in transforming Chicago’s economy and urban culture by building what the authors call “a city of spectacle.” During his years as mayor Daley mobilized the city’s corporate and philanthropic elite behind a vision of transformation that often invoked the city’s collective memory of the 1893 World’s Fair, Daniel Burnham, and the 1909 Plan of Chicago. At the same time, he minimized political opposition by bringing leaders of the African-American and Latino communities into his electoral coalition.
Daley has been harshly criticized in some quarters for building a tourist-oriented economy and infrastructure at the expense of other priorities. These concerns were raised at the same time that a long series of corruption scandals erupted, and as the authors show, Daley left his successor, Rahm Emanuel, with serious issues involving a long-standing pattern of police misbehavior, brutality and corruption, under-funded and uneven schools, inadequate housing opportunities, and intractable budgetary crises. Nevertheless, because Daley helped transform Chicago into a leading global city with an exceptional urban culture, he also left a positive imprint on the city that will endure for decades to come.
Costas Spirou, Georgia College & State University Dennis Judd, University of Illinois at Chicago Dick Simpson, University of Illinois at Chicago Annette Steinacker, Loyola University Chicago Jamie Smith, Indiana University South Bend
