The new food-tech city : adapting Chicago's post-stockyard urbanism

This thesis examines the latent potential of Chicago's former Union Stock Yard, which consequentially draws attention to the polarities of industrial food production. The Union Stock Yard was once symbolic of an era where urban progress was equated with efficiency and growth. Today, the site is facing an identity crisis: it is characterized predominantly by underutilized warehousing, however, innovative closed-loop food producers (such as The Plant and the Iron Street Farm) are indicative of an emerging narrative that focuses on sustainability, health, and taste. This thesis offers a design proposal for a new food technologies cluster that includes multifunctional programmatic components for: research, production, and marketing (as well as new residential communities.) The goal is to formulate a design solution that selectively packages existing elements (river, warehouses, workforce) with new buildings, infrastructure, and public spaces - to build a flexible urban network that will reconnect to the larger square-mile Chicago grid. To do so the study draws upon original analytical studies and numerous precedents that convert decommissioned industrial land. The design product will provide reflection upon the past as it presents a scenario for the future.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Burnham, Justin (Justin Paul)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael Dennis.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72810

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/72810