Touring Chicago
Today I began a community tour training program, part of the Burnham Centennial. We are working with six Chicago neighborhoods to develop tours about their plans for their communities. Rolf Achilles and Jean Guarino and I are the tour design consultants. Rolf and I did a similar docent training program a decade ago for the I & M Canal National Heritage Corridor. The training involves getting information about Chicago history and architecture but it also involves helping people become good tour guides.
I have been giving tours for over 25 years and people keep asking me to do it, so I guess I know something about it. At the same time, this program is wisely designed to let the community stakeholders make the key decisions about theme and sites to be visited. And the focus is future plans, so our expertise about history and architecture is more of an added bonus rather than the heart of the project, which is about the future. Of course, the future is what preservation is about too.