CHICAGO my new favorite?

Chicago is a great city. It's been freezing, but we've handled well, and we've been seeing so many architectural sites. Although the weather has been less than ideal, the environment of the city has been extremely uplifting. I traveled through the city with two of my friends who are architecture majors. While they seemed to be gearing their interests toward the modern era, I tried to capture and explore as many styles and time periods as possible-THERE WAS SOOO MUCH TO TAKE IN. Chicago is a great place to see architecture, and feels like it's been a progressive city to what it allows to be built here. While Burnham's ideas still shine in this urban giant, modernists like Mies, Kahn, just to name a few, have left their very timely finger prints. There are also a great deal of very contemporary buildings that make me categorize this city as architecturally progressive. They aren't afraid to take on the concepts of the future, while preserving the architecture of the past. Materiality issue isn't an issue here-the more the merrier, the flashier,the tackier, make it old, make it new, it's a big urban boat that everyone is invited to sail on. What would Burnham think about Gehry's Millenium park? Not the City Beautiful he wanted perhaps, which brings me to a discussion my friends and I were having all day. They would say, "Mies this and Mies that" and I would say "Burnham this and Burnham that" Perhaps instead of focusing on 'whose city it really is', the lesson may be in the argument. Time and trends have been good to this city. It's not about what styles and trends, but perhaps that all the style and the trends of the past have graced this city with examples of the best. I look forward to studying more about this city in my Urban Form class, and am truly fixed on some of the issues and architects, and especially Burnham as a designer. I took soooo many pictures and am working on setting up a Flikr account to be able to share them. I will be in Boston on Thursday...I'm gearing up for another overwhelming and mind blowing experience. I CANT WAIT, because I feel like I know the least about Boston in any of the cities I'm going to. More updates to come soon.