Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers......

As of this past Tuesday, it's official that LA will compete with Chicago for the US Olympic bid. We love LA and we only bring this list in hopes of getting things in motion. To have the 2016 Summer Olympics here and be host for the third time -- that triumphant return would be a dream come true. But there's a city on the third coast that has never had it and wants it......

10) While LA's Silversun Pickups can't seem to shed the Smashing Pumpkins comparisons despite releasing a record -- "Carnavas" -– that tops anything Billy Corgan's done since Siamese Dream, the only think rockin' in Chicago these days is the back seat of R. Kelly's stretch Benz. 9) Ex-Illinois Governor George Ryan may be headed to jail for his activities as a corrupt, crony-lovin' highway-to-nowhere-building Republican, but he at least had the foresight to impose......

Although networks of institutions help comprise cities, they cannot survive on conventional institutional arrangements alone. In a vast place like Los Angeles it takes all sorts of institutions within institutions and folks within them to generate new ideas, alternatives, and potential solutions for the innumerable challenges we face. The existence of the Norman Lear Center is a result of “the industry,” (thank you, "All in the Family"!), yet it deals with the very real......