November 15, 2015

Architect has new plan for Chicago police stations

Chicago Tribune - The police station [Jeanne] Gang envisions would be more like a town center than a fortress. A gym, open to the public as well as the police, would rise across the street. Cops, teachers and firefighters would live in nearby housing. Some of the parking lots around the station would be transformed into parks. The idea is to have police rub shoulders with residents, building bonds of trust. Gang calls the idea "Polis Station," a play on the word "polis," which describes an ancient Greek city-state characterized by a tight knit sense of community.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Police" is pronounced "polis" in the Scots-speaking areas of Scotland (as opposed to the Gaelic-speaking ones, where the word is "Poileas", pron. "police"), and the Afrikaans word is "polisie".

"Police" is definitely "Polis" in Sweden, tho.

Her scheme is an excellent one. I hope it's adopted.

Anonymous said...

While this all sounds great, it might be rather difficult to engage the community and get the community to use these amenities, if police brutality and racial profiling continues. Otherwise it looks like the cops are just trying to lure people into places where they will be easier to brutalize. People who have been harmed by the police will need more then parks and gyms to build trust in their local police force.