If we’re able to realize even a tenth of Yo Chicago’s audience and revenue potential, it will spawn imitators around the country. Our innovations will then come to seem commonplace. Many of them will vanish, as we imitate the imitators who find better ways of doing what we’re doing.

A year from now, even I will have forgotten many of the elements in the metropolis of “firsts" that Yo Chicago and its content represent. It’s difficult enough now to track the firsts, and even if it were possible to enumerate them all, there isn’t enough time to do so – or enough value in the effort. If you doubt that, just try describing a new city sewer pipe by sewer pipe, house by house, alley by alley, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Know us first and best by our ambition: we’re out to build a dazzling destination metropolis. It helps to think of the process we’re in as playing SimCity.

I like the SimCity analogy because it picks up some continuing threads in my life. There’s the Master’s in Urban Planning program that I began and didn’t finish, but that left me a lifelong disciple of Jane Jacobs and Saul Alinsky. There’s my son Jordan, who’s been a SimCity addict / adept for more than a dozen years. And, any game I’m in I’m in as much for the serendipity of it, and to pass the time, as for any other payoff that might result.

Think of Yo Chicago as a sim city. Thus far, we’ve passed some enabling ordinances and sketched out a plan to generate high revenues from low taxes. Until other revenues begin, we have a business that pays enough in taxes to pay the bills and provide funds for investment.

We’ve laid out some water and sewer lines, provided a lot of electricity, built some traffic and communications infrastructure, added a few parks, a decent library, some photo galleries, the plot plan for a public square, the foundation of a school …

We have to build wider before we can build higher. As we get further along in our metropolis, we’ll have some twisters, some lightning bolts, possibly even a meteorite impact. We’ll have to learn to cope with pollution – and hopefully with congestion – and will need to call in the fire and police departments on occasion. Some of our vacant lots will never be developed. Some of our buildings will become distressed and need to be demolished. Development will proceed in directions we don’t currently anticipate, and will cost more than we expected.

We have some proven guidelines to follow. We’ll begin to draw some tourists and some curiosity-seeking transients, and convert some of them into temporary or permanent residents before we can attract much commercial development.

We can maintain focus, because our competitors are languishing in their Detroit while we concentrate on building our New York.