Rethinking Union Station in an Era of High-Speed Rail

I'm also pleased to announce that I'll be on the jury for a design competition hosted in Chicago next month, brought to you by the Chicago Architectural Club. The purpose of the competition is to rethink – and redesign – Chicago's Union Station, updating it for an era of high-speed rail travel in the United States.
Unfortunately, it's a bit late in the game to be announcing this: designs are due by October 15!
But I've uploaded the competition brief to my Flickr page, so check it out – and hopefully it's not too late for some of you to participate.
I'll be meeting with the jury to announce our decision on Sunday, November 9; you can read more about that here.
But if our transportation options change, and high-speed rail does become an infrastructural fact of American life, then how can the design of our cities keep pace? What will Chicago – indeed, what will all metropolitan forms in the American midwest – look like in the year 2020, if high-speed rail becomes a viable option? Will we see future super-cities hot-linked one to another across the plains – or simply well-made train stations plunked into existing cities here and there?
While I'm in Chicago next month I will also be hosting an amazing panel with Jeffrey Inaba, Sam Jacob, and Joseph Grima, easily three of the most interesting people working in architecture today – but I'll be posting more about that soon.