Chicago, the host city for August’s TRSA Joint Committee/Annual Meeting, didn’t earn the title “hog butcher to the world” by accident. 
 
The area of the city’s south side known as “Back of the Yards” once was the world’s largest center for meat processing. It featured enormous livestock pens as well as nearby plants engaged in butchering, packing and shipping meat across America and around the globe. However, technology led to changes that undermined this centralized system. Production peaked in 1924. Thereafter, improvements in transportation—especially the construction of interstate highways, starting in the 1950s—spelled doom for Chicago’s stockyards ...