Category Archives: Places

Even affluent Chicago neighborhoods, like Lincoln Park, have lost significant numbers of residents

Posted on by

Rust Belt cities like Chicago have declined in population since the mid-1900s and the population loss is not just limited to poorer neighborhoods:

For a long time, most accounts of Chicago’s lagging population have focused on parts of the South and West Sides where many residents, largely African-American, have decided to decamp for the suburbs or the South in search of better schools, less crime, and more jobs.But the under-appreciated flip side of population loss in those parts of the city is that places that ought to be growing like gangbusters are stagnant, often sitting 25% to 50% below their peak populations. Lakeview, for example, was once home to 124,000 people; its population is now 94,000. North Center is down from nearly 49,000 to under 32,000. West Town, which includes Wicker Park and Bucktown, has fallen from 187,000 to 81,000.

Decline5010

What explains the population loss in even popular neighborhoods? Here is one possible answer:

Since replacing a couple two-flats with a courtyard building is now illegal, developers make money by tearing down an old two-flat and building a luxury two-flat in its place. Or they build a mansion, and the neighborhood actually loses a housing unit. As a result, as a neighborhood becomes more attractive, the city encourages fewer people to live there.

Zoning (theoretically based on improving the neighborhood) plus chasing profits may just lead to population loss. This could be balanced out by approving more high-density housing in a particular area (like the Loop are in specific portions of popular neighborhoods as to limit their effect) but that leads to major changes in two places.

It is still worth noting that the areas that seen an increase in population are either (1) the Loop with a reemphasis on residential construction and (2) community areas on the edges of the city which other lower densities as well as potentially more open land since 1950.

How should the 1995 Chicago heat wave deaths be commemorated?

Posted on by

An arts critics think about how Chicago might remember the deaths of hundreds in the 1995 heat wave:

After all, events that caused far fewer deaths have been the subject of remembrances, designed to honor those who died. July 1995 has yet to make into that civic category, but it deserves a spot. Perchance someone may convene a discussion between those who were involved in that crisis and ponder what was learned (I should note that Klinenberg also charges the media, including the management of this newspaper, with some culpability in the tardiness of the connecting of the dots, while acknowledging some formidable reportage).

More useful, though, might be an artistic response.

A commissioned symphonic piece, perhaps played outdoors. A concert honoring those who died. A dance work. Some stirring poetic words. Some deep collective thoughts from city leaders as to if, or how, the city has changed since then and where there still is work to be done. Some consideration of whether we now do a better job of taking care of each other, whatever the weather outside. It is worth the attention of the city’s artists. And politicians.

“Marking it as a historic event is important,” Egdorf said. “If only to remind people to look after their neighbors.”

Three quick thoughts:

1. Given the demographics of those who died, such a commemoration could also go a long ways toward addressing social divisions such as those involving age, class, and race. Important figures are often commemorated but what about a mass number of average residents?

2. For the social forces that contributed to who died in this particular heat wave, I recommend Heat Wave by sociologist Eric Klinenberg.

3. The idea of having an artistic response to this disaster is an interesting one. We often have solemn commemorations but this presents an opportunity to create something new of tragedy.

Essay on Chicago’s alleys

Posted on by

You aren’t going to find too many erudite essays like this one on the subject of Chicago’s alleys:

Thus, alleys in Chicago, as in most other cities, evolved organically: as a general product of function and construction, but with modulations in dimension, materiality, position, and construction, readily changed to suit the needs of its neighbors and occupants. Fluxing along their entire lengths, they cut a byzantine pattern in the city’s figure ground, contributing to its unmistakable appearance in plan without serving as the primary warp and weft of the fabric…

The results are not always beautiful or orthodox, but they are usually interesting; alleys seen in this light could be conceived as both museums and laboratories for material combinations and adjacencies, methods of assembly and detailing. But in another light, alleys are urban canyons—broken glass, vegetation clinging to the fragile mortar joints, with a single swath of sky above: more products of time and erosion, with human intervention to architectonic formations what glaciers are to geology. Again: raw super-nature registered through a Kantian impression of the sublime…

And consider this: glamour in its modern manifestations is generally assigned to objects and places that are alluring, attractive, and special. Its secondary connotation is less positive; a permutation of Norse and Scottish words that tie it to illusion and obfuscation, spells of the eye meant to conceal true natures. In that vein, is it so difficult to see ordinary as glamour, and alleys as extraordinary? We would do well to keep ourselves open; there may be something truly remarkable lying in plain sight within the gravel and brick.

For those who know cities well, I suspect many of them could tell of places where they found something sublime in the non-glamorous places. Much of the attention paid to major cities focuses on major works (like skylines) while residents and others who take a longer and deeper look see a different side.

I was reminded of Chicago’s alleys recently when showing my class part of Mitchell Duneier’s video supplement to his ethnography Sidewalk. In the film, we see images of the subjects of his research – homeless street vendors – wandering through New York City’s garbage in order to find books, magazines, and other things to sell at their sidewalk tables. There was so much garbage simply piled at the curb, not exactly a glamorous sight. In contrast, alleys allow some of these basic functions to be moved behind buildings and open up sidewalks for more pedestrian and social uses.

When a major city’s tallest structure is a roller coaster

Posted on by

Perhaps this could only happen in Orlando: the city’s tallest structure will soon be a roller coaster.

The Skyscraper aims to live up to its name. When construction of the roller coaster is completed in 2106, it will dominate Orlando’s skyline. At 570 feet, the Skyscraper will loom over the next tallest structure, the Suntrust Center—which is itself only a few dozen feet taller than the Orlando Eye, a 400-foot-tall Ferris wheel opening this spring.

Orlando appears to be one-upping other cities in the global race to build soaring structures that aren’t buildings. Where plenty of cities have built observation wheels (Orlando included), the Theme Park Capital of the World is looking to distinguish itself through a different kind of roller coaster, one whose footprint and height resemble, well, a skyscraper’s.

Developers released new plans last week for the Skyplex, a $300 million entertainment center that will anchored by the Skyscraper. The expanded plans include the Skyfall, a 450-foot tall drop ride (built into the Skyscraper structure) that will itself be taller than the tallest building in downtown Orlando.

Tall buildings may be functional but they are also intended to say something about the city: that it is has a certain level of success and sophistication. A skyline is meant to stand out and provide a lasting and permanent (though it is open to change, people don’t really consider losing major buildings from the skyline) image of a city. So, Orlando seems to be staking its claim to entertainment and amusement, to lasting screams and high speeds. And once you have this tall ride, how do you top it?

Just how much is the Willis Tower worth?

Posted on by

News is that the Willis Tower in Chicago is up for sale and one insider suggests it could go for $1.5 billion:

The owners of the Willis Tower have hired Eastdil Secured to seek a sale, according to an offering book already given to potential buyers. The property’s owners are being advised in the deal by Chicago-based Stephen Livaditis and New York-based Douglas Harmon, senior managing directors at Eastdil, according to the materials…

Chicago is coming off the strongest year of office building sales downtown in seven years. Boosted by low interest rates, a strong real estate appetite for U.S. real estate by domestic and international investors and comparatively higher pricing in coastal cities such as New York and San Francisco, Chicago in 2014 experienced some of its biggest office deals…

Industry newsletter Real Estate Alert, which first reported Willis Tower was being shopped, estimated it could sell for about $1.5 billion. That would be almost $400 for each of the tower’s nearly 3.8 million square feet of office space.

But because of its huge size and unusually broad sources of revenue, experts say Willis Tower’s value is more difficult to pinpoint than a traditional office property.

Sounds like a thriving market right now. Building occupancy is up in recent years and several other large office buildings have sold for high prices in the last year or so.

It would be fascinating to see what happens if the name changes again. How would Chicagoans react? The Willis Tower switchover never completely happened – hard to believe that was over 10 years ago now – so would a new name work? We are not there yet but could be headed toward a world where major buildings consistently change names as they change owners or even develop sponsorship deals to have particular names?

Quick roundup of notable Chicago by drone

Posted on by

Many have seen famous Chicago sights in person or via photography but here are links to some impressive videos of Chicago by drone. The best thing the drone adds to seeing Chicago? Changing the level of sight so as to not just be on the ground or above everything. Now, where is the ultra-impressive promotional video or commercial for Chicago utilizing this technology?

When Silicon Valley communities have too many tech jobs, new residents

Posted on by

Many communities would love to have a tech company headquarters in town but what happens if that company is Google and it brings many residents and employees?

Google owns or leases about 7.3 million square feet of office space in Mountain View — roughly equivalent to three Empire State Buildings. That includes most of the property around its headquarters on the north side of the city near Highway 101, which cuts the length of the valley, according to Transwestern, a commercial real estate brokerage.

That success has brought Mountain View loads of tax dollars and a 3.3 percent unemployment rate, as well as skyrocketing home prices and intolerable gridlock. Good and bad, tech is responsible for most of it: Technology companies account for 27 percent of the jobs in the Silicon Valley region, compared with 7 percent in California and about 5 percent nationally, according to Moody’s Analytics.

The result is an existential argument that pits residents who want to halt the city’s growth against people who think Mountain View needs to grow up and become a real city.

Mountain View, about 40 miles south of San Francisco, has close to 80,000 people; with its strip-mall thoroughfares and streets of single-family homes, it looks like a sleepy suburb. But since hiring has boomed, the city’s roads swell with commuters during the morning and evening rush.

While this may get extra attention because it involves Google (does that do no evil pledge apply to the communities in which its offices are based?), this is a question that many suburbs face at one point or another. When new developments are proposed, whether commercial, industrial, residential, or something else, how might these change the existing character of the community? Jobs are often seen as good things: they provide employment and the buildings for employees generate property tax dollars, reducing the dependence on residential property taxes. Yet, what if those same jobs lead to new office parks that take up a lot of land, new infrastructure needs such as roads, water and sewer lines, and schools, and an influx of traffic? Or, what if such jobs require tax breaks or special deals for a single business or industry?

Two possible outcomes here (and this is not an exhaustive list):

1. Why aren’t urbanists calling for companies like Google to move to large cities? A lot of the issues with infrastructure and space could be more easily absorbed by a major city. Three Empire State Buildings worth of space is still hard to come by but Granted, this hasn’t gone smoothly recently in San Francisco but developing new land leads to particular challenges, especially in places used to a smaller population.

2. At some point, Google could go the way of other companies and organizations and start making demands to push Mountain View to accept what they want. The end of the article hints at this; if Google brings in a lot of new employees, they could even sway local elections. Could Google hold the suburb hostage to get what it wants?

Play explores idea of a proposed mosque for downtown Naperville

Posted on by

Inspired by reactions to a proposed mosque in Naperville several years ago (and another proposed mosque received opposition), a playwright has put together a script that involves a proposed mosque in downtown Naperville:

Khoury said he’s seen the same response elsewhere, including in unincorporated land near Naperville. The Irshad Learning Center in 2010 took to court its attempt to win DuPage County’s approval of the needed conditional use permit for a worship center on property it owns on 75th Street east of Naper Boulevard, just across the city border.

Neighbors of the 3-acre parcel had ardently opposed the center, voicing concerns about traffic, lighting and noise, with support from the Naperville Tea Patriots and the anti-Islamic organization Act! for America. After a divided County Board in January 2010 denied the request, the matter wound up in federal court, with Irshad claiming its Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and equal protection had been denied. Northern Illinois District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer ruled in March 2013 that the county improperly withheld the permit, in part citing the outside groups’ role in the process. The Irshad board is preparing to open the center later this year…

The play centers on a proposal from a ficticious group called Al Ulama, which has prayer space in a Naperville neighborhood but wants to move to headquarters on the actual site of the downtown Naperville Nichols Library, property owned in the play by Truth Lutheran Church. The plan calls for razing the church annex and building a new 100,000-square-foot structure on the same footprint, an Islamic worship site that’s taller than the previous building. In the play a town hall meeting has been scheduled to present the plans…

“The fear really is of Muslims: What’s this going to do to our downtown? Is it going to scare people away?” he said.

While fictional, this does present an intriguing hypothetical. Would any religious group be allowed to utilize valuable downtown land for a religious building? Downtown Naperville is a business and civic center but communities can sometimes protect properties in order to keep them on the tax rolls. There are churches within several blocks of downtown Naperville but I can’t think of any immediately within the business and civic district.

The end of the article says there will be public readings of the play in Naperville in the next month or so. It will be interesting to hear about reactions…

Gentrification limited in Chicago; should worry more about neighborhoods in severe decline

Posted on by

Gentrification may get a lot of attention in big cities but one journalist suggests the more influential issue in Chicago is the number of neighborhoods that have undergone severe declines.

At WBEZ, a Chicago public radio station, our neighborhood bureau reporters produced a package of stories, “There Goes the Neighborhood” (found here) in December, about the changing conditions of neighborhoods in racially segregated Chicago. We partnered with the University of Illinois at Chicago, which created a gentrification index for understanding how to measure neighborhood change in the city, for better or worse. The index measures 13 indicators of neighborhood conditions, including race, income, house values, education, and even the percentage of kids attending private schools. The findings confirmed and challenged some of our own notions, but the main takeaway is that gentrification is not as pervasive throughout Chicago as conventional wisdom might suggest.

Scoring neighborhoods based on the index, Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods were grouped into nine categories ranging from “stable upper/middle class,” meaning index scores remained high since the 1970s, to “severe declines,” meaning those scores dropped significantly since the ’70s. The “gentrification” category captured neighborhoods that had low index scores in the 1970s, but grew significantly higher by 2010. There were only nine neighborhoods that fit that “gentrifying” classification, almost all of them in downtown Chicago (“The Loop”) or just north of it, areas that have been historically white. These places were basically immune to the housing crash, but meanwhile a glut of luxury high rises cast shadows over Lake Michigan.

The category you want to pay attention to, though is “severe decline” — 14 neighborhoods found mostly in South and West Chicago have populations that are, on average, two-thirds African American. Add those to the 12 neighborhoods that have remained in extreme poverty since the ’70s, of which 94.5 percent of residents are African American…

Policymakers, hence, must address the concerns of inequitable development across neighborhoods and income inequality, which are both also national issues. According to a City Observatory report examining urban poverty released last year, the problem over the past four decades is not wealthy whites infiltrating black and Latino neighborhoods with designer Pulaski hatchets and vegan cupcake shops. Governing magazine came to similar conclusions, showing low percentages of gentrified Census tracts in Chicago since 1990.

Gentrification might be the sexy topic but addressing the pressing issues in persistently disadvantaged neighborhoods would likely help more people in the long run. Of course, addressing the issues in poor neighborhoods is complex and not change may not come as quickly as it does through gentrification. Given Chicago’s long history of residential segregation, many of these poor neighborhoods – which are often heavily non-white – are not in any danger of gentrification anytime soon because they are far removed from the edges of wealthier white neighborhoods where good real estate deals or trendy spaces appealing to young, white, creative types might be found.

 

Interpreting dreams about New York City real estate

Posted on by

At the center of the world, what do dreams about real estate mean? One dream specialist looks into real estate dreams of New Yorkers:

“I dreamt that I found a door in my apartment that lead to this massive extra room no one knew about and suddenly our 300ish-square-foot one bedroom was big! And we didn’t have to move to have kids! Just don’t tell the landlord! I woke up and searched for that door. It did not exist. Dammit, Narnia!”Anne Cutler: The dream image of finding a hidden door that opens into a room one didn’t know was there could be a metaphor for discovering a new aspect of oneself that you didn’t realize existed. In this dream, the expansion of the apartment with the new room could be both literal: room to start a family, and metaphorical: a psychological readiness to have children and expand the family…

“After our first meeting with our broker—which, by the way, was very positive—I had a dream that he was like, “Rebecca, I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to look on Staten Island.” (My parents are assisting with the buying; that’s why I said “we.”) I was very depressed when I woke up. I’m sure the dream interpreter will say I have financial anxiety about buying an apartment but who knows what else this means.”

AC: This dream was most likely triggered by something in her initial meeting with the broker. Possibly the dreamer was trying to manage her expectations about what they could afford. The dreamer is most likely engaged in an internal weighing of her own fantasies about her dream apartment/house versus her fears about how far her finances will go. The dream does have an anxiety component. Given her depressed mood when she woke up, I’ll assume the dreamer doesn’t want to live in Staten Island. But the specifics of why not can only be gleaned from further discussion with the dreamer. The specific images we choose in dreams all have significance. So, in this case, why Staten Island instead of Queens or the Bronx or Brooklyn?

The neuroses of New York City life – perhaps this should have been the focus of a Woody Allen film?

I can’t help but want more data on such a topic:

1. Do New Yorkers dream about real estate more than people in other cities, particularly those in cities with less expensive housing markets?

2. Compared to others, do New Yorkers always want to move up (bigger place, better location, etc.) in their dreams? Given the consumerist nature of American life and what we think real estate signifies about us, is this limited to New Yorkers?

3. Do people have positive dreams about where they live? The examples presented here are more about anxieties dealing with home. Yet, psychologists and others have argued that certain dwellings can be designed to provide a better fit with the resident’s personality.