Tag Archives: Chicago

Fighting over the fate of the Lathrop Homes, one of the remaining public housing projects in Chicago

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While Chicago’s public housing high-rises (like Cabrini-Green) have been torn down, there is a current debate about the fate of the Lathrop Homes:

Lathrop’s two-story row houses and three- and four-story walk-ups occupy 35 acres on the western edge of Lincoln Park, and are often noticed by passersby on Diversey owing to the thick, white plumes of steam that rise from ground vents like jets from primordial geysers—the result of aging heating pipes. When the 925-unit development opened in 1938, it was one of the first public housing developments in the country and only the second in Chicago, built by a dream team of architects for the Public Works Administration’s New Deal program. For 30 years it was one of four all-white public housing projects managed by the Chicago Housing Authority. When the first African-American families were finally allowed to move into Lathrop in the late 1960s, they were segregated in the buildings on the south side of Diversey. The project didn’t become the melting pot Suarez describes until the 1970s…

Though Lathrop was supposed to be rehabilitated—and to remain 100 percent public housing—the CHA’s position shifted over the years. In 2000 the CHA stopped accepting new residents (in anticipation of rehabbing the property), and each subsequent year families were encouraged to move out. The buildings were shuttered one by one as Lathrop shrank from 747 occupied units in 2000 to about 140 today.

In other words, at a time when affordable housing in Chicago was becoming more and more scarce, hundreds of low-rent apartments were sitting vacant in a prime neighborhood.

In 2006 the CHA announced that Lathrop would become a mixed-income community with 400 public housing units, 400 tax-credit-subsidized units, and 400 market-rate ones. Demolition was scheduled for 2009.

But the housing market collapse, the recession, and persistent leadership turnover at the CHA has stalled those plans. To this day, not a single one of Lathrop’s 30 buildings has been demolished.

Interesting read about a project that is on the National Register of Historic Places and doesn’t get much attention despite some unique features. The story of the slow-moving CTA is not unusual; that has been the story for decades and it is understandable why residents aren’t always optimistic about better outcomes.

Man fills Chicago potholes with mosaic art

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Chicago has had plenty of potholes in recent months and one man has taken to filling a few potholes with art:

The perfect pothole might not exist for many people — but for mosaic artist Jim Bachor, it’s one with a nice oval shape. Bachor began filling those potholes a little more than a year ago, after one in front of his house became a hassle.

Bachor doesn’t just fill them with cement, though. He’s turned pothole-filling into a public art project — one with a sense of humor. He fills them with mosaics.

“I just think it’s fun to add that little bit of spark into (an) issue that people moan about,” says the Chicago resident, whose work also hangs in galleries. He was first drawn to the ancient art form because of its ability to last.

With orange cones and vests displaying his last name, Bachor and his helpers look official enough to shut down a street section to work on filling a pothole.

Bachor uses the Chicago city flag design in his pothole art. Some versions hold phone numbers to local auto repair shops, while others simply read “POTHOLE.” His most recent installment north of downtown Chicago — “(hash)21914” — pokes fun at the huge number of potholes that exist in the city.

Public art that also helps the city fulfill one of its basic duties. How long until he is shut down for not filling potholes to standards or because it leaves the city liable?

It would be interesting to test the durability of mosaics in potholes. Given their construction with numerous small pieces, wouldn’t they be particularly susceptible to pressure, water, and freezing? I suspect there are much better ways to address potholes but they may not look as good or have any moxie.

Chicago to get its own “Carmageddon” on the Kennedy in June

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Major repair work on the Kennedy in June is being dubbed Chicago’s own Carmageddon:

Chicago-area drivers are being urged to steer clear of the downtown stretch of the Kennedy Expressway during the last three weekends in June, officials said Thursday. That’s when bridge demolition on the Kennedy interchange at Ohio and Ontario streets will require shutting down expressway lanes, first in the inbound direction, then outbound and finally the Ohio and Ontario feeder ramps…

Officials hope the stern warning will help prevent hourslong snarls along the expressway that carries an average of 260,000 vehicles a day, avoiding what some traffic engineers have referred to a “carmageddon.”…

The work to tear down sections of the bridge, drop the concrete pieces onto the Kennedy and haul away the debris is scheduled for a series of tightly choreographed 55-hour periods on the weekends of June 13-15, June 20-22 and June 27-29, according to IDOT plans…

On an average project, IDOT tries to “scare away’’ 15 percent of the traffic to compensate for lane closures, officials said. During the Kennedy work, they hope to divert about 25 percent of traffic elsewhere.

There are echoes here of the Carmageddon in Los Angeles several years ago that ended up working out pretty well. While this location is a key part of the Chicago highway system, there are alternative routes either in the downtown area or different highways that can route people further around the city. At the same time, this does highlight the importance of fixing the Circle Interchange nearby to have better traffic flow.

It will be interesting to watch the PR for all of this. In fact, is two weeks enough time to start alerting people to Chicago’s own Carmageddon? Yet, I imagine local news outlets will eat this up.

Chicago second in nation, fifth in world for Starbucks

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Chicago is a world leader in Starbucks, even if it is sometimes insecure about its place on the world stage:

Chicago is home to 164 Starbucks, ranking the city second in the United State behind New York City–and fifth in the world, according to Starbucks store data compiled by Chris Meller.

There are 64 locations in an area bounded by DesPlaines, Oak Street, Congress Parkway and Navy Pier. That’s 40 percent of the city’s total…

At O’Hare International Airport alone, there are 17 Starbucks locations, including spots in baggage claims, terminal concourses, food courts and near gates.

The South Side has only nine stores south of 33rd Street. There are no Starbucks on the West Side–at least none west of Ashland.

The common factors behind the Chicago locations seem to be the wealth and number of tourists in different locations. In other words, Starbucks tends to locate where there are more people with more money to spend on coffee. This may be a little different than the vision the store promotes for serving as a “third place” – these third places are for certain kinds of neighborhoods.

Designing Chicago to provide a better video game experience

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Making Chicago the setting of the new video game Watch Dogs includes changing the city to improve the gaming experience:

He described the basic creation of Chicago this way: “Essentially we started with a top view of Chicago, the actual Chicago map, which we put in our game editor, and from there we carved into it. It’s a big, empty space at first. So we start laying out roads by going with the real road and adjusting from there, making sure, for instance, that Wacker follows the river correctly, but adjusting a bit too. You also make sure roads connect properly, but we didn’t go with the Chicago grid because it was so straight, too many right angles. It’s better for the game play if you can’t see far ahead of yourself. So we curve things. Once the roads are laid down and the city reduced, you went street by street putting in neighborhoods, landmarks …”

Like many an open-world video game city, building the open-world Chicago of “Watch Dogs” became a dance between game play, accuracy and urban planning. In general, what Arriola described is the same process that created cities in “Saints Row” and “Grand Theft Auto”: Four-lane roads became six lanes to encourage driving (nobody likes digital gridlock, either), buildings were pressed together to encourage rooftop-to-rooftop leaping and only the most visually unique neighborhoods survived (albeit incongruously, mashed up against other neighborhoods).

“An open-world city in a good video game is a riff on a city, not a city,” said Brian Schrank, co-chairman of the game development program at DePaul University. “It’s a little exploitative, a little like a remix of familiar elements. You are seeing a suggestion of unending choices, but in reality a game developer is being subtle and laying out the breadcrumbs that pull you through their city.”

Hence, the isle of Chicago.

The Chicago River needed widening, and the Northwest Side needed geographic diversity, so, in the game, the north edge of the Gold Coast becomes actual coastline, the farthest northern point in this Chicago. A player can pilot a boat from the lake and around the downtown area without hitting a dead end.

See this earlier post about using Chicago in the new game.

This isn’t just the issue of creating a copy of the city of Chicago. That in itself could be interesting and/or jarring, seeing a faithful reproduction on the screen but being able to do things the average resident or visitor could not. But, this goes a step further to “improve” the city for the gamer. One way to think about it is that the city is not compelling enough as it is but needs to be tweaked to allow for features that gamers expect like easy yet unclear driving and using a boat. The isle of Chicago? A grid system of street that now curves? Urban sociologists and other urbanists are often drawn to big cities because of their dynamism – from social interactions to culture to architecture, to economic and political activity – that is plenty interesting without tweaks.

The gamification of the world continues, with the big city as yet another victim…

Presenting big data about Chicago

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The Chicago Architecture Foundation has a new exhibit highlighting the use of big data in Chicago:

Architects, planners, engineers and citizens, it contends, are increasingly using massive amounts of data to analyze urban issues and shape innovative designs…

But data, the show argues, is useful as well as ubiquitous. We see some classically gritty Chicago stuff to back this up, though it’s not quite powerful or precise enough to be fully persuasive…

More convincing are the show’s examples of “digital visualization,” which is geekspeak for using digital technology to present and analyze urban planning data.

Take a monumental, crowd-pleasing map of Chicago, 15 feet high and 30 feet wide, which presents the footprints of thousands of buildings, even individual houses, and color-codes them by the era in which they were built. We see the impact of the city’s three great building booms, from Chicago’s earliest days to 1899, from 1900 to 1945, and from 1946 to 1979. The recent surges that filled downtown with new skyscrapers look puny by comparison.

Also worth seeing: Video monitors which display data for Divvy, the city’s bike-sharing program. They offer neat tidbits: Divvy’s most popular station, for example, is at Millennium Park.

Sounds interesting. Big cities are complex social entities who could benefit from large-scale and real-time data collection and analysis. Of course, as Kamin notes at the end, there still is a human side to cities that cannot be ignored but getting a handle through data on what is happening could go a long way.

Another dimension to this is how to best present big data. While the online presentation of maps has grown popular, how can this be done best in person? I look forward to seeing this exhibit in person as I already like what the Chicago Architecture Foundation has done with this space. Here is part of the gallery a few years ago:

CAFChicagoAug11This is a great free place to learn more about Chicago and then choose among the cool offerings in the gift shop or sign up for one of the architecture tours that cover all different aspects of Chicago.

Chicago stars in the new video game Watch Dogs

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Curbed Chicago looks at how the city is portrayed in the new game Watch Dogs:

Chicago is finally getting a starring role in a new video game. New York, LA and Miami have all made cameos in the popular Grand Theft Auto series, but a new game called Watch Dogs will take place in an Orwellian version of Chicago. Although the scale and placement of buildings is not completely accurate, the graphics are quite surprising and this semi-fictional city depicted in the game definitely looks like our fair city. Some of the Chicago icons spotted in this promo video include famous buildings like the Willis Tower, the Trump Tower, the John Hancock Center, the Aqua Tower, and Marina City.

The pictures look pretty accurate.

So why doesn’t Chicago get more video game love? Do other American cities have glitzier and more worldly facades that are well-suited to garish video game scenes or dystopian scenes? Maybe all that Midwestern charm, winter weather, and gleaming International style architecture simply isn’t entertaining enough. Chicago may be the #7 global city but not necessarily for video game purposes.

Why is Chicago building a new roadway between the Loop and Chinatown?

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The Chicago Tribune presented this headline yesterday: “Mayor proposes new roadway between downtown, Chinatown.” When I first saw this, I thought this might be something along the lines of the Crosstown Expressway, a major new arterial roadway connecting two areas. However, the article seems to emphasize the importance of safety:

The $62 million project, called the Wells-Wentworth Connector, would also realign Wentworth Avenue between Archer and Cermak roads to bring this section of Wentworth in line with the portion of Wentworth south of Cermak, according to the Chicago Department of Transportation.

The Wentworth-Cermak intersection, which jogs in an offset alignment, contributes to a high number of crashes, according to a city analysis…

In Chinatown, the southern end of the new arterial road would offer access to the Dan Ryan Expressway, according to the city’s Central Area Action Plan, a list of proposals and specific projects, along with their construction timetables and estimated costs…

The city has slowly been planning improvements for more than a decade to boost safety and reduce traffic congestion in the area, especially among vehicles exiting the Ryan ramps at Cermak. In April 2008, a semitrailer truck that had just exited the Ryan barreled through a crowded intersection and slammed into the Cermak-Chinatown station, killing two people and injuring 21.

Improving a dangerous intersection, particularly in a higher-pedestrian area, would be helpful. It sounds like Wells and Wentworth could be connected between Roosevelt and 18th Street, providing another north-south route. Yet, the city’s explanation of the rationales for this change hint at another important factor:

1. Improved safety for vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists. Within a wide study area, the offset intersection at Wentworth and Cermak had the highest number of crashes of any other intersection. In comparison, the number was almost double the number of crashes occuring at the intersection of the Dan Ryan off-ramps with Cermak. The realignment of Wentworth at Cermak is required to facilitate safer connections for all modes of traffic.

2. Construction of a new north-south collector street (Wells Wentworth) . This will allow for improved traffic flow throughout both TIF Redevelopment Areas by creating a coordinated series of intersections, as well as provide or improve pedestrian connectivity within the two project areas and to nearby destinations such as the new Ping Tom Park Fieldhouse, the proposed new Chinatown Library, the existing commercial areas, and transit stops.

3. Significant redevelopment opportunities. Improved connectivity between the Loop, the two TIF Redevelopment Areas, and the surrounding communities will promote the redevelopment of vacant land and expand economic development opportunites.

So the real reason may not be safety or providing another north-south thoroughfare to help relieve traffic. The primary reason, as it often is with urban changes, is development which means money and profits. Safety is good but safety plus new developments that bring in new money are even better. There is money to be made with a new street.

Chicago again named #7 global city

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Curbed Chicago highlights the 2014 A.T. Kearney rankings which again have Chicago at #7 in its Global Cities Index:

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Chicago has recently been named the 7th most globally integrated city in the world according to management consulting firm A.T. Kearney’s latest Global Cities Index. Five North American cities made the list, including New York (1), Los Angeles (6), Washington (10) and Toronto (13).

As the article notes, Chicago has been roughly in the same position for a number of years. But, I’m not sure I agree with this:

It appears that Chicago has played it safe, maintaining a solid position over the last few years, and not making any major changes in position.

What is the evidence for this? Perhaps the important question to ask is how much a city might realistically be able to move up or down the rankings within a year or a few years. Major changes that would heavily impact the five criteria happen infrequently, some change takes quite a bit of time, and the other cities are doing things as well even as things are happening in Chicago. Also, we might ask whether it is valuable for a big city to chase such rankings versus do the things that are best for the city and its citizens.

Lawsuit again Chicago halfway houses may clarify rules on how they can operate

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A new lawsuit from Chicago residents against several halfway houses on the north side may help clarify how such facilities can locate in residential neighborhoods:

Both lawsuits highlight tensions often exposed in neighborhoods when treatment and recovery facilities seek to move in. Doing so can be difficult, treatment experts say, when established neighborhoods often don’t want them there.

But the case could also break new ground in Illinois, the plaintiffs’ attorneys say, raising legal questions about how the federal Fair Housing Act protects substance abusers in a group home, whether such residents qualify as disabled and if the law affects the city’s regulatory authority…

“They’re not saying, ‘Judge, evict these people,'” attorney Michael Franz said of the neighbors’ complaints. “They’re saying, ‘Judge, please make them follow the procedures that any other business would have to follow in the city of Chicago on zoning variances.'”…

“Studies have shown that when you put a group of recovering addicts and alcoholics in good, single-family homes in good, single-family neighborhoods, the recovery process is enhanced and the residents receive a benefit,” Polin said. “Part of the reason is they’re not living in drug-infested neighborhoods, they’re living in good neighborhoods.”

Sounds like an interesting set of cases: homes for the disabled versus the ability of a community to set zoning laws to limit what can be located within a residential area. The typical homeowner would not want to live next door to such a home and yet it can be difficult for organizations to find suitable and welcoming locations. Halfway houses for substance abusers aren’t the only ones who draw objections: homes for ex-convicts, churches, and businesses can similarly draw the ire of residents who don’t want the character of the neighborhood nor their financial investments possibly disturbed. But, should all such facilities be located in areas beyond residential zoning?