Ugh. I agree with the overall thrust of the piece, as Chicago has indeed lost many of its bustling neighborhood strips. The ones that remain basically match up with the city's long-standing Pedestrian Streets zoning overlay, which is heavily North Side-centric.
https://danielhertz.files.wordpress....1965003984.png It's too bad the city won't proactively expand the P-street designation to other areas as a guide for new growth.
On the other hand, I don't agree with the hate for chains. Independent businesses aren't
ipso facto a generator or a marker of a healthy neighborhood. Also, this has the side effect of vilifying "urban retail" chains that invested in inner-city locations at a time when independent business owners were all fleeing for the suburbs. The article even shows a Payless Shoes in Lincoln Square, for example, and Walgreens has also done this. Villa also comes to mind. Subway and Dunkin Donuts have also provided food options in struggling areas, ones that keep long hours and offer low prices, and they are amazingly flexible when it comes to the spaces they occupy and when it comes to accepting little or no on-site parking (unlike McDonalds, which outside of NYC pretty much demands a drive thru and parking lot for urban locations).
Also, re: the original study of Chicago's main streets... only 13 blocks? What ridiculous bar are they setting? Chicago is a truly massive city and has many neighborhood shopping districts that should qualify, from Wicker Park's hipster Milwaukee Avenue to Little Village's Mexican-oriented 26th St. Now, I wish the city had many more of these, but putting all kinds of ridiculous qualifiers in there doesn't help.