From the comment section on DNA info:

Absolutely absurd rationale. Potential traffic from a grocery store is the problem here? Not the double parked mommymobiles idling up and down the block waiting for lil Johnny and Suzy to get out of school?

Fuck these people.

The traffic issue is such an overblown one. From LaSalle II's website..

Trader Joe's hours (Diversey): 8:00am-10:00 pm

The sole delivery for TJ's would occur around 5:30a or 6a, before parents arrive, and it would only be one truck. In the afternoon, nobody is really going grocery shopping at 2:45pm. I don't see the potential for conflict. If it's such an issue, move TJ's opening time back. I doubt they do much early morning business anyway.

As far as the parent-dropoff thing being anti-urban... I agree, but what did you expect when you reformed CPS along a magnet/charter school model? Neighborhood schools generally suck, and parents with means typically don't send their kids there, but those are the only schools that young children can safely walk to.

This x100.

With a rake.

1. I'm not a politician
2. I believe in a republic run by elected representatives who actually are allowed to make decisions. You know, where they don't have to go back to the public every 5 goddamn minutes to "gauge" their opinion on every little matter in sundry community meeting after meeting.

Democracy has become equivalent to mob rule in Chicago. Intimidation of elected officials to the detriment of the city's bests interests. Aldermen think having power over zoning is some sort of blessing, but if you ask me, it's a curse. They would be much better off, and much more secure in their jobs, if they were stripped of this power and it was instead in the hands of the planning dept. Then they can wash their hands of these decisions and not be held accountable come election time when the "far too dense" 4 story building in a neighborhood of single family homes was approved.

+1

I think any project team in Chicago does a good job reaching out to the public. The only important thing is transparency and open discussions to those affected in the project area. But at some point, you have to let the experts and the people in charge get things done. If the public wants to maintain some sort of status quo for the neighborhood, that's really got to be done through meetings and policy changes before anything is ever proposed. But these meetings tend to be more reactive, despite that what's being proposed is more often that not, legally permissible.

Generally, I think it should be up to the school to find a solution to traffic problems, not the other businesses. I think of Ogden school in my neighborhood that has traffic management down to a perfect science with designated queuing areas. This alongside garages and busy commuter traffic. The neighborhood has grown tremendously but the school took the initiative to create a safe and efficient traffic control system on Walton.

Jobs here; transit over there
 

From a Metropolitan Planning Council presentation

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3784/1...094367ca_b.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3796/1...3edd8650_c.jpg

Is there a way to flip the colors on that first map, so we can see how many jobs those blue circles are covering?

^Sorry, I didn't make the map.

Bloomingdale/Western: viaduct removal

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.n...49417358_n.jpg
606 Chicago


Eventually... the Ashland bridge girders will be moved over to Western and the sidewalks will be cut through the embankment to allow for a wider roadway.

http://the606.org/wp-content/uploads...ew-930x435.jpg
src

Amazing that they were able to populate those renders with living people, rather than ghosties. That must require special mastery of dark arts.

You know they're really serious when they completely shut down Western Avenue. I wonder if it was all accomplished within a single day.

That is a really great image IMO. Taken from the centerline, you have the symmetry of the Greek ruin-like columns on the sides, with the ferocious machine in dead center waiting to pounce again. Add those boulders and the snow dusting, and you've got a scene ready for Transformers filming.

By law and good ethics, commercially produced images can contain real looking people if they've come from an officially licensed source where the subjects have given permission or were offered compensation to have their image sold off as photo stock. Otherwise, if the company that produced the images doesn't have a rendering library of background entourage, they must use ghosted figures. As you point out, it's totally worth it for firms to invest in purchasing people image cutouts because it makes renderings way more appealing.

While the blue circles are distracting, the map is useful for identifying job clusters that aren't served by rail transit: the Busse Woods ring (Schaumburg-EGV) and the I-88 corridor appear to be the big offenders. It's also interesting to see that there's still a big drop-off in job density west of I-355, which opened 25 years ago.

Said planning department ultimately reports to political heads. Sure, there are many cities where day-to-day planning decisions are made in a more technocratic manner, but eventually politics will always rear its head. Even Singapore, the ultimate in technocrat city-states, has NIMBYs who influence local elections.

Interesting but not that surprising. Schaumburg/Rolling Meadows and Lombard/Downers Grove boomed as job centers precisely because they had good north-south/circumferential connections on 355 as well as east-west/radial connections on 90 and 88 respectively. In other words, being near a major interchange is desirable to employers because it maximizes the pool of talent they can draw from. The same goes for the central Tri-State/294 corridor, although that tends to be more manufacturing-oriented.

You can't say that about job centers further west along 90 or 88, where north-south connections are relatively poor (IL 59, 31, 25, Randall Rd). The talent pool for those locations is far more limited - just that sector of Chicagoland and not the whole thing.

RTA eliminated, governor given more power under transportation proposals
 

http://www.suntimes.com/26139628-761...proposals.html

By ROSALIND ROSSI Transportation Reporter March 11, 2014 6:26PM

The Regional Transportation Authority board would be eliminated and the governor would get more power over transit
appointments under proposals advanced Tuesday to Gov. Pat Quinn’s Northeastern Illinois Public Transit Task Force.........

Email rrossi@suntimes.com

Twitter @rosalindrossi

Saw a poster today at Jefferson Park... not sure if this has any teeth to it. It's not connected to ward-level zoning decisions and not connected to Metra's decisions about service frequency or infill stations. Not even sure what the point is other than to start the discussion about Metra TOD in the city.

http://chicagometratypologies.com/meetings/

Expect the lakefront flyover bike path to beginning very soon.

It's going to be done in 3 phases and take 4 years.

http://www.cityofchicago.org/content...ON_feb2011.pdf

I will certainly be at the meeting March 25th at the Avalon Park Field House, (which is close to the 83rd St. Electric District Main Line station) to hand out literature and information about upgrading the in-city Electric District routes to the Gray Line.

Creating maybe a few hundred New Jobs right there in the vicinity of the station, and thousands in Economic Development right there in the Neighborhood