Quote:
Originally Posted by bcp
It's interesting to read that there is some inherent need for a (mostly) midrise hood...or that they don't already exist.
Besides acting as a buffer and transition to urban residential areas... whats driving the belief that we must have them?
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Highrise neighborhoods have quite a few downsides. The highrises limit the light that reached ground level. The buildings are massively expensive to build and maintain, so condo ownership (or rents) tend to rule out all but the wealthiest folks. For whatever reason, certain kinds of people (especially parents with children) often reject highrise living even if they might be open to a midrise or a 2-flat/3-flat. Midrise neighborhoods don't have these downsides to the same degree, but still provide density levels high enough to allow the neighborhood to be truely walkable, with amenities in short walking distance in every direction.
Basically, offering true midrise neighborhoods helps increase the "menu" of different living options that Chicago offers, which means the city is attractive to more people. Look at European cities, not the core areas but the actual neighborhoods where middle-class folks live... often these are midrise neighborhoods that have stood the test of time.
Unfortunately our zoning code has a "downtown area" where highrises are explicitly encouraged, and neighborhood zoning outside of that where anything above four stories is essentially banned. There's not really a way for a midrise neighborhood to spring up outside of the downtown area, and this is basically the only neighborhood within the downtown area that hasn't already been overrun by highrises. If we had a more organic process where, say, Wicker Park or Lakeview could slowly grow into a forest of midrises and the process continuing outward, the West Loop wouldn't be so precious, but that's not the system we live under...