CHICAGO | General Developments

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

They are already gearing up on site. Looks like a facadectomy.

Good to hear. Facadectomy - similar to what they did for the Viceroy?

[Rizzo]

The viceroy facade had to be taken offsite and repaired / cleaned. I'm assuming this one will stay in place.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Yes, it looks to me like they will just stabilize the facade and build the new building behind it.

[chrisvfr800i]

[QUOTE=LouisVanDerWright;7870163]Lol, yes saying the suburbs will collapse when forced to stand on their own without government subsidy = Stalinism. Great deduction!



Obviously I am referring to your apparent desire to use the government to force people to live in a way you support...which, oh by the way, is an existence heavily reliant on government subsidy, too.

[10023]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Yes, it looks to me like they will just stabilize the facade and build the new building behind it.

This is done everywhere in Europe, of course. Due to wartime bombing, the vast majority of old buildings you see in London are not old on the inside. Only the facades have been preserved, and the interiors are periodically rebuilt.

For example:

http://www.costar.co.uk/Global/Build...r%20Square.jpg

https://www.buildington.co.uk/images...bd.400x300.png

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by chrisvfr800i

Obviously I am referring to your apparent desire to use the government to force people to live in a way you support...which, oh by the way, is an existence heavily reliant on government subsidy, too.

When did I ever say anything about having the government do this? I'm proposing that local governments will collapse as private markets revert to the historical mean of central cities being the most attractive real estate in a city. The government created the suburbs with eminent domain, "slum" clearance, construction of freeways, and other policies that fanned the flames of white flight. Now the city has sprawled as far outwards as practically possible and the same economic forces that once trained their attention on suburban greenfield sites is focusing back on this inner city. Many suburbs are screwed and will become the new slums just as many inner city neighborhoods collapsed when their middle or upper middle class populations (and businesses) left for the suburbs. The government has nothing to do with this, the only thing I've said about this is that governments in the burbs may very well collapse as their tax base is eviscerated or as problems due to poverty outgrow their ability to address them.

[the urban politician]

^ Many of Chicago's neighborhoods were once suburbs. Suburbs were being built when people were going about by horse and buggy, and they will still be built. The car had nothing to do with suburbs being built.

Yes, the most prime real estate is the city center, which it should be. But that doesn't mean everything else will choke and die, even though you may wish for it to be so.

[Khantilever]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

The car had nothing to do with suburbs being built.

Are you serious?

Urban economist Ed Glaeser writes in a review of the literature: "Suburbia, edge cities and sprawl are all the natural, inexorable, result of the technological dominance of the automobile."

And a very clever and highly-regarded paper showing the effect of highways on suburbanization: Did Highways Cause Suburbanization?

[the urban politician]

^ Many of Chicago's neighborhoods were once suburbs.

Sprawly, auto-oriented suburbs are the result of the car, but not suburbs themselves.

[Mr Downtown]

It's pretty silly to claim that suburbs resulted from auto ownership. Hints: Evanston, Elmwood Park, Oak Park, River Forest, Elmhurst, Cicero, Berwyn, Riverside, Summit, Blue Island. And, of course, Rogers Park, Lake View, Jefferson, Norwood Park, Edison Park, Austin, Town of Lake, Morgan Park, Fernwood, Gano, Hyde Park, South Chicago.

I was much impressed recently by Elaine Lewinnek's book, The Working Man's Reward, a study of Chicago's 19th century move to the suburbs.

[Rizzo]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

It's pretty silly to claim that suburbs resulted from auto ownership. Hints: Evanston, Elmwood Park, Oak Park, River Forest, Elmhurst, Cicero, Berwyn, Riverside, Summit, Blue Island. And, of course, Rogers Park, Lake View, Jefferson, Norwood Park, Edison Park, Austin, Town of Lake, Morgan Park, Fernwood, Gano, Hyde Park, South Chicago.

I was much impressed recently by Elaine Lewinnek's book, The Working Man's Reward, a study of Chicago's 19th century move to the suburbs.

No.

Most modern postwar suburbs that had accelerated growth the last half of the century flourished ONLY because of automobile ownership and convenience. It made those suburbs practical to expand without having to intensify public transportation Having a rail station only reinforced their success. Cut out the rail station and they'd still survive.

Also consider there's more cities outside of Chicago where mobility is exclusively reliant on the car....like the 4.5 million suburban residents of Detroit

[Kumdogmillionaire]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ Many of Chicago's neighborhoods were once suburbs. Suburbs were being built when people were going about by horse and buggy, and they will still be built. The car had nothing to do with suburbs being built.

Yes, the most prime real estate is the city center, which it should be. But that doesn't mean everything else will choke and die, even though you may wish for it to be so.

This is objectively just wrong top to bottom, and the real kicker is your statement that the car had nothing to do with suburbs being built. They had everything to with suburbs being built, and for the existence of sprawl in the southwest and sunbelt regions. You really need a history lesson on the influence that automobile lobbying groups had on the development of suburban America. You are either very young and haven't taken any urban politics courses(ironic for your name), or are just going senile.

[the urban politician]

^ Dude, relax. I read all that stuff long ago (GM buying all the streetcar systems and dismantling them to support buses), the fossil fuel lobby, etc etc. I schooled myself on that stuff over a decade ago.

Nothing anybody here says changes a damn thing I'm saying because I'm making a simple point that continues to remain salient--suburbs--or let's call them "collar communities", have existed and developed long before the automobile. You have already been given many examples in Chicago alone.

Suburban growth is how cities like New York and Chicago grew to begin with. The only difference now is the lack of annexation, which was more common in those days. And I still don't see mass annexation making a comeback any time soon.

[emathias]

Of course you're all right, insofar as you go.

It is probably most correct to say that transportation technology enabled the rise of suburbs.

Before the 1930s, suburbs were fueled by commuter rail. This was true in cities from as diverse a collection as Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Philadelphia, Sydney, several Chinese cities (especially in Manchuria when occupied by Japan), several Indian cities, Toronto, Buenos Aires, etc. Most of the suburbs created by or supplemented by rail service were built for a human, pedestrian-driven environment much like the larger cities they connected to. This was out of necessity since people had to be able to get to the train station for it to be useful.

With the democratization of the automobile starting in the 1920s the stage was set for a new style of suburb. The Great Depression and then the Second World War delayed the practical implementation of this new paradigm, but once World War Two ended and soldiers returned home, scores of new families wanted quiet, clean neighborhoods with their own house and a yard to be enjoyed within the private confines of the family. Initially many of these suburbs were still built fairly densely because it was assumed they would still make use of the commuter rail system for commuting, but as expressways enabled fast access to city centers and those with car discovered the speed and convenience of the point-to-point travel the automobile enabled, pedestrian access to commuter rail became to be seen as unnecessary and antiquated. Neighborhoods, subdivisions, and entire new suburbs were suddenly built in a way that not only enabled the automobile but suddenly required it. This was largely seen as inevitable and the future of transportation, with little heed given to the consequences and eventual inconvenience that mandatory participation in the age of the automobile would bring.

As the inevitable congestion and limitations of the automobile finally becoming unavoidably apparent, various localities began to realize that in their rush to embrace the automobile they'd ignored its limitations and slowly they started taking steps to reign in the ubiquity of cars. Some regions have been better at doing this than others, but there is at least a near-universal understanding that planning on 100% use of automobiles for transportation isn't possible, let alone desirable. BRT, expansion of commuter rail, creation and expansion of light rail systems have all had an impact on at least providing as an option communities with transportation choice, no longer assuming that 100% automobile dependency is desirable.

With the advent of autonomous automobiles, it will be interesting to see how communities adapt to yet another transportation technology. There are ways it will impact community design that we know of, but there will probably be unforeseen impacts, too. Some of these may be new uses that are surprisingly helpful, and some maybe situations that turn out to be far more negative than we can currently predict.

One thing is certain - transportation technology drives a constant evolution of how we live. Desired density will ebb and flow, with desired attributes of transportation constantly adapting to both practical and opinion-based considerations.

[Khantilever]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ Many of Chicago's neighborhoods were once suburbs.

Sprawly, auto-oriented suburbs are the result of the car, but not suburbs themselves.

When we're talking about "the suburbs", we're referring more to Schaumburg, Oakbrook, and Naperville (and the many townships and villages around them) - not the classic bedroom communities of Oak Park and Evanston, and certainly not everything that at any time could have been considered a suburb.

"Suburbanization", in particular, refers to the rapid period of growth in outlying areas and the emptying of central cities in the post-war period.

[the urban politician]

^ Ok, go ahead and invent your own terminology then. Makes for a very useful discussion

[Khantilever]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ Ok, go ahead and invent your own terminology then. Makes for a very useful discussion

It's not about inventing terminology. You're being disingenuous when you pretend not to understand what everyone is referring to when they say "suburbs".

If I were to talk about "modern" architecture, and point out an example from the '50s, you would understand that even though the building is not "of, relating to, or characteristic of the present or the immediate past" (Merriam-Webster) it is a modern building in the sense of the movement and historical period.

Regardless, your point is perfectly valid that in the more general sense "suburbanization" is the process by which all urban areas grow; the fringes are slowly populated until they're eventually subsumed by the city.

[LouisVanDerWright]

When a city is not seeing population growth there is no reason to expand borders. All of the world's great cities have gone through multiple periods of slow or negative growth. This is how cities mature. Chicago was built "suburban" style from day one, it's just that the technologies changed and then the city boomed creating a distinct growth ring from the post war period that is colloquially known as the suburbs. This doesn't include pre war communities that were built as an extension of the city grid. If you go far enough back technically all of Chicago besides the loop is a suburb which is just a rediculous way of looking at things.

The interesting point you make is that places like Lawndale or Austin were built in very much the same fashion as the mid century and later suburbs we are talking about. They were built in a matter of years on green field sites and all the buildings therefore share a synched depreciation cycle. This is also a big part of why the neighborhoods took such a spill. Everything was the same age and there wasnowhere to build anything new. So people left for the next green field in the burbs. Now there's a little space and a lot of character so these older urban areas are ripe for eventual redevelopment. The suburbs built in 1950-70 are now where Lawndale, built in the 1900's and 1910's, was in 1950 or 1960. Everything is old, Everything needs work, everything is out of style. The later burbs from the 1980's or 1970's when building quality really started to fall off are catching up quick.

[Swicago Swi Sox]

I think you would all find this article and video about the difference between the growth of American cities and European cities interesting and relevant to the current on-going discussion/argument.

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/why-are-am...ean-1788196723

[harryc]

July 19