CHICAGO | General Discussions

[10023]

Originally Posted by TimeAgain

Anyone who doesn't understand Chicago's population loss hasn't stepped foot on the south and west sides in years. While you have growing parts of the South Side, such as Hyde Park, Woodlawn, Bronzeville, and maybe Pullman seeing some growth and resurgence, huge swaths of the south side are becoming barren.

This city has serious and fundamental problems that are being covered to an extent by big private investment. In areas that don't have that, there's not much else to keep things going.

Not to take this thread even more off topic, but what could be done to address that? Are people in these neighborhoods trying to start businesses, and not being allowed because of some kind of zoning or other regulation?

Otherwise, I'm not sure what you can do. Manufacturing would do the trick, perhaps, but you'd have to examine why that's a less compelling place to build a plant or DC than exurbia. Access to interstates and intermodal transport?

It's not like even, for instance, Amazon's HQ would fix the South Side's issues, except by replacing existing residents with new, different people hired by Amazon.


And they're going to need to stiff public pension holders. A massive haircut is the only way. Pass a constitutional amendment, give everyone 50 cents on the dollar (perhaps above a low minimum threshold like $50k in total pension value). And then do away with public employee pensions entirely, and have state employees participate in Social Security instead. You can only get one or the other, and so the existence of pensions is just voluntarily shifting the obligation from the federal government to the state, which is insanity.

[jtown,man]

I've been interested in Chicago since I first visited back in 2001. My wife has always detested the very idea of moving there....for you guess it, the cold. After this incredibly cold snap we recently had I basically told her this is pretty much how like what...2-3 months of Chicago feels like a year and she realized its not so bad when properly dressed. My point? After she finishes a year or so in her new job she is way open to Chicago now.

Crime? This is a real perception. People think the city is ravaged on all sides by crime. The media plays this up. People are often surprised when I mention Chicago is far from being the murder capital of America, per capita, which is all that matters anyways. This too is based on someone's current surroundings. I currently live in downtown Norfolk, which is relatively safe, but I am surrounded on 2 1/2 sides with nothing but public housing and the accompanied crime and deteriorated neighborhoods that come with large public housing. I never let this affect me though when im walking my dog at 2 am. Being a city dweller you learn crime is usually local, like really local.

[10023]

^ Everyone who has lived in or is from Chicago has had that conversation with people.

I just tell Londoners that they're as likely to visit crime-ridden neighborhoods in Chicago as they are to visit somewhere like Croydon. There are some fairly sketchy places on the West Side that you might go to for great Mexican food, but you'd have no reason to be in most of the city's worst areas literally ever.

[BuildThemTaller]

Originally Posted by 10023

^ Everyone who has lived in or is from Chicago has had that conversation with people.

I just tell Londoners that they're as likely to visit crime-ridden neighborhoods in Chicago as they are to visit somewhere like Croydon. There are some fairly sketchy places on the West Side that you might go to for great Mexican food, but you'd have no reason to be in most of the city's worst areas literally ever.

I used to have a job that took me to Gary, Indiana from time to time. This was in the mid-2000's. I even did some volunteer work once on the weekend, cleaning up the sidewalks. Locals were very nice to me, said hello in that particular Midwestern way. They knew I wasn't from Gary. It's a privilege to be a 6 foot tall white male in many ways. I never felt anything but incredibly safe in Chicago for the seven years I lived there. It helps to have company when you're out and about, especially if you are going out to the bars and clubs at night. Otherwise, 80-90% of the city is completely safe.

[KWillChicago]

Grant Park would be the most logical in both feasibility and economically I would believe. But it would still take alot of private money via people and companies. Our city and state has way bigger problems to fix that federal grants would be used for. Even though I personally would put the grant park cap at top of the list.

[Notyrview]

Originally Posted by BuildThemTaller

It's a privilege to be a 6 foot tall white male in many ways.

Lol ya think?

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by KWillChicago

Grant Park would be the most logical in both feasibility and economically I would believe. But it would still take alot of private money via people and companies. Our city and state has way bigger problems to fix that federal grants would be used for. Even though I personally would put the grant park cap at top of the list.

Closing Columbus Drive would be so cheap. Tear up the concrete, throw some grass seeds on there, and turn on some sprinklers. Done.

[Notyrview]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Closing Columbus Drive would be so cheap. Tear up the concrete, throw some grass seeds on there, and turn on some sprinklers. Done.

+1 like a beautiful promenade with fountains and white oaks lining it (if those can grow well in chicago)

[Halsted & Villagio]

I posted this in the Chicago Eco forum a few weeks ago. In light of the current discussion, I am going to repost it here. In short, if we are ATTRACTIVE enough to garner this much tourism, surely (despite what the media tells us) there is something about Chicago that intrigues people. And if people are this intrigued by our city, we can't be that far away from getting them to stay as residents. I mean, I travel a lot for work. Everywhere I go I hear the same questions everyone is pointing out about Chicago - weather, crime, etc. But you know what else I hear... I hear stories about how when they visited, how they fell in love with Chicago. This is something we should be building upon.

Here is my post:
Speaking of inferiority complexes.... I have long been a believer that Chicago has lost a bit of its swagger... in fact, I posted that in this forum more than a few times. There is a night and day difference between the Chicago confidence/bravado that I knew as a child versus what I hear and see now. The media has really done a number on us... and I do mean to include myself in that. Why? Well, I had a revelation THIS WEEK....

Upon hearing our new numbers for tourism for our fair city - over 55 Million - a new high for Chicago - I decided to check the Nationwide numbers for tourism. To my surprise Chicago RANKED 2ND IN TOURISM throughout the United States by most reputable sources. I was floored! That is when I knew that I had been infected... by the media.

When I went to check the nationwide tourism numbers I expected to see Chicago at somewhere around 5, or 7, or possibly even 10... or even higher ....based upon the constant bashing of Chicago that we hear. And yes, there were a couple of outliers (haters) out there in the media that put us way down the list... but you could see their obvious bias/agenda. But to see that most reputable sources had us at 2 was astounding to me. At 2 over LA. At 2 over Hollywood. At 2 over DC. At 2 over Miami. At 2 over Las Vegas. At 2 over those Sunbelt cities. At 2 over any city in the South. Simply amazing when you juxtapose that with what the media tells us every day.

And the last kicker - Chicago only had 5 million less visitors than the leader in tourism, NYC - which had like 60 Million. Based upon what the media tells us everyday you would think that gap would be 10/15 million or more. Nope, not the case.

I know this is off topic but I just had to bring this up. It helped put things in perspective for me and I thought I was always one of the positive ones.While we race for Amazon and while negativity abounds, I hope this puts things in little bit better perspective for you too. Chicago is NOT what the media tells us we are. We may or may not get Amazon but Chicago has a legit shot and will be fine with or without Amazon.

[moorhosj]

The talk about population gain/loss is forgetting one simple point, Chicago was a Rust Belt town. Look at Milwaukee, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland and St Louis, you will find population increase during the great migration then huge losses after 1980, high violent crime rates and massive de-industrialization. Chicago was buoyed somewhat by immigration that these cities didn’t see, but is still more demographically similar to these cities. Minneapolis and Toronto are growing faster because of their economies and demographics. Chicago is undergoing a massive shift in workforce to focus on the jobs of tomorrow.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by 10023

^ and if they put sports fields above the tracks, then they can replace the existing ones to the east with (heavier) trees. But frankly Grant Park already has too many ball fields and not enough more scenic gardens.

Sports fields are ideal for a railroad cap because they don't require any soil depth. With artificial turf, it's basically just a 5-inch layer cake of different materials on top of the concrete bridge deck.

The east half of Grant Park is more formal (inspired by the Tuileries in Paris) but if you wanted a formal garden on top of the cap with trees, you'd have to stack up the soil much deeper, and deal with that immense soil weight or use a lightweight GeoFoam type system instead of soil. Even as sports fields, I don't see a way to truly make the cap lightweight/cheap, though. Grant Park is a gathering spot, so any open spaces will eventually be jammed wall-to-wall with crowds that weigh a lot, the cap would have to support the weight of all those people. Emergency services would also require that ambulances and police vehicles be able to drive on top of the cap.

What I would do is just put down pavers over the railroad cap from Jackson to 9th, and move Taste of Chicago there. With a large (pedestrianized) festival promenade, Columbus Drive could be narrowed to a minor park road and the adjacent green spaces expanded.

[Chicago Shawn]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Well, immigrants aren’t coming in and buying condos, for the most part. So either wealthy foreigners are buying real estate to park their money, or Toronto has a big bubble on their hands (or a bit of both).

The great news for Chicago is that we probably don’t have that much of a bubble on our hands compared to other places

Toronto is building the North American equivalent of São Paulo and while there has been a major escalation in home prices over the past decade and a half, it's not a bubble in the traditional sense as there is demand to fill these units. This is through a number of unique factors:

1) Strong regional growth
2) Protective greenbelt and regional planning standards encouraging increasing density
3) lack of vintage multi-family housing. Toronto was not a large city until the post war period and the older city was heavily influenced by Victorian British culture; namely few apartment buildings in the pre-war city as apartments were looked down upon. The 50s-80s saw a wave of apartment construction in slab towers, mostly in more suburban parts of city. While some slabs have been updated, many do not appeal to the tastes of current buyers.
4) Significant investment in transit infrastructure with very pro growth TOD policy. TOD in Toronto can often mean a 40-50 story condo tower on transit, even in the suburbs beyond the city boundary. A 61 story condo tower was just proposed in Vaughn near a recent subway extension.
5) Home price escalation has made single family homes out of reach for many, thus condos are the way forward for attaining home ownership.


On a recent visit in the fall, I counted 110 cranes in a two day period, with about a dozen beyond the city boundary. It's a high-rise boomtown of epic proportions and short of an economic collapse, there is much more to come, including Toronto's first true supertall

[the urban politician]

^ Good analysis.

This goes to show you how much the political and cultural climate has far more to do with how cities shape up than mere population trends.

Think how different many American cities like Chicago would look if large SFH and car ownership weren't the norm.

[urbanpln]

Originally Posted by Chicago Shawn

Toronto is building the North American equivalent of São Paulo and while there has been a major escalation in home prices over the past decade and a half, it's not a bubble in the traditional sense as there is demand to fill these units. This is through a number of unique factors:

1) Strong regional growth
2) Protective greenbelt and regional planning standards encouraging increasing density
3) lack of vintage multi-family housing. Toronto was not a large city until the post war period and the older city was heavily influenced by Victorian British culture; namely few apartment buildings in the pre-war city as apartments were looked down upon. The 50s-80s saw a wave of apartment construction in slab towers, mostly in more suburban parts of city. While some slabs have been updated, many do not appeal to the tastes of current buyers.
4) Significant investment in transit infrastructure with very pro growth TOD policy. TOD in Toronto can often mean a 40-50 story condo tower on transit, even in the suburbs beyond the city boundary. A 61 story condo tower was just proposed in Vaughn near a recent subway extension.
5) Home price escalation has made single family homes out of reach for many, thus condos are the way forward for attaining home ownership.


On a recent visit in the fall, I counted 110 cranes in a two day period, with about a dozen beyond the city boundary. It's a high-rise boomtown of epic proportions and short of an economic collapse, there is much more to come, including Toronto's first true supertall

And to add to that. (1) it is a growing financial center (it may passed Chicago in importance and size already). (2) It has a booming tech sector. (3) For decades now affluent Chinese fleeing Hong Kong settle there bringing their money and skills with them and also making it one of the most diverse cities on the planet. (4) It is a huge entertainment hub. It's the cultural capital of Canada. It has a respectable the media, art and at one time (20 plus years ago) had a growing fashion presence in N.A. It surpassed Chicago as the third largest city in N.A. last year.

With all of Toronto's assets I believe Chicago has the advantage, when it comes to people visiting, being blown away or impressed, and staying on the minds of visitors long after they have left. Architecturally, Toronto falls way behind Chicago and many other cities in N.A. This is why I have come to believe that while supertalls are great to have they don't make great, unforgettable cities. A walk down Michigan Avenue simply blow most people away. Our Lakefront and LSD have the same effect on visitors and residents too.

[begratto]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

Undoubtedly because of their low, low taxes.

Toronto's construction boom (Montreal is having one that's even more puzzling) is, as I understand it, largely the result of Canadian immigration law. Immigrants can get Canadian citizenship if they show a certain amount of job-creating investment, and building construction is one of the easiest ways to do that.

What's puzzling about Montreal's construction boom? Montreal's economy is doing quite well, and the city receives 45K immigrants per year, which is more than US cities that are much bigger.

2016 immigration numbers (from this post)

1. New York: 195,593
2. Los Angeles: 88,743 (together with Riverside, it would be 105,302, retaining its position as 2nd)
3. Miami: 88,651
4. Toronto: 81,375
5. Montreal: 44,235
6. Washington: 40,642
7. Chicago: 39,749
8. Houston: 37,777
9. San Francisco: 36,476 (together with San Jose, it would be 56,266, placing the Bay Area 5th, ahead of Montreal but behind Toronto)
10. Dallas: 33,605
11. Vancouver: 29,715
12. Boston: 28,677
13. Atlanta: 23,620
14. Calgary: 21,435
15. Seattle: 20,582
16. San Jose: 19,790
17. Philadelphia: 19,318
18. San Diego: 18,690
19. Edmonton: 17,885
20. Riverside: 16,559

[left of center]

Originally Posted by urbanpln

And to add to that. (1) it is a growing financial center (it may passed Chicago in importance and size already).

Not sure about that, unless you consider the TSX to be of more importance than the CME/CBOE.

Originally Posted by urbanpln

Architecturally, Toronto falls way behind Chicago and many other cities in N.A. This is why I have come to believe that while supertalls are great to have they don't make great, unforgettable cities. A walk down Michigan Avenue simply blows most people away. Our Lakefront and LSD has the same affect on visitor and residents too.

I haven't been to Toronto, but I have been to other cities where slab concrete residential dominates, so I am in agreement with this. Chicago has a better urban fabric in this regard, in the same way that Toronto won't ever be able to replicate the charm of older Canadian cities such as Montreal and Quebec City.

That being said, from what I've seen (have done a lot of research on Toronto the last few days!) it seems that the new crop of Toronto high rises has vastly improved even from a few years ago, which will hopefully begin to 'lighten' up its skyline so to speak, ala the new towers in River North starting to cover up the concrete puke that went up in the mid 00's.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by 10023

...
And they're going to need to stiff public pension holders. A massive haircut is the only way. Pass a constitutional amendment, give everyone 50 cents on the dollar (perhaps above a low minimum threshold like $50k in total pension value). And then do away with public employee pensions entirely, and have state employees participate in Social Security instead. You can only get one or the other, and so the existence of pensions is just voluntarily shifting the obligation from the federal government to the state, which is insanity.

I agree that Illinois will have to allow for the adjustment of pensions visa a constitutional amendment, however I disagree with the idea of "stiffing" pensioners. A very large portion of the pension "debt" isn't debt in the normal meaning of the word, but rather a calculation of monies needed to meet pension obligations as projected. Given that, a big chunk of that debt would just go away by limiting the COLA increases baked into pension payments. Part of the reason the pension numbers increased is that we had over a decade of time where inflation was historically low, yet COLA increases for pensions were guaranteed to be 3% or more. There is no world where COLA increases on pensions being higher than the rate of inflation can be considered fair to taxpayers. I don't have the numbers needed to calculate this for certain, but I think a constitutional amendment with three changes would dramatically reduce the problem:

1) Going back to the year 2000, all pensions should have COLA retroactively capped at the higher of inflation or 3%. For pensioners whose current payments are higher than they would be with those retroactive calculations, their increases would be stopped until their payments were in line with what the retroactive calculations would have made them.

2) All State and local pensions should be combined and limited at, say, $100,000. Perhaps this could exclude certain job titles like doctors, but they, too, should have some max limit. So no one could receive $75,000 from a local pension and $75,000 from a state pension. Instead they would receive, at most, $50,000 from each.

3) All future pensions would be required to be fully funded in the year they are given credit for. In other words, any contract promising a pension would need to have monies for that pension budgeted and paid in each year that counts toward pension awards - if they are not, the law would be that that year would not count toward pension entitlements. So, unions would strike immediately if their pension wasn't funded that year because they would know immediately that the state or local government was ripping them off, and the problem would be addressed immediately instead of being kicked down the road indefinitely.

Just those three things would dramatically reduce the current and future needs of the pension system, without huge hits to current or near pensioners.

[the urban politician]

The whole direction skyscraper construction has turned, with Asian, Middle Eastern, and Canadian cities completely blowing away American ones with highrise construction in sheer volumes, gets me increasingly feeling that we are simply looking at things the wrong way.

Despite Chicago’s history, wealth, and iconic importance it can’t possibly keep up with these places, despite the fact that the highrise was co-invented here, and that for most of modern history it was one of the predominant skyscraper capitals.

But we will never win this volume game. We simply need to measure our success with a new type of yardstick. I don’t know what that is.

Old European capitals must’ve felt this way 100-150 years ago when looking at American boomtowns.

[maru2501]

we are becoming a boutique business city that will have more in common with SF

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by urbanpln

It surpassed Chicago as the third largest city in N.A. last year.

I assume you mean fourth largest city, can't forget about Mexico City...

With all of Toronto's assets I believe Chicago has the advantage, when it comes to people visiting, being blown away or impressed, and staying on the minds of visitors long after they have left. Architecturally, Toronto falls way behind Chicago and many other cities in N.A. This is why I have come to believe that while supertalls are great to have they don't make great, unforgettable cities. A walk down Michigan Avenue simply blow most people away. Our Lakefront and LSD have the same effect on visitors and residents too.

Yeah, the lakefront is just a spectacular urban ensemble that never fails to wow me. It truly feels like a visionary plan that was executed on a gargantuan scale - which it was, in a way that possibly no other American city can match. (NY comes close with Central and Riverside Park) But I don't see us really building on that legacy. We've spruced up some corners of Grant Park at tremendous cost, but the Riverwalk is really the only truly-new, significant public space we've added.

Here's hoping Lincoln Yards can be a leader in planning and landscape like Toronto's Port Lands or Vancouver's False Creek.