After many requests, I’ve started a gallery of photos of big-box retailers that have made a worthy attempt to fit into Chicago’s urban fabric. Many big boxes claim that they simply can’t have doors opening out onto the sidewalk, that they need to have a moat of parking out in front. That’s nonsense, especially in locations where many people arrive on foot, on transit, or on bikes. If you demand different designs, you’ll get them — and credit goes to the Department of Planning and Development for doing just that.

The gallery will be updated as I take more shots. Rumor has it that the new ex-Ward’s, now-Target at Addison and California (another fragment of the old Riverside streetcar-company amusement park) is a multi-level store; the recent sub-zero temperatures have sapped my wherewithal to snap photos so far.

The new store is just a mile away from the highest-grossing Target in the chain, at Logan, Elston, and Western. The multi-level Target on Colorado in Pasadena was also a conversion of an old department store (Broadway? Bullocks?), as is the Wal-Mart at Crenshaw Plaza in Los Angeles. One of Target’s first ground-up multi-level stores is on Nicollet Mall, the transit mall in downtown Minneapolis; it’s part of the corporate headquarters. The store under construction at Roosevelt and Clark will have one level, a corner entrance, and structured parking.

With Wilson Yard, Target will join a growing number of boxes that have moved past the riverside industrial corridors and onto the walkable commercial streets. Home Depot opened its first multilevel store there; the Brooklyn mini-Home Depot is in a strip center and has only a token mezzanine. Best Buy and Circuit City also took ground-floor, sidewalk-fronting spaces last year.

One reason why these chains are willing to adapt, besides (relatively) progressive management, is that the demographics of the market are too hard to resist. The new Target is within five miles of 1.5 million people — five or ten times more people than in the suburbs. (Typical population densities on the north side are about 20,000 per square mile.) The Home Depot on Halsted sits in a neighborhood where per-capita income is nearly twice the national norm. Retailers would be stupid not to jump through hoops to reach these customers. At the same time, it’s notable that these locations are not in downtown high-rises, but in real neighborhoods.

The desirable demographics are one reason why upmarket chains like Whole Foods Market have been leaders at adapting to gentrified urban environments. Whole Foods has opened two sidewalk-fronting stores here, with another under construction; similar designs are in Portland, Manhattan, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Austin, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Cambridge, and Baltimore.