A few years ago, when I worked on affordable housing policy, we (with Janet Smith of UIC) took a detailed look at Census, HMDA, abandonment, etc. figures for Chicago neighborhoods and came up with a “cluster” grouping of neighborhoods. The clusters weren’t really used in the final analysis, but they did make sense:
* a big chunk of the city was still stuck in decline, with high vacancy
* huge swaths of immigrant neighborhoods were economically healthy but suffered from overcrowding
* a few areas were (statistically) stable and balanced, but reports from the ground indicated impending gentrification
* some areas were undergoing rapid gentrification without new supply
* other areas were gentrifying, but adding supply that matched demand.

For-sale prices in the last three categories (there were seven, I’ve forgotten two) were all rising, with one exception: Chinatown, where prices were stable and indeed, fairly low. It turns out that lots of new housing was built in the 1990s. Light amounts of subsidies (TIF, 202, muni bonds) paid for infrastructure, senior housing, and community facilities, but most of the housing was built by local builders for community residents.

Earlier this year, a former coworker and I talked about Chinatown, and she found the other part of the picture: the financial ties that keep capital circulating through the neighborhood, and to a certain extent keep neighborhood property out of the hands of speculators on the general market. She wrote a neat article after that.

Similar reports from nearby Latino neighborhoods indicate that they’ve managed to avoid gentrification and keep housing affordable to working families through similar methods, keeping transactions within a local market, as opposed to the wider, Realtor-driven market.

And, for what it’s worth, the voluntary inclusionary policy in Chicago creates about 500 units a year out of 10,000 or so built every year. To ensure long-term affordability, individuals and communities can opt (perhaps partially) out of the market system of ever-inflating prices and into a system that views housing as a non-market good. Models like Community Land Trusts and limited equity cooperatives allow people to take their land, opt out of the market, and provide stable, low-cost, legal, no- or low-subsidy housing in perpetuity. The key is to enter the neighborhood at the right moment: before the big run-up of land values that accompanies gentrification (which often roughly coincides with the neighborhood’s debut on the MLS).

(posted to urbanists)

“Pedestrian friendly… lively” in “some places”:http://www.rosemont.com/rosemont_walk.shtml means something like “half-mile walks”:http://www.rosemont.com/images/rw2.jpg through antiseptic tunnels alongside monstrous parking garages, protected right turn sleeves, little single-use pods, and criss-crossing high-speed arterials outlining superblocks. No thanks.

The CTA concourse at O’Hare has four pairs of moving walkways — two from Terminal 1 (north) to the station, and two from Terminal 3 (south) to the station. (Terminal 2 is nearly in front of the station.) Let’s number these A, B, C, and D, north to south. When rebuilding the walkways, crews could shut B & C or A & D, thereby leaving one walkway in service in either direction. But… no. Last winter, when I was on a bunch of American (Terminal 3) flights, C & D were closed. This spring, when I have a bunch of United flights, A & B are closed. “Sprinting across the vast plains of terrazzo,” as the AIA Guide puts it, is no fun.

‘City information’ kiosk

Originally uploaded by paytonc.

The JCDecaux people came through last week, years after finishing the bus shelter and newsbox installations, to add more useless advertising clutter to the sidewalks, under the guise of “city information.” (Hey guys, where are the public loos? the public bicycles? Or how about a deal with CTA, er, CDOT to help cover the cost of new subway elevator housings? And how come empty “newsstands” arrived years ago, while the old newsstands haven’t budged an inch?) Here at Dearborn & Washington, the billboard blocks some real city info — although a week later, that panel has vanished, while the billboard now “flips.”

Stateway’s swan song, an article by Antonio Olivo of oral histories of Stateway Gardens (with “accompanying multimedia slideshow”:http://chicagotribune.com/stateway ), included this succinct recollection of the rise and fall of CHA housing courtesy of Harold Woodridge, 64, a Stateway resident since 1959:

Sitting on his couch, he remembers when this portion of State Street was lined with clapboard shacks, a few markets and clothing stores. After Stateway Gardens opened in 1958, people were in awe of all that modernity and open space.

“You could sit on the grass and just enjoy yourself,” he says. “It was safe. Upstairs, people used to bring out their cots and sleep on the porch all night.”

But years of neglect by the Chicago Housing Authority eventually took their toll, Woolridge says.

“They didn’t do nothing to maintain the buildings. They didn’t even cut the grass. Before you knew it, [people] were selling drugs downstairs.”

Soon, as gun violence became rampant, residents learned the best way to survive was to look the other way.

“Nobody even trusts the police. The police snitch on you, telling the drug dealers you the one who gave them their information. Then, the gang is on you for telling. It got to be real bad.

“A few years back, the line for drugs downstairs would stretch 50 people. The dealers would walk up the line, keeping order, saying `Have your money out! Have it ready!’ Like they were having a department store sale.”

bq. This goes to the heart of Chicago’s glaring shortcoming: its failure to recognize that urban fabric is the lifeblood of all great cities. When I go to New York and walk around SoHo with its wealth of glorious industrial architecture, Greenwich Village with its intoxicating Left Bank ambience, and Brooklyn Heights with its picture-perfect blocks, I come back here and literally ask myself where is the city? What part of Chicago really lends itself to casual strolling? I think the best cities strike the right balance between architectural fabric and architectural monuments.

bq. It’s most unfortunate that Chicago has yet to learn what may be the most important architectural lesson of all: that great architecture is not enough. This is a city whose trophy buildings have become its consolation prizes.

— David Sikon, writing to the Chicago Tribune in response to a Kamin article citing the recent wave of bland cement boxes as one of “Chicago’s Seven Blunders”

Kristin Ostberg recently wrote an article for Chicago Journal on how Chinatown has quietly resisted gentrification (new link). The article partially arose out of conversations we had years ago while working on the Rehab Network’s Affordable Housing Factbook; it turns out that Chinatown, er, Armour Square is a complete statistical anomaly — growing economically, attracting new investment, adding proportionally many new units, but without an increase in housing stress (e.g., rising rents or overcrowding). Much of this success stems from recycling capital within the community, through informal and formal financial networks, “a circuit of reinvestment that has maintained Chinatown’s vitality through decades when neighboring communities declined.”

No one knows how long this little miracle can last, but it will probably last just long enough to withstand the current South Loop speculative bubble. Maybe that bubble, though, has helped to keep the pressure off Chinatown by pre-empting housing demand.

2017 update: WBEZ recently did a story about how Chinatown landlords typically use informal networks to recirculate apartments within the community.

Perhaps one reason why Haussmann-style diagonal boulevards never made it in Chicago is because Chicago (governed as we are by mayors, not an emperor) was unwilling to condemn and demolish enough of the old fabric. Paris demolished so much that the subdivisions could be re-platted into continuous buildable lots fronting the boulevards. In Chicago, newer diagonals like Ogden Extension never meshed into the built fabric and thus never built a constituency — the remnant lots lining them, if they were ever built, house only hot dog stands and garages.

Meanwhile, our diagonals have a way of disappearing under the grid. UIC knocked out a huge chunk of Blue Island. Clark once flowed into Rush. Parts of Kingsbury have reverted to dust over the years. Much of the Indian Boundary (Forest Preserve & Rogers) was probably never even paved before the grid arrived to then-new suburbs like West Ridge. Cottage Grove got sliced for Lake Meadows and the freeway between 24th and 33rd; a rump remnant, the saddest little street in all Chicago, ran from 24th Place (an access road along I-55) to a cul-de-sac just short of Cermak, fronted with an odd pile of abstract sculpture (the “dancing french fries”). It was lined solely with McPier parking lots, yet it had fresh bike lanes. Alas, it’s joined its fellow segments in urban renewal’s dustbin, subsumed by the colossal McCormick Place West.

Diagonal rail spurs, like the Seminary branch off the Lakewood line headed to Wrigley, also melt back into the grid when abandoned. Meanwhile, the old right angles of Lake Shore Drive’s S-curve live on as the Cancer Survivors’ Garden.

Apparently, _someone_ still uses Meetup.com: the New Urbanism & Sustainable Development Meetup Group No. 21 here boasts “85 Advocates of New Urbanism,” out of a worldwide population of over 1,000 who’ve expressed interest. Now I just need to figure out how to advertise CNU membership to these folks.

My distant relative Runyon “Runny” D. Banks was interviewed (very, very briefly) by “WGN-TV”:http://wgntv.trb.com/news/local/eveningnews at yesterday’s anti-war rally. A fuller report on the action, including links to other photos on Flickr, at the “B4B blog”:http://billionairesforbush.com/blog/node/view/652.

Josh Noel and Barbara Bell report in the Tribune that condo sales have started, among the first steps in the city’s ambitious “downtown plan”:http://www.cnu.org/about/index.cfm?formAction=project_view&templateInstanceID=818.

bq. [Developer John Bergeron] makes no apologies for the price of the units, despite what he called the “non-believers” who say enough buyers can’t be lured there. Anything is possible, he said, if the condos can project the North Shore’s image of affluence. “That’s the only way you’re going to be able to change the perception of Waukegan,” he said. “In a matter of a few years, you’re going to see an amazing transformation.”

bq. Among the skeptics is Skokie developer Chris Rintz of New England Developers, which built a 350-condominium development called HarborPark along the lakefront in Kenosha. The major difference between the two is price, he said. In Kenosha, about 20 miles north, units cost $80,000 to $300,000 and all look onto Lake Michigan. “Just because you can see the lake doesn’t mean you can charge North Shore prices,” Rintz said. “I don’t think Waukegan is significantly different from Kenosha.”

Not significantly different, but different enough: just two towns past the North Shore, and right in the middle of Illinois’ wealthiest county. Yes, $200-$900K is pretty rich and I’m not sure that Chicagoans are necessarily the right target market, but the North Shore as a whole is pretty starved for any multifamily product.

“Blair Kamin”:http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/arts/chi-0603040223mar05,1,7383557.story writes on “grit,” “soul,” whatever you want to call it, and its disappearance as cash sanitizes downtown:

bq. Now that we’ve figured out how to get people to invest in downtown, how do we maintain its diversity and vitality so it doesn’t become a sterile home for the super-rich? At issue is the survival of texture — the urban texture that makes cities endlessly fascinating, quirky, exotic and even a little wicked.

bq. You can see it along Ohio Street in an old narrow, four-story building wedged between the Michigan Avenue Gap store and the soon-to-be-demolished parking garage where Cambridge House occupied the ground floor, its green awning distracting the eye from the ugly garage. The little four-story building, which has a handsome facade of brick and stone ornament, packs more character than an entire vertical mall. First floor: an Armenian restaurant called Sayat Nova. Second floor: a dimly-lit gay bar. Third floor: an astrologer/psychic/tarot card reader, advertised by red neon signs and blue awnings. Fourth floor: an apartment occupied by the restaurant owner’s son.

Oddly, I’d been told about the Second Story Bar before but had never noticed it before the week before this article — when I happened to look up and see its ’70s-style lettering. A few days later, we stumbled in to find a tiny space (fire occupancy limit 36?), one of the few Chicago establishments that’s smaller than anything I’ve seen in New York. Perhaps expectedly, it’s pretty dive-y and cheap by downtown standards — and it will look so incredibly out of place once it’s squished between the Gap and the ice-queen glass condo box planned for the Cambridge House site.

(In this case, it’s small even compared to KGB, the tiny Stalin-themed bar in Greenwich Village where I first had a full bottle of beer — two months past 21 and I’d never moved past the wine list. Similarly, La Fontanella in Heart of Chicago almost matches the postage-stamp single-storefront spaces in the East Village, although I haven’t brought out any measuring tape yet.)

Kamin continues:

bq. Resolving messy urban vitality and architectural grandeur is an eternal challenge… But in the end, character can’t be manufactured or legislated or drawn up in some architectural recipe book. It comes from a long-simmering intermingling between a building and the human activity that goes on inside it.

In other words, it takes time to make things messy. Anything new, whether wine or landscape or “fabric”:http://latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jeans28feb28,0,4711785,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines, will inevitably be a bit too clean and fussy; it takes years of layering to develop complex flavors and subtle distinctions in both New Wine and New Urbanism.