Learning from Chicago
I’m developing a hypothesis that the neighborhood around Lincoln Square is the way mankind was meant to live. This is the classic three-story city: leafy streets with small multi-unit walkups and up / down duplexes with short setbacks, no side yards, and just enough room at the back for a tiny yard and a garage. Archetypal Germantown Chicago, just dense enough to be walking distance from transit and the obligatory coffee house and ethnic restaurants. The vast expanse stretching from the Gold Coast to Evanston remains one of the most fascinating urban districts that I know. Is it Southern California beautiful? No. Is it Highland Park clean? No. Is it West (Greenwich) Village interesting? No. It is, however, real.
Here one gets the sense that this is a real, legitimate, possible urban city. Sort of the density that one arrives at by default once all of the older concentrated areas are gentrified and the initial suburban districts are built-up. This is the Old Urbanism that the New Urbanists are drooling to recreate. My only question is the logistical how. So much of the city is the artifact of a concentration of skilled labor and low relative wages. The intricate masonry and woodwork (surprisingly in combination), the real materials, the naturally ventilated rows gentrified into using every available square foot of available outdoor space. I shudder to think of the replacement cost for a street like Leland Avenue.
Yet, it’s surprisingly affordable. This little piece of heaven should command Manhattan rents, but is priced more like the better parts of Dallas. Wage deflation? Perhaps. More probably a lack of middle-aged, dual-earner families and their school-age children. It always strikes me that in a really interesting neighborhood in almost any American city how I see young adults, the elderly, and infants in strollers (lots of those) but almost never pre-teen and teenage children. Maybe it’s just my anecdotal experience, but I really think it runs deeper than that. The way public schools are organized, added to a few parenting neuroses, is almost a recipe for single-demographic districts and ever-newer development. The Warrens’ Two Income Trap still remains the best description of this phenomenon I’ve seen.
Two things are really odd here: The first is how a seemingly-unrelated idea like public school allotment determines so much – well – architecture. The second is that these places always seem to be totally functioning and fantastic or squalid slums, quite often with the exact same original building stock. (I’m thinking not only North and South Chicago, but also the eerie similarity of ultra-tony University Park and we-don’t-speak-English-here-anymore Oak Cliff in Dallas.) It’s almost enough to make a guy quit the profession and become an economist.
A final all-too-appropriate note: The closing paragraph of Witold Rybczynski’s eulogy for Jane Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities) in Slate. Rest in peace Jane.
That vision of the urban good life had wide appeal, but the supply of old cities that offered the requisite mix of street life, architecture, and diversity was limited. The lively city districts that Jacobs championed, including her beloved Village, have become exclusive enclaves, closed to all but the extremely wealthy. She always considered the amenities of city life to be everyday and widely available goods. Little could she have imagined then that they would become luxuries instead.
- Witold Rybczynski – Slate, April 26, 06
Here one gets the sense that this is a real, legitimate, possible urban city. Sort of the density that one arrives at by default once all of the older concentrated areas are gentrified and the initial suburban districts are built-up. This is the Old Urbanism that the New Urbanists are drooling to recreate. My only question is the logistical how. So much of the city is the artifact of a concentration of skilled labor and low relative wages. The intricate masonry and woodwork (surprisingly in combination), the real materials, the naturally ventilated rows gentrified into using every available square foot of available outdoor space. I shudder to think of the replacement cost for a street like Leland Avenue.
Yet, it’s surprisingly affordable. This little piece of heaven should command Manhattan rents, but is priced more like the better parts of Dallas. Wage deflation? Perhaps. More probably a lack of middle-aged, dual-earner families and their school-age children. It always strikes me that in a really interesting neighborhood in almost any American city how I see young adults, the elderly, and infants in strollers (lots of those) but almost never pre-teen and teenage children. Maybe it’s just my anecdotal experience, but I really think it runs deeper than that. The way public schools are organized, added to a few parenting neuroses, is almost a recipe for single-demographic districts and ever-newer development. The Warrens’ Two Income Trap still remains the best description of this phenomenon I’ve seen.
Two things are really odd here: The first is how a seemingly-unrelated idea like public school allotment determines so much – well – architecture. The second is that these places always seem to be totally functioning and fantastic or squalid slums, quite often with the exact same original building stock. (I’m thinking not only North and South Chicago, but also the eerie similarity of ultra-tony University Park and we-don’t-speak-English-here-anymore Oak Cliff in Dallas.) It’s almost enough to make a guy quit the profession and become an economist.
A final all-too-appropriate note: The closing paragraph of Witold Rybczynski’s eulogy for Jane Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities) in Slate. Rest in peace Jane.
That vision of the urban good life had wide appeal, but the supply of old cities that offered the requisite mix of street life, architecture, and diversity was limited. The lively city districts that Jacobs championed, including her beloved Village, have become exclusive enclaves, closed to all but the extremely wealthy. She always considered the amenities of city life to be everyday and widely available goods. Little could she have imagined then that they would become luxuries instead.
- Witold Rybczynski – Slate, April 26, 06
posted by KP | 27.4.06
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home