Chicago Rapid Transit

The CTA last week announced plans to extend three of its existing rapid transit lines. The Red Line would be extended south to 130th Street. The Orange Line would be extended south to the Ford City Shopping Center. Finally the Yellow Line, formerly known as the Skokie Swift, would be extended north to just west of Old Orchard Shopping Center.

From an extremely unscientific survey I made the other day judging from internet comments, it seems that the folks along the two south side lines welcomed the extensions while those up in Skokie for the most part opposed the project. This could be due to the fact that the Yellow Line extension would be built closer to existing homes and businesses while the other two lines would be built in relatively undeveloped areas. A couple of north siders even suggested that the Yellow Line extension would bring crime along with it.

The haves vs. have nots factor could also account for the difference in attitude as the south side has traditionally been bereft of rapid transit service. The Red Line extension for the first time would extend the L all the way to the city's south limits. It would also hopefully be a shot in the arm for development along the transit corridor, as the construction of the elevated line to Howard Street a century ago was to the Edgewater and Rogers Park neighborhoods on the far north side. The same could be said for the Orange Line extension, although it would not extend to the city limits as would the Red Line.

Another excellent post from the Urbanophile can be found here. It suggests that while these projects indeed have merit, they should be integrated into a far more comprehensive, Burnham, "make no little plans" style plan that would include major renovations and extensions, some practical, others perhaps not. The idea would be to bring the issue of public mass transportation to the forefront by including the entire city.

I couldn't agree more. Big plans for the future of the city are a far more fitting tribute to the legacy of the Burnham Plan than the two insignificant temporary pavilions by (St)archchitects Zaha Hadid and Ben van Berkel which are currently on view at Millennium Park.

I think the time is right to plan big in terms of public transportation in the city. In that vein I think the south side is the place to start by conceiving plans for a light rail system. If the Olympics come to Chicago, the opportunity will be right at our doorstep.

Let's not drop the ball.

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Chicago Rapid Transit

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http://guidice-galleries.blogspot.com/2009/08/chicago-rapid-transit.html

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A magnificent drive

As anyone who has visited Chicago in recent years has discovered, automobile traffic has become a nightmare. It's not unusual to find oneself in a traffic jam at any hour, day or night. Sometimes weekends are the worst, especially during summer when festivities may occur every few blocks or so. Such was the case this weekend with the Lollapalooza music festival downtown, the Bud Billiken Parade on the south side, a couple of White Sox games, a Bears public workout at Soldier Field, and countless parades and neighborhood festivals. Such is the life of a vital city.

This afternoon we decided to brave the traffic and visit the Hyde Park Art Center, basically at the other end of the city from where we live. The Center was terrific, if you're there in the next couple of weeks be sure to check out a wonderful site specific piece by my friend Glenn Wexler in one of the stairwells. We met up with some friends at a kids' art workshop, then had the best gelato and espresso in town at Istria Café, adjacent to the Center.

Then came the question of getting home. I convinced my hot and tired family that the best way was to avoid going through the Loop in favor of unquestionably the best drive in the city, the Boulevard System. I have lots of experience with the boulevards as I spent several years documenting them and the parks (with very few exceptions, the most significant in the city) that they connect.

Contrary to popular belief, the ring (actually a horseshoe) of tree lined boulevards that connect Jackson, Washington, Sherman, Gage and McKinley Parks on the South Side, and Douglas, Garfield and Humboldt Parks on the West Side, was not the result of the Burnham Plan. In fact the system predates the plan by several decades, most of it was planned and realized well before the Great Fire of 1871. The boulevards originally surrounded the city limits and were speculative developments designed to encourage people to move out to what were at the time the suburbs. Magnificent homes, apartment buildings, public sculpture, and places of education and worship were built along the boulevards. They became among the most fashionable addresses in the city.

Today many of the boulevards run through the most challenged neighborhoods of the city. The drive is at times hit and miss as many of the buildings that once graced the system are long gone, replaced either with ramshackle vernacular structures or worse, vacant lots. Yet very many magnificent buildings survive. With a little creativity one can imagine what was there, and even better, what could be. It is encouraging to see bits and pieces of new development even in the most difficult areas.

I have to say that in the eight or so years since I wrapped up the Park/Boulevard Project, there have been a number of improvements, along with a few setbacks. The city does seem to be committed to the boulevards, to a greater extent I think than is realized by the general public. The landscape architecture of Jens Jensen , Frederick Law Olmsted and his sons among others has gained new appreciation. Their work is beginning to be returned to its former glory after many years of neglect. Unfortunately not all the users of the parks share this apprecation and continue to carry on their slovenly ways. The same can be said of the parkways along the boulevards which are looking better than they have in years, save for the bad behavior of a handful of people.

Given all that, Chicago's parks and boulevards are urban treasures that need to be taken care of, by and for us, and for future generations.

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A magnificent drive

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Another side of the Burnham Plan

When we think of the Burnham Plan we think of what it bought to the urban environment, the City Beautiful movement, Michigan Avenue and the lakefront, practically everything we value in this city as good and true. We don't think of suburban sprawl and all the destructive elements that were brought about by the rise of the automobile. Yet Burnham was a great advocate of the automobile as an invention that brought liberation to the "multitudes of people who formerly were condemned to pass their entire time in the city."

In the latest post of The Urbanophile, Aaron M. Renn writes about the machine that Burnham saw as beneficial to development of the urban landscape and how we are coping now for better and worse with those ideas.

A must read.

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Another side of the Burnham Plan

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http://guidice-galleries.blogspot.com/2009/07/another-side-of-burnham-plan.html

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Old Post Office

Just heard that the Old Post Office Building by Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, (originally built in 1921 and greatly expanded in the 30's) that straddles the Eisenhower Expressway between Clinton and Canal Streets is up for auction. I have to suspend my perhaps misguided admiration for buildings built before 1950 on this one. While it has some nice Art Deco details, it's a behemoth that creates a most un-welcome terminus to the view of the city to the west.

It's construction forever put the kibosh on the centerpiece the Burnham Plan, namely the Congress Street east-west axis of the city, and the focal point of the entire plan, a magnificent (if somewhat over-bearing), Beaux-Arts civic center at the intersection with Halsted Street. This is ironic since G.A.P.&W. was the successor firm to Burnham's.

Once that became a fait accompli, it was a mere twenty years before the construction of the Expressway which necessitated the widening of Congress Street east of the Post Office building all the way to Buckingham Fountain. This was arguably one of the most devastating blows to the city in terms of its architecture as it wiped out several buildings as well as the first floor storefronts of the Auditorium building and the Congress Hotel. It also irrevocably altered Congress Plaza at Michigan Ave. separating Ivan Mestrovic's two great equestrian statues, Spearman and Bowman. Here is the plaza as it looks today:












There have been numerous attempts to find an alternate use for the past several years but given the magnitude and the current economic climate, nothing has panned out.

I doubt there will be a strong move from preservationists to save it but I could be wrong.

Personally I wouldn't be sad to see it go although it is still kind of cool to drive through the center of the building to have the city open up to you.

Bids open up at just 300K, just a tad more than our condo.

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Old Post Office

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http://guidice-galleries.blogspot.com/2009/06/old-post-office.html

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Re-thinking urban streets

Good Magazine has published the winners of its "Design a Livable Street" contest. The concept was to start with a photo of a street scene, presumably in the contestant's own area, and present improvements using PhotoShop that would make the street more user-friendly. In other words pedestrian friendly, not car friendly.

This is quite timely as New York has just closed portions of Times and Herald Squares off to vehicular traffic.

While I'm a big advocate of foot, two wheeled and public transportation over the four wheeled motorized variety, I'm a bit skeptical of re-designing urban streets that have served the purpose of balancing the transportation needs of all of the above quite well for in most cases over a century.

The suburban street scene is quite another story of course.

The obvious example in Chicago is the failed State Street Mall which was mercifully returned to a traditional street in the 90's. You can read more about it in an earlier post here.

The conceptual problem with the SSM beyond its design flaws, was that the reduction of the width of the street (which increased traffic density even though private vehicles were prohibited), combined with widened sidewalks reduced the over-all density of foot traffic on the street. While at the outset, the number of pedestrians on State Street remained consistent, the lower density gave the perception that the area was in decline. City centers thrive on density. That decline became a self-fulfilling prophesy as what was once the commercial heart of the city became a virtual a ghost town.

But getting back to the contest, the entrants included in their designs, bike lanes, crosswalks, streetcars, the removal of billboards, and best of all, lots of attractive people enjoying their stroll through the once bleak city-scape. (Clicking on an entry brings the viewer to an interactive before and after view). No one seems to be going to work or engaged in otherwise unpleasant activities. All the unpleasantness has been PhotoShopped out.


The scenes presented by the contestants all seemed fine enough if not a little boring. There was a particular sameness in all of the entries. All hints of sense of place also seemed edited out.

For example, billboards to me are not particularly offensive, they add color and life to the streetscape.

And while I love the idea of bringing back streetcars, their efficacy as an eco-friendly, cost effective transportation alternative is debatable.



Strangely enough given the fact that the bicycle is my primary means of transportation, I save my biggest reservation for bike lanes. Setting aside specific lanes for bicycles gives motorists the idea that bike traffic should be limited to those lanes and that cyclists should stay off streets with no bike lanes. It has always been my contention that we cyclists are better off with fewer concessions from government. If we ask for fewer concessions, then fewer concessions are demanded of us, or so the argument goes.


If I am skeptical of all this, it is because of all the well meaning, grand visions of city planning that I've seen over my years. What works well on paper and in images does not always translate to real life. To me what is fascinating about cities is the way they come together through happenstance, the flow of everyday life that plays out on the streets. Big plans don't always save room for small details where most of the life of cities resides. Momentous and far reaching as the Burnham Plan was, I think we are better off that much of the Plan was never realized.


Still I applaud the efforts, I may take a stab at reconstructing a Chicago street. Up where I live, Western Avenue between Howard and Touhy needs some work. Stay tuned!

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Re-thinking urban streets

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http://guidice-galleries.blogspot.com/2009/05/re-thinking-urban-streets.html

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