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Chicago Hope: The Windy City offers an ideal urban model
Dallas Hansen
Saturday, March 25, 2006, p. a17
LAST Saturday, as my girlfriend and I emerged from the Apple computer
store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, the sidewalks were buzzing with
talk of a looming anti-war protest. As we rounded the corner onto Oak
Street, a massive crowd began marching toward us chanting, whistling,
waving signs and banners. For the next quarter hour we sat on a stoop,
watching the spectacle of thousands of protesters walking past, and it
struck me that even if so many Chicagoans dislike their country's
foreign policy, they do love their city's downtown.
Although I had other business in Chicago, one of my intentions was to
see what The Windy City has in common with the Chicago of the North.
Certainly Winnipeg's Union Bank Tower, Lindsay Building, Electric
Railway Chambers Building, and the Paris Building are scaled-down
versions of the scores of original-era Chicago-style buildings that
abound within Chicago's downtown loop. But what impressed me more than
the vestiges of a bygone architectural era were how scaled and
sympathetic new buildings were to their surroundings. Usually brick
exterior, they tend to follow a classic formula that has worked to
enliven the downtowns of so many cities: ground-level storefront,
second-floor offices, and anywhere from four to 18 storeys of apartment
dwellings.
There is no reason why Winnipeg shouldn't seize upon this winning
formula. Obviously Winnipeg is a fraction of Chicago's size, but we
should certainly aim to mimic its urban successes on our own scale. No
one's suggesting we build to the scale of Hancock Center or the Sears
Tower; depending on the street, five, seven, 10, or 15 storeys will do
fine. Winnipeg already has many buildings of 15 stories or higher.
Rather than spreading out to the Perimeter and beyond, it would make
sense to restore not only densities lost in the latter half of the 20th
century, but to build even more densely than we did in the streetcar
era, thus adding to our tax base without having to expand services such
as roads, sewers, garbage collection, snow removal, street cleaning,
etc. It's possible, indeed desirable, to add another 250,000 people
into Winnipeg's pre-1970 boundaries.
And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Blue West Construction, a condo
development firm, has illustrated plans for the southwest corner of
Main Street and Bannatyne Avenue that would see an existing
three-storey heritage building incorporated into a seven-storey
storefront-condo building. After a few hundred similar projects,
downtown Winnipeg would seem much more like Chicago, at least as much
as it did in 1920.
Chicago, too, has made its mistakes. Many of its new mixed-use
buildings are taking the place of parking lots and strip malls that
took the place of devalued buildings in the modernist era.
Cabrini-Green, a giant housing project that epitomized the failure of
public housing in America, has been mostly torn down for mixed-use
buildings and new townhouses built in a traditional Chicago style.
Peripheral downtown streets feature close, detached houses of various
classic styles that could've been built in 1896 or 1996.
All this would be impossible without the services of the Chicago
Transit Authority, whose subway and elevated rapid transit stations
feed thousands from every station each day, sparing any need for
automobile storage. Rapid transit alone is the difference between
bustling, prosperous Chicago and desolate, failing Detroit.
Wicker Park, a neighbourhood on Chicago's northwest side, was when I
visited it last a decade ago rather rundown by comparison to today.
Many of its buildings were abandoned, its storefronts filled with such
services as pawn shops. Artists and bohemians moved in and
gentrification followed, so that today Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park
is lined with upscale boutiques, friendly watering holes, and trendy
hair salons, in addition to the usual sorts of services, such as drug
and grocery stores, that neighbourhood residents need. Above the
storefronts are newly renovated lofts. Chain outfits such as 7-Eleven
and Best Buy move into the ground level at the sidewalk rather than box
stores with parking lots.
For all its walkability, Chicago is still friendly to the motorist. The
main objective of this trip was to pick up a used car purchased via the
Internet. Although parking was scarce outside our hotel in the
northside neighbourhood of Wrigleyville, I did find a spot on the
street overnight and area residents with a neighbourhood parking permit
would have no trouble. A similar permit plan would benefit Winnipeg's
downtown and inner city residents with nowhere to park but on the
street -- yet constantly inconvenienced by parking restrictions.
Winnipeg would do well to strive to become known again as the Chicago
of the North. Neither Calgary nor Edmonton could ever pull it off.
Category: Editorial and Opinions
Uniform subject(s): Real estate industry
Length: Medium, 644 words
2006 Winnipeg Free Press. All rights reserved.
dallashansen.com
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