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But by European standards, Chicago is a small city of about 100,000 people surrounded by an enormous commuter town.
by mortehu 10y ago
But by European standards, Chicago is a small city of about 100,000 people surrounded by an enormous commuter town.
- kasey_junk 10y agoWhich standards would those be?
- kuschku 10y agoThe standards of the "City" ending where you go from city style buildings (multiple people per building, density high enough that it’s fully walkable, etc) to suburban or rural style buildings (seperate, one or two family homes, unusable by foot)
- tptacek 10y agoChicago is one of the most walkable cities in the country. Moreover, the stuff people actually want to go to --- the various bar and restaurant districts, &c --- are in the residential north side of the city, not downtown, which basically shuts down at 6PM. Almost every neighborhood in the city has a mix of freestanding single family homes, townhouses and 3-flats, and dense apartment buildings.
- bbarn 10y agoAre most other big cities like the loop after business hours? I'm always shocked at how deserted it is on weekends, and evenings aside from the odd theatre traffic.
- kuschku 10y agoMost big cities after business hours are full of life, full of people out going to bars, clubs, other events, etc. If you go outside in the downtown of most 200k+ cities, on any normal day, you’ll find lots of people there. On the other hand, the residential suburbs will be dead.
- dionidium 10y agoThis isn't true in the U.S. Downtowns all across the country are dead at night.
- kuschku 10y agoWell, I can’t really compare – I’ve never been in the US. But I’m gonna assume the relaxed zoning in the EU, and the resulting mix of commercial, residential, and offices, often even in the same building, leads to the people having a reason to go downtown.
- kasey_junk 10y agoThats part of it, the other part is simple market economics. It is hard for the things that people want to do at night (clubs, art galleries, restaurants and bars) which are much lower margin businesses to compete with the large financial and governmental institutions that dominate places like the Chicago loop, lower Manhattan or downtown Dallas. These leads to a pretty common pattern where just outside of the financial/governmental centers of US cities there exist neighborhoods that are mixes of residential, cafe's, nightlife, "creative businesses" or retail. For instance, the Chicago loop is literally surrounded by such places. But the lack of activity in a financial district has very little correlation to the density of the city. Manhattan is obviously a walkable and dense place to live but lower manhattan (wall street) can feel down right empty after hours. I have much less experience in European cities, but my experience in Dublin, Amsterdam and Frankfort are not much different than this.
- kuschku 10y ago> I have much less experience in European cities, but my experience in Dublin, Amsterdam and Frankfort are not much different than this. I only visited cities which don’t really have high-margin businesses, so that’s maybe why I never noticed that.
- Memph 10y agoI don't think it's so much the financial uses pushing out restaurants and retail but rather housing that's being pushed out. In Toronto the Financial District doesn't go completely dead, but the 4million square foot underground mall shuts down, and it's just a few ground level businesses that stay open. It's still more lively at night than the typical suburb, but not as bustling as the adjacent neighbourhoods or as the Financial District during the day when there 200,000 office workers there (vs just a few thousand tourists and residents within walking distance at night). From what I heard it's not as dead at night as the Chicago loop.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kasey_junk 10y agoI don't know about most, but downtown Manhattan is very similar at night. Some places like downtown Dallas are even more empty.
- kasey_junk 10y agoI live in a neighborhood of 25k people in Chicago that precisely matches that standard. It is surrounded on 3 sides by similar neighborhoods (and a lake on the other). Those style neighborhoods are the norm in Chicago. Further, there are many Chicago suburbs that match that description.
- rayiner 10y agoTo pick a random European city, let's compare Chicago to Amsterdam: http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.com/2015/01/amsterdam-area-weighted-density.html http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.com/2015/01/amsterdam-area.... Amsterdam's metro region has about 670,000 people living in neighborhoods above 20,000 people per square mile. Chicago has between 1.1-1.3 million people (twice as many) living at that density or higher: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Z3ai_T6K_40/T4I6B9akQDI/AAAAAAAABVY/1oC7ttvR06o/s800/new%2520york%2520city%2520and%2520chicago.png https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Z3ai_T6K_40/T4I6B9akQDI/A.... It's actually more than that, because this data excludes satellite cities, which the Amsterdam figure above includes. Another point of comparison. Chicago the city has 2.7 million people at about the same weighted density (19k/sq-mi) as the Amsterdam metro, which has 1.7 million people. EDIT: these are not my charts. They're from this thread: http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=198004 http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=198004.
- yompers888 10y agoThose cumulative density charts for population density are the best representation I've ever seen of that stat. Did you make those charts?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Memph 10y agoChicago has 1.12 million people living in census tracts above 20,000 people per square mile, the satellite cities are more in the 10-15k/sq mi range. http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.ca/2014/03/toronto-and-chicago-density-comparison.html http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.ca/2014/03/toronto-and-chi... Chicago quickly drops off past the 20k/sq-mi range too, which is basically typical rowhouse density. It only has 88,000 people living in >50k/sq-mi census tracts, mostly stretched out along the northern waterfront. Amsterdam has almost twice as many at 162,330. Amsterdam isn't even that dense by European standards, although Swiss cities are probably similar. The densest cities are in southern Europe, ex Valencia has about 800,000 residents over 20k/sq-mi, and 400,000 residents living at 50k/sq-mi densities and it's not even a big city. https://chartingtransport.com/2015/11/26/comparing-the-densities-of-australian-and-european-cities/ https://chartingtransport.com/2015/11/26/comparing-the-densi... But back to the original point... Chicago has fairly dense areas within a short commute of downtown - but those mostly have 2-3 flats and bigger apartments, and the few single family homes are quite expensive. For more affordable SFHs with a decent school and crime situation, I think you'd have to go to neighbourhoods that would be considered "suburbs" by European standards even if they're within city limits. San Francisco is even more expense, the better neighbourhoods have SFHs at $2m+. More far flung areas like Sunset would be more like $1m which is still not exactly cheap and it's getting to be a long commute (40-50min each way by transit).