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The Gold Coast in Chicago is a particularly good example. It's Chicago's most prime real estate, preferred by celebrities and high powered executives. Yet it's

The Gold Coast in Chicago is a particularly good example. It's Chicago's most prime real estate, preferred by celebrities and high powered executives. Yet it's cheap enough that most people here could live there in a studio or 1br on a code monkey salary and have plenty to spend left over. This is because Chicago allows supply to meet demand, and has the Manhattan-like neighborhood of the Gold Coast in a city without nearly as much as housing demand as the real Manhattan. (Also, the Gold Coast is way nicer for reasons the parent post talks about.)

rayiner 14y ago
The thing I love about Chicago is its design reflects a deeply midwestern sensibility. Illinois is plain, flat land. Chicago isn't an island (MFH), or on a peninsula (SF), or sandwiched between two rivers (PHL). They could've sprawled, but instead they built this compact downtown, because it was orderly. The town my wife grew up in in rural Iowa has less than 2,000 people. Yet, it's got this perfect 10x8 little street grid. Why? The town founders didn't want the layout to be disorderly in case the town ever became a huge city.
- tanzam75 14y ago
  Often, it reflects the age of the town. Grid layouts were very common from the mid-19th century to about World War II. For example, Boston's colonial-era city center is a mess, but Back Bay and Cambridgeport are an orderly grid, and the postwar suburbs outside Route 128 are sprawl. A city like Chicago did not exist in 1776, and so it has a more orderly downtown. There's also a certain path-dependence at work. Western states were also laid out in a rectangular grid by federal land surveys, and thus arterial roads often fell on the boundaries. Subdivisions, however, can be much messier, depending on when they were developed and what the developer felt like doing. Compare Seattle (prewar) to its outer suburbs across the lake (postwar). Or inner Phoenix (prewar) to outer Phoenix (postwar).

rayiner 14y ago

The thing I love about Chicago is its design reflects a deeply midwestern sensibility. Illinois is plain, flat land. Chicago isn't an island (MFH), or on a peninsula (SF), or sandwiched between two rivers (PHL). They could've sprawled, but instead they built this compact downtown, because it was orderly. The town my wife grew up in in rural Iowa has less than 2,000 people. Yet, it's got this perfect 10x8 little street grid. Why? The town founders didn't want the layout to be disorderly in case the town ever became a huge city.

tanzam75 14y ago
Often, it reflects the age of the town. Grid layouts were very common from the mid-19th century to about World War II. For example, Boston's colonial-era city center is a mess, but Back Bay and Cambridgeport are an orderly grid, and the postwar suburbs outside Route 128 are sprawl. A city like Chicago did not exist in 1776, and so it has a more orderly downtown. There's also a certain path-dependence at work. Western states were also laid out in a rectangular grid by federal land surveys, and thus arterial roads often fell on the boundaries. Subdivisions, however, can be much messier, depending on when they were developed and what the developer felt like doing. Compare Seattle (prewar) to its outer suburbs across the lake (postwar). Or inner Phoenix (prewar) to outer Phoenix (postwar).