How did American core cities survive the 90's?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Jasoncw

I'd like you to educate me about these vast areas of Chicago where the public schools are good, there's no crime, where practically every middle school kid has their own transit card and knows the routes by their home, where kids ride transit unattended to go to cool hangout spots, where no one bats an eye if a household doesn't own a car, where old buildings are just thought of as being normal buildings and not as novel things that need protection. Where there's chain restaurants and everyone eats at them because no one has strong opinions about whether it's a chain or an independent restaurant.

Where is such a place in the Western world?

You seem to be saying you value the cultural values of sprawl America but want the built form of urban America.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Jasoncw

I'd like you to educate me about these vast areas of Chicago.

much of the northside of the city: lincoln square, logan square, edgewater, avondale, portage park, irving park, jeff park, albany park, north park, edison park, norwood park, etc.

Originally Posted by Jasoncw

When millenial families move to the burbs it's a values statement. They aren't looking at urban homes and suburban homes equally and unaffectedly. They want to live "in a quiet area". You ask them why and they'll say things like "more space" "a yard".

FTFY.

Originally Posted by Jasoncw

It's not this big expression of your identity and it's not part of the culture wars, it's just a nice house that you think will be good for raising your family in.

wow, i had no idea that my desire to live in a nice home for raising my family in a pedestrian-friendly city neighborhood was somehow part of the stupid fucking culture wars. you have a seriously warped world-view.

i simply find places that are designed around auto-centricty to be unattractive and unpleasant to be in. other people don't seem to mind them as much. more power to them, but it ain't for me. i'm a human being not a car; i like places designed for me.

i really hate driving. traffic drives me totally fucking nuts. and if i had to live somewhere where i had to deal with car commuting in rush hour traffic everyday, i'd probably put myself in an early grave from either stress or suicide. no thanks.

Originally Posted by Jasoncw

When I think of normalized urbanism.

well, urbanism is pretty normal and unremarkable here in chicago. millions of regular old people just going about their daily lives everyday here in the windy city.

it's not regarded as some magically enchanted shangri-la that's only for special people. i'm about as normal and unremarkable as any old regular person you'll find.

you should head over for a visit sometime; it's only a 45 minute flight. you might learn something (though with your know-it-all attitude, i won't be holding my breath).

[The North One]

You're an extreme urbanist liberal. You wanting to live in an urban neighborhood for your reasons doesn't contradict his point at all.

Jasoncw's criteria for cities truly being back will never be a reality in the US, it's useless to lament this and might be a little extreme itself but I get what he's saying.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by The North One

You're an extreme urbanist liberal.

i'm an urbanist, but i'm not a liberal.

i even sometimes (gasp) vote for republicans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


how can that be? i thought everything in our world fits neatly into cozy little preconceived boxes.

my world is now shattered.

why Pizza God, why? why have you cursed existence with nuance?

it means people actually have to critically think about shit.

fuck that.

[Jasoncw]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Where is such a place in the Western world?

You seem to be saying you value the cultural values of sprawl America but want the built form of urban America.

But that's what I'm talking about. Supposedly there's the cultural values of sprawl America and the cultural values of urban America, and they're opposed to each other. But what does that even mean? What does small variances in density have to do with chain stores?

Steely Dan, you're a guy with almost 19,000 posts on an online urbanism forum. The way you view cities and your decision making process with choosing your home is not typical. None of ours is. But we're the types of people moving into cities.

So imo, until "getting your first transit card" is part of the shared American experience in the same way that "getting your drivers license" is, I don't think we can say that urbanism is normalized.

[pip]

Originally Posted by Jasoncw

I'd like you to educate me about these vast areas of Chicago where the public schools are good, there's no crime, where practically every middle school kid has their own transit card and knows the routes by their home, where kids ride transit unattended to go to cool hangout spots, where no one bats an eye if a household doesn't own a car, where old buildings are just thought of as being normal buildings and not as novel things that need protection. Where there's chain restaurants and everyone eats at them because no one has strong opinions about whether it's a chain or an independent restaurant.

And then you need to explain to me that suburban Chicagoans feel the same way about the neighborhoods that you're talking about, and that they don't really view any distinction between the two. And then you need to explain to me how this is something that is typical all across America.



When millenial families move to cities it's a values statement. They aren't looking at urban homes and suburban homes equally and unaffectedly. They want to live "in the city". You ask them why and they'll say things like "density" "diversity". They probably follow urbanism related social media accounts. They probably know who Jane Jacobs is.

When everyone else is buying a home they're just looking at listings and neighborhoods and none of these things even cross their minds. In the suburbs when someone buys the ranch house next to yours you don't automatically know what political party they are. It's not this big expression of your identity and it's not part of the culture wars, it's just a nice house that you think will be good for raising your family in.


When I think of normalized urbanism I think of places like Japan, where urbanism is entirely mainstream and unremarkable.

What?

[Jasoncw]

Originally Posted by pip

What?

Is there something you didn't understand that you'd like me to a do a better job of communicating, or are you just being an asshole?

[ardecila]

^ I used to think it was all some big black-and-white, urban vs suburban culture war, but then I met my girlfriend. She grew up with a very in-between lifestyle in an outer neighborhood of Chicago filled with conservative-voting cops and firefighters, and liberal-voting workers of other city agencies like CTA. All of them willing to walk down to the park for a kids baseball game, to the neighborhood bar for a brew, or to the train station for a quick ride downtown. Many folks there love their cars, but also like living in a tight-knit community that feels like a neighborhood and not like an endless racetrack or stage set. They like living in a neighborhood that has diverse housing types, there are lots of single-family homes and bungalows but plenty of apartments too, if you are a single person or elderly, there is a housing option for you as well.

Schooling is pretty evenly split between kids going to public vs parochial schools. Probably the Catholic-school kids are a little better off financially, but not consistently.

Dealing with her friends and family definitely convinced me there is a whole world of nuance in the choices people make regarding where they live and what they prefer in their neighborhood. To be clear, though, Chicago has a city residency law that forces cops, firefighters and other city workers to live within city limits. If the law was eliminated tomorrow, some of my girlfriend's neighbors would certainly bolt for the real suburbs ASAP to get larger homes and yards and excellent public schools instead of just good ones. However, it seems many of the people in that neighborhood generally like it and understand the conveniences they gain by sacrificing some living space.

Also, my girlfriend doesn't own a car and yet has no convictions about urbanism and certainly couldn't quote Jane Jacobs. She's generally liberal but just views car-free living as common sense for a city neighborhood. On the other hand, I'm the hardcore urbanist with an unhealthy transit obsession, but I need a car for my job, so YMMV.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Jasoncw

When everyone else is buying a home they're just looking at listings and neighborhoods and none of these things even cross their minds. In the suburbs when someone buys the ranch house next to yours you don't automatically know what political party they are. It's not this big expression of your identity and it's not part of the culture wars, it's just a nice house that you think will be good for raising your family in.

When I think of normalized urbanism I think of places like Japan, where urbanism is entirely mainstream and unremarkable.

Important to mention that zoning keeps walkable neighborhoods in short supply, which in turn makes them very expensive unless other factors make them undesirable. We're not really building any more of these neighborhoods, and the areas that do see development are usually seeing low-intensity commercial uses become mixed-use apartments. Nowhere in the US are we building walkable neighborhoods full of modest detached homes at any kind of adequate scale (except, ironically, trailer parks). Every existing walkable core is surrounded by miles of shitty suburban development, so we can't really build off of existing urbanism either.

Basically I'm just glad I live in a city that occupies the middle where urban housing can be uber-expensive or dirt-cheap with a whole spectrum of options in the middle for middle-class folks like myself. That means at least in Chicago, urban living is increasingly becoming an accepted path for middle-class (white) families. Such a thing is inconceivable in many coastal cities because of the cost, and inconceivable in many struggling cities because urban neighborhoods have little to offer a middle-class family.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Jasoncw

The way you view cities and your decision making process with choosing your home is not typical.

When did this discussion become about what's typical? America is a suburban nation. Urbanism is certainly not typical on a national level, and i doubt it ever will be. I was just responding to your initial comment about how regular old middle class white pepole don't live in US cities. They do. Many of my friends fall into that category. I'm talking about plumbers, carpenters, firemen, gas men, mechanics, teachers, brewers, messengers, cops, facility managers, city workers, etc. There are hundreds of thousands of such people living in chicago.

And it's not some kind of BS political statement to live in the city. In fact, for anyone who collects a city paycheck in chicago, it's actually a requirement.

Originally Posted by Jasoncw

So imo, until "getting your first transit card" is part of the shared American experience in the same way that "getting your drivers license" is, I don't think we can say that urbanism is normalized.

If that's the standard you're gonna use to deem that US cities have turned the corner from the dark ages, the you're gonna be waiting a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG fucking time (ie. never). You don't undo a freaking century's worth of rampant autocentric suburban development in a single generation. Suburbia will always be with us and it will be a choice that many will continue to choose for the foreseeable future. It's not like all 7 million suburban chicagoans are just gonna up and leave their homes and move to the city over 20 years. That will never happen. But cities can continue to improve and be a choice for those middle class people that want it. And some of them won't even be liberals, if you can believe it.

[Obadno]

If gas prices had continued as they were going about 10 years ago I would think urbanism might have come back out of economic necessity but with ride sharing, self driving cars, and modern internet communications anynidea that urbanism will come back out of economic need is incorrect.

I do think there has been a general culture shift for people to like urbanism more than before but it will never be the norm just a choice of preference like people that prefer small towns or rural areas over large metros.

I like urban neighborhoods but I would hate not having acres to a car, it would make me feel trapped to my neighborhood and the train line with no real ability to move on my own.

So I’d rather live in a smaller urban area where I can have a car and have a somewhat medium level of urban walkability.

Many f eh extreme urban folks on here will think that’s stupid but I think not being in control of your own transport is stupid so there ya go

[SIGSEGV]

I wish the US would standardize on one transit card like the Netherlands has. Then I wouldn't have so many of them lying around my apartment...

[Londonee]

Is Chicago that much of a lightening rod city that nearly every one of these City Discussion threads must immediately become almost solely about it?

[Steely Dan]

^ two things:

1. Absolutely nothing is preventing you or anyone else from discussing any city other than chicago in this or any other CD thread.

2. As a very regular reader and contributer to this sub-forum, I completely fail to see how Chicago is solely dominating every thread here. Recently we've see lots of discussion about philly, new york, LA, and SF around here as well. People talk about what they know, and we just happen to have a lot of forumers from those cities.

It probably has something to do with this being a skyscraper forum and all of those cities are currently experiencing pretty exciting skyscraper building booms at the moment, thus attracting more SSP participation from those quarters.

[Jasoncw]

Ardecila: But I guess that's what I mean because you grew up in suburban Chicago and didn't know that her neighborhood really existed. How common is that type of neighborhood in Chicago? Are suburbanites aware of that neighborhood? How common is it across all cities in America? I think it's the exception and not the norm, and so imo in order for American core cities to come back, American core cities need to be mostly comprised of neighborhoods like that.

And when that happens I think aspects of urban living will naturally become part of mainstream American experience (for the record I think rural living is the same, "the first time dad let me drive the tractor" is an experience dear to many but it's not part of mainstream culture). The reason I bring up the cultural experience stuff is because if you asked your girlfriend, I bet she remembers the first time she rode public transit by herself, and I bet most of her childhood friends do too, and I bet she'd get really nostalgic talking about it. But the vast majority of Americans don't even know to use transit. Or you know about Detroit for example, you talk to any geezer and they'll tell you about how their mom took them on the bus to Hudson's department store. And that type of story happened all across the country and was part of mainstream American culture because that aspect of urbanism was part of so many people's lives.


I also don't think many suburbanites are thinking too deeply about where they choose to live. Most neighborhoods in American cities have shootings. Most people very straightforwardly think "shootings are bad, I don't want to live someplace with shootings" and that's it. People don't like having to make special accommodations to avoid bad public schools. People don't like paying more in taxes. People want newer lower maintenance houses.

But for the families moving into urban neighborhoods with those problems, the pros outweigh the cons. But who is really so interested in these places that they learn about all the pros in the first place? And who values those things so highly that they outweigh cons like regular neighborhood murder? They're motivated by things that most people aren't motivated by.

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

When did this discussion become about what's typical? America is a suburban nation. Urbanism is certainly not typical on a national level, and i doubt it ever will be.

The way I interpreted the discussion, it was about American cities recovering from their post war decline. To me there are different aspects to American prewar urban vibrancy and I don't think many of those aspects have returned.

I was just responding to your initial comment about how regular old middle class white pepole don't live in US cities. They do. Many of my friends fall into that category. I'm talking about plumbers, carpenters, firemen, gas men, mechanics, teachers, brewers, messengers, cops, facility managers, city workers, etc. There are hundreds of thousands of such people living in chicago.

And it's not some kind of BS political statement to live in the city. In fact, for anyone who collects a city paycheck in chicago, it's actually a requirement.

I'm not saying there are literally no middle class white people in cities, but it's not the norm.

If that's the standard you're gonna use to deem that US cities have turned the corner from the dark ages, the you're gonna be waiting a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG fucking time (ie. never).

That's the standard that imo this discussion sets for itself.

I do think it's possible and I think we're trending in that direction but we'll have to see what happens.

[jtown,man]

Lets be real here, most urban residents are liberal. I used to be called a liberal at work(fun banter) or called a hipster because of my choices of living in an urban area in a very nonurban metro, riding my bike around town, and taking public transport etc.

I am surrounded my liberals, all the time. My freaking wife works as a graphic designer for a company that works with many Democratic Organizations non-profits. I still see Bernie stickers everywhere. Liberals are attracted to cities and conservatives to the burbs. Its just the way it is.

Me being a Republican is 100% based on my national views. I think our country is a Federal Republic, I don't think the Dems believe this(neither do Reps, but they are better in this respect). On a state and local level I will vote Dem. Haven't on the state level yet but did vote for a Democrat twice locally.

Anecdotally all my conservative friends always bring up "man your apartment is so small" "why do you live in Norfolk/downtown" "you live in the ghetto?" all the time. The few that come over always end up loving it. I think our culture has been infested with MORE HOME BETTER...MORE SPACE BETTER....quantity over quality for so long that its hard for people to break this mindset. Liberals are much more likely to not have this view point. They are much more likely to not mind living in tight spaces. They are much more likely not to have 5 kids and a mini van and truck. They are more likely to be environmentally conscious. It just is what it is.

[NiHao]

Originally Posted by ardecila

^ I used to think it was all some big black-and-white, urban vs suburban culture war, but then I met my girlfriend. She grew up with a very in-between lifestyle in an outer neighborhood of Chicago filled with conservative-voting cops and firefighters, and liberal-voting workers of other city agencies like CTA. All of them willing to walk down to the park for a kids baseball game, to the neighborhood bar for a brew, or to the train station for a quick ride downtown. Many folks there love their cars, but also like living in a tight-knit community that feels like a neighborhood and not like an endless racetrack or stage set. They like living in a neighborhood that has diverse housing types, there are lots of single-family homes and bungalows but plenty of apartments too, if you are a single person or elderly, there is a housing option for you as well.

Schooling is pretty evenly split between kids going to public vs parochial schools. Probably the Catholic-school kids are a little better off financially, but not consistently.

Dealing with her friends and family definitely convinced me there is a whole world of nuance in the choices people make regarding where they live and what they prefer in their neighborhood. To be clear, though, Chicago has a city residency law that forces cops, firefighters and other city workers to live within city limits. If the law was eliminated tomorrow, some of my girlfriend's neighbors would certainly bolt for the real suburbs ASAP to get larger homes and yards and excellent public schools instead of just good ones. However, it seems many of the people in that neighborhood generally like it and understand the conveniences they gain by sacrificing some living space.

Also, my girlfriend doesn't own a car and yet has no convictions about urbanism and certainly couldn't quote Jane Jacobs. She's generally liberal but just views car-free living as common sense for a city neighborhood. On the other hand, I'm the hardcore urbanist with an unhealthy transit obsession, but I need a car for my job, so YMMV.

Wish the law was cops had to live where they patrol.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Jasoncw

I do think it's possible and I think we're trending in that direction but we'll have to see what happens.

it's not possible, not in our lifetime anyway.

way too much of our nation is way too suburban.

at some point down the road, i can see the "getting your own drivers license" right of passage switching over to "getting your own driverless uber account" for your average american kid, but none of us is going to witness a day when >80% of all american middle-schoolers get their own transit pass and use their transit system for all of their day-to-day transportation needs. that's just not going to happen at any point in the foreseeable future, and to think that it might is delusional thinking in my opinion.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Obadno

If gas prices had continued as they were going about 10 years ago I would think urbanism might have come back out of economic necessity but with ride sharing, self driving cars, and modern internet communications anynidea that urbanism will come back out of economic need is incorrect.

^ Perhaps, but if you ask me, I think ride-sharing makes city living even more appealing versus suburban living.

People generally won't use ride shares in the burbs unless it's a highly specific trip (going to the airport, etc). But in dense cities, ride sharing (in addition to taxicabs, bike lanes, etc) fill in the gaps within American transit networks to get people to their destinations conveniently. Plus, in cities the trip distances are shorter, so basically an Uber should theoretically not be as expensive.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

I wish the US would standardize on one transit card like the Netherlands has. Then I wouldn't have so many of them lying around my apartment...

Standardizing a metro card for a federal trade system in a nation the size of New Jersey is a bit different than trying to standardize a metro card for the entire nation across hundreds of VERY independent and combative jurisdictions from States to unincorporated towns.

lol it would take years and billions in court battles just to get half of the cities on board let alone the country.