Chicagoland renters and buyers are itching for walkable suburbs. Enter 'surban.'

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

evanston and oak park ARE the two crown jewels of chicagoland town centers.

i'm talking about rail suburbs in the sense that another downtown pops up miles from downtown across miles of lower density mostly residential, etc. i forget "rail suburb" doesn't mean the same thing in a city that still has its original suburban commuter and rapid transit rail. i mean like metra downtowns.

[Steely Dan]

^ here are some of the old railroad suburb town centers in chicagoland, organized by metra line.

i've only done the 8 old school commuter rail lines. the newer NCS, SWS and HC metra lines don't really have historic town centers built-up around their stations, for obvious reasons.



UP-N:

main street
downtown evanston
central street
wilmette
winnetka
glencoe
highland park
highwood
lake forest
waukegan
zion
kenosha



MD-N:

morton grove
glenview
northbrook
deerfield
libertyville
round lake



UP-NW:

park ridge
des plaines
mt. prospect
arlington heights
palatine
barrington
crystal lake
woodstock



MD-W:

elmwood park
bensenville
itasca
roselle
bartlett
elgin


UP-W:

oak park
maywood
melrose park
elmhurst
lombard
glen ellyn
wheaton
geneva



BNSF:

berwyn
riverside
brookfield
lagrange
western srpings
hinsdale
clarendon hills
westmont
downers grove
naperville
aurora



RI:

blue island
midlothian
tinley park
mokena
joliet



ME:

harvey
homewood
flossmoor

[Centropolis]

there's a couple of metra stops in total farm towns, which i have always thought massively interesting. i have always thought that illinois should make high speed commuter rail a priority to bring 1/3 of the state or whatever into the fold of chicagoland since the economy of the state falls off a cliff just outside the edge of the contiguous suburban area of chicago.

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

there's a couple of metra stops in total farm towns, which i have always thought massively interesting. i always thought that illinois should make high speed commuter rail a priority to bring 1/3 of the state or whatever into the fold of chicagoland

I don't think anymore of Illinois (land area wise) needs to brought into the fold...Maybe a (dare I say it?!?) state-sponsored plan for redeveloping existing neighborhoods with vacant lots next to active train lines. We've got a lot of infrastructure that is criminally underutilized in some neighborhoods and well over capacity in others.

It's an interesting article and a positive trend indeed.

[nomarandlee]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

i'm talking about rail suburbs in the sense that another downtown pops up miles from downtown across miles of lower density mostly residential, etc. i forget "rail suburb" doesn't mean the same thing in a city that still has its original suburban commuter and rapid transit rail. i mean like metra downtowns.

I think Lake Forest is very nice. A bit sleepy and could be more dense of course but genteel, has nice storefronts, and a number of streets are two level attached buildings. Lake Bluff, just to the north, while small is also rather nice.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

I don't think anymore of Illinois (land area wise) needs to brought into the fold...Maybe a (dare I say it?!?) state-sponsored plan for redeveloping existing neighborhoods with vacant lots next to active train lines. We've got a lot of infrastructure that is criminally underutilized in some neighborhoods and well over capacity in others.

agreed. chicagoland itself already has lots of existing infrastructure in places that are pretty underdeveloped.

we need to fix that before turning country towns like pontiac and dixon into commuter rail burbs with high-ish speed rail.

[Kenmore]

Originally Posted by 10023

So why didn’t they move to, like, Andersonville?

public schools with black and brown students

[Steely Dan]

^ unfortunately, that is also a significant part of the equation.

Peirce Elementary (andersonville' CPS neighborhood school) is only 28% white, which is a peculiarly low percentage for such a predominately white neighborhood. many (most?) of the white upper middle class families with children who live in andersonville send their kids to private school.

many other white upper middle class families look at that situation and say "fuck that, why don't we just move to glenview? i can still take metra to work.".

[10023]

Won’t that change though? Lots of Brooklyn public schools are majority white now. Unless they’re bussing kids in from elsewhere, the school demographics should reflect the neighborhood demographics.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by 10023

Won’t that change though?

it might, but i imagine that doesn't mean terribly much in the moment to the upper middle class white family with small children who neither wants to pay for private school nor wants to send their kids to a CPS school with high racial and economic diversity. hence, glenview.

andersonville is already overwhelmingly white, but most of the white parents there choose to send their kids to private schools.

there are tipping points, though, where a CPS school can go from like 15% white to 60+% white in the course of a decade or so. you need a critical mass of families to all jump into the pool together at the same time, and then boom, it just takes off from there. Peirce might be in the middle of that transition right now, i don't know for sure. the neighborhood around it sure is a HELL of a lot more white than the school's demographics would indicate.

[Kenmore]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ unfortunately, that is also a significant part of the equation.

Peirce Elementary (andersonville' CPS neighborhood school) is only 28% white, which is a peculiarly low percentage for such a predominately white neighborhood. many (most?) of the white upper middle class families with children who live in andersonville send their kids to private school.

many other white upper middle class families look at that situation and say "fuck that, why don't we just move to glenview? i can still take metra to work.".

yup

[Vlajos]

Our kids went to Peirce until 2nd grade. We wanted a single family home and couldn't afford the neighborhood so had to move. We had a good experience there. The school is now 25% white, just 5 years ago it was 17% white. Enrollment is steady at over 1,000 kids, so there is a gradual shift going on.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

The school is now 25% white, just 5 years ago it was 17% white.

Peirce is actually at 28% white now, so yeah, it sounds like the shift is on.

Originally Posted by Vlajos

We wanted a single family home and couldn't afford the neighborhood so had to move.

yep, even if andersonville had a school like coonley, blaine, etc. the supply/demand curve for SFH is just way out of whack there (there just aren't a whole lot to go around), so 10023's retort of "why not just move to andersonville" still wouldn't be an affordable solution for most families that are set on a SFH.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Peirce is actually at 28% white now, so yeah, it sounds like the shift is on.






yep, even if andersonville had a school like coonley, blaine, etc. the supply demand curve for SFH is just way out of whack there, so 10023's retort of "why not just move to andersonville" still wouldn't be an affordable solution for most families that are set on a SFH.

You're right I was looking at the previous school year that was 25% white.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

the suburban town centers around the UP lines are generally more built-up and developed than those around the MD stations, for whatever reason.

of course everything takes a back seat to the mighty BNSF through the southern tier of the western burbs.

That reason would be the frequency of train service. Commuters are admittedly creatures of habit who howl when their 7:45 express gets changed to a 7:40 express, but it still might surprise you to know that the train schedules on these lines are not much different than they were in the 1940s.

The suburbs with stronger downtowns are those that had the best train service, and thus the most residents, prior to WWII. The towns along the Milwaukee District were just little cow towns.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

yep, even if andersonville had a school like coonley, blaine, etc. the supply/demand curve for SFH is just way out of whack there (there just aren't a whole lot to go around), so 10023's retort of "why not just move to andersonville" still wouldn't be an affordable solution for most families that are set on a SFH.

This presumes that people really need a SFH.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by 10023

This presumes that people really need a SFH.

nobody needs a SFH.

but many people certainly want a SFH.

andersonville SFH's are generally outside the price range of all but the wealthy because they are HIGHLY sought after and not many of them exist on a relative basis (~10% of housing units in edgewater are SFH).

Originally Posted by ardecila

That reason would be the frequency of train service. Commuters are admittedly creatures of habit who howl when their 7:45 express gets changed to a 7:40 express, but it still might surprise you to know that the train schedules on these lines are not much different than they were in the 1940s.

The suburbs with stronger downtowns are those that had the best train service, and thus the most residents, prior to WWII. The towns along the Milwaukee District were just little cow towns.

interesting. i don't know much about the relative histories of the 8 old school commuter rail lines in chicagoland.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

nobody needs a SFH.

but many people certainly want a SFH.

I need a SFH...so I can yell at the neighborhood kids to get off my lawn.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

interesting. i don't know much about the relative histories of the 8 old school commuter rail lines in chicagoland.

Yeah, the C&NW (today's UP lines) and the CB&Q (today's BNSF) provided the best service by far, along with the Illinois Central (today's Metra Electric). Those lines also had interurbans paralleling them in a few cases, the North Shore Line, South Shore Line and the CA&E. The towns along those lines had strong links to the city and grew rapidly, and in a walkable fashion, in the days before expressways changed the burbs forever.

It will not surprise you to learn that many of the railroad executives and employees lived in these suburbs and rode their own trains to get to their downtown offices. To this day, Barrington still gets a stop on every single express train because the C&NW's president lived there back in the day and had a holding yard constructed there.

The other railroads that operated commuter service back then were focused more on long-distance passenger and freight service, so commuter service took second fiddle. Milwaukee Road in particular stretched all the way to Seattle, so Chicago-area commuter service was small potatoes for them. They didn't want to bog down their premium, fast long-distance Hiawatha trains with a ton of slow commuter trains, so they operated a lighter schedule of commuter service. The towns along the line didn't really swell with Chicago commuters until the postwar period, when the new expressways got congested and driving/flying killed the long-distance train.

As a girl, my mother moved into a brand new subdivision in Deerfield in 1969, less than a mile from the train station. It's a pretty typical ranch house for the era, the neighborhood has sidewalks (and now mature trees) but also tons of cul-de-sacs. You could just as easily be ten miles from the nearest train station. If you go to Winnetka, on the other hand, pretty much everything within a mile radius of the train station was already built-up by WWII, with charming architecture and a walkable design.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Kenmore

public schools with black and brown students

I am really getting tired of the "you don't do this or that because of black or brown people."

Let us consider two discussions a family might have when thinking about moving:

A) " The school district has way too many black and Hispanic people, little Jimmy just wouldnt fit in and I don't want them corrupting him."

or

B) "The school district for our potential new house has a 2 out of 10 rating, no way little Jimmy will be going there, he needs better opportunities than that!"