I doubt it, any city at this latitude gets the same light - nyc, boston, philly, SF. It's the diversity of architecture plus the flatness of the lake and surrounding areas that really make the skyline stand out.

yup

High-rise?

Still, more buildings of that height creating a consistent street wall would be nice. That’s a great plan for the West Side, for the West Loop through the United Center area, in lieu of high-rises with several floors of parking.

The flatness of the surrounding area doesn’t really help. The skyline would look so much more dramatic if Illinois had any topography whatsoever. But the lake definitely provides the best setting.

This thing is really going to have amazing, unobstructed views from basically every unit huh?

I noticed that slight misnomer when re-reading my post, but I left it as written. It's close enough, and it feels like a high-rise relative to the 2- and 3-story pitched-roof flats in the background.

And I agree, it's a good archetype--at least visually--for sites in outlying neighborhoods that are near transit nodes.

Right. It’s basically standard building height for large European cities, which shows you how they get so much density and atreet activity basically without high-rises, because it’s buildings of that size one after another with no gaps.

I dunno, there's something unique about a perfectly flat surface with a perfect square grid imposed on it with perfectly cubic boxes extruded vertically from that grid. Chicago is so square, lots of people note the lack of view terminating buildings, but that openness I think contributes to the lighting because the sun can freely stream down E-W oriented canyons and provide a shifting lighting effect on all the different elevations over the course of the year.

And yet it is also this building style that leads to these cities have astronomical housing prices since it leads to running out space quickly and then rampant NIMBY-ism(San Fran is the best example in the US). If Chicago wants to avoid this they will allow high rises to be built in many areas. Your obsession with Europe blinds you from its faults. Chicago ain't perfect, but those places aren't either.

Now, Chicago isn't about to run out of land, so it's a bit premature of a complaint for me to make, but as global warming causes mass emigrations inland and Chicago becomes the most important city in the US by 2100 that problem will arise.

Only small minds think in terms of their own lives, that's why Burnham is still such a monumental figure for us today. He planned hundreds of years down the line with his city planning for us

We definitely have a ton of land, but there is a more limited amount of land in desirable areas. Building short and squat means we burn up land faster and gentrification then pushes more people out of their homes and into further, fringe neighborhoods.

Building taller and denser will help keep people from getting pushed out of their homes, and overall keep housing prices affordable in the city. Clearly, we aren't going to be building high rises everywhere (nor should we), but in certain instances it should be encouraged, particularly anywhere near CTA/Metra stations (TOD), as well as along major commercial intersections.

Lol, while global warming worst case scenarios are thankfully a little while off (or maybe not, depending on how quickly we curb our usage of fossil fuels), we probably are poised to be a net beneficiary of rising sea levels. Of the 10 largest cities in the US (measured by metro population), 7 are coastal and the 2 that arent (Dallas and Atlanta) are in the South and may become unbearable to live in. Being on the shores of one fifth of the world's freshwater is also a huge benefit.

Although mountains would absolutely have an impact, it is also the lack of mountains that lead to the dramatically long, low sun angles and reflections at dusk -

http://i64.tinypic.com/2pq0xav.jpg
Nick Suydam

I live in LA and even though there are mountains all around the impact visually is really no more dramatic than the clouds and sky can be in Chicago. In So-Cal its usually a boring, cloudless sky.

I think this is the first valid explaination I've heard from someone for the lighting effects I notice here but don't see elsewhere. Even a few hundred feet of topography West of here would lop off a few precious moments at sundown. That's when the effects I'm describing are most dramatic to me, when you are coming down the Kennedy or 290 and it's just the right time of day where the sun is hitting the skyline at basically a 90 degree angle reflecting the light straight back at you and everything is lit up like it's on fire. That combined with the perfectly aligned grid allowing that light to pour down the canyons bouncing between the buildings is an effect I don't think I've ever seen anywhere else. You get these weird super shadow effects on North facing facades where the Sun is well to the NW and as low on the horizon as possible. The light almost bounces through the skyline when it's like that creating some kind of weird filtered lighting that's coming from a totally instinctually awkward angle.

While I personally support gentrification, I think you have to keep in mind what I said earlier: policies of downzoning and development restriction are inherently pro gentrification and will cause displacement. As a society are we prepared to go to the mat to push that issue, or is racial and income segregation preferable? I tend to think that gentrification is the only reasonable way to break up racial and income segregation, but that's just me. I mean the vast majority of anti-growth nuts like Carlos Rosa are stupid enough to think that their anti-growth policies slow gentrification so perhaps we should all be pushing for RS-3 zoning in literally all of Chicago until the entire city is nothing but mcmansions on 3 or 4 lots.

I am more interested in the opportunities that topography would provide for viewing the skyline, not the backdrop that it would provide in photos.

Even in London, which just has small hills, the best views are from places like Primrose Hill.

Plus, I think Chicago’s general level of urbanity is actually harmed by its endless street grid. It’s extremely underbuilt as a result, with roads that are much too wide lined by single-story commercial buildings. Some topography that broke up the grid, with hilltops mostly residential, and commercial streets forced between the hills to create denser pockets of activity, would make for a more interesting urban morphology (with more defined districts and neighborhoods).

Obviously, Chicago’s perfectly flat topography played a big role in its success as a transportation and logistics hub in the age of the railroad, but how cool would it be to picnic on a 500 foot hill out in the Northwest Side with a view of the skyline?

Not every European city has astronomical housing prices, and it's a fallacy to assume that a midrise housing form generates high prices. NYC has obviously allowed highrises in many parts of the city and keeps opening up more areas, yet their prices are also astronomical. Likewise, Prague has miles of beautiful midrise buildings but isn't expensive. The highrise building style originated as a response to scarcity of land, but arguably Chicago has no such scarcity. The only reason to build highrise is to maximize the utilization of amenities like lake views, costly transit stations and parks, etc... back in the days of river shipping it was a serious pain in the ass to cross the river, so literally nobody wanted to open their office outside the Loop, hence a scarcity.

Prices are set by supply and demand, if the city of Chicago opened a vast inland territory to midrise development it would take decades or centuries to build out all of that capacity, assuming current demand levels.

As for 10023's comment on a hill in the Northwest... idk, I guess it would be something to break up the monotony but I think I like the flatness of the area because it means you can see the skyline from everwhere, miles and miles away. The skyline is the topography

It's kind of like you didn't read any of the second part of my comment. Hmmmmmm

Ehh, most cities have hills, I've never once been like "omg this is so awesome". I mean even Denver, with the freaking rockies right there, just looks tiny when viewed from a higher elevation. It doesn't make the skyline look better, it doesn't make it look bigger.

I also strongly disagree with you on the "urban morphology" point. What super wide roads lined with single story retail are you talking about? If you are talking about roads like Western and Ashland you are referring to roads there were widened at the dawn of the automobile era utterly destroying the built environment along their lengths. Most of the negatives you cite are almost entirely artifacts of the fact Chicago never grew as large as they planned (was supposed to be another NYC) and that it then shrank even further leaving huge tracts of underutilized land.

However, where intact sections of the city do exist, the built form is almost impossible to top. Unique districts and neighborhoods have formed anyhow, but they flow seamlessly into one another. Ultimately the entire core will be like the Northside is now where all the underutilized or demolished properties from decades past have been razed and replaced by infill. The North side is a very similar built form, at least along the lakefront, to a city like Paris plus a long row of highrises. Blocks upon blocks of 3-5 story buildings. The difference is our streets are built on a logical grid on a hub and spoke transit system to downtown giving us a truly urban central city fed by the surrounding fabric of neighborhoods.

The second part of your comment is wild, apocalyptic speculation. As much as I'd like to see Chicago gain more global prominence, I think we easily have the technology to save NY, Boston, etc from both flooding and droughts. We're not going to see any "mass emigration".

The thing is, "wild, apocalyptic speculation" is considered to be a not unlikely scenario. I've read a lot on how Chicago is uniquely positioned to weather (pun not intended) the effects of climate change due to its location, proximity to Lake Michigan, and lack of catastrophic natural disasters.

It all depends on how good we're able to take care of the quality of Lake Michigan, and how easily we can carry away excess rainwater. Over time, and I agree with KDM's timeframe of about 80 years down the road, if climatologists' worst case materializes without technology swooping in to save the day, Chicago may indeed see a huge influx of displaced people.

why do people act like Chicago exists in a bubble and also wont suffer its own adverse effects? while it might not be threatened by rising seas, seeing Chicago have the climate of modern day Austin by the end of the century isnt exactly something to relish or cheer. which btw will impact our own vegetation, tree canopy, health of the lake, quality of life, etc. to say nothing of the unimaginable global upheaval which will make this whole notion of some leisurely privileged American midwestern lifestyle seem beyond quaint. this whole idea that Chicago somehow stands to profit as the rest of the world crumbles is insufferable, and if it comes to pass its not really a world i think any of us are going to want to inhabit anyway.