Quote:
Originally Posted by 10023
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?
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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.