Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
but what's odd about all of that is "why are downtown chicago's land values so high in the first place?"
we're not an island, or a peninsula, or ringed by mountains. our city exists on one of the flattest and most unceasing plains on the planet.
and we are a stagnant region, at best. there is no high population growth here. economic growth is falling relative to our peers.
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Well, the Loop WAS an island. Train yards were a real barrier to the south and the river a barrier to the west and north. It was truly expensive to build quality bridges in the late 1800's. Crossing the river was a trip.
The de facto island nature of the Loop meant development all happened there. Just like the San Francisco peninsula or Manhattan island. Thus, infrastructure was concentrated there, namely transit and regional rail.
So the Loop continues to get built up because of legacy infrastructure reasons. There's no other central area in the country that has so many trains all pointed at one spot, other than Manhattan. And even in Manhattan, the areas that have the most high rises are the areas that are served by transit nodes, same as in Chicago.
And sure, Chicago isn't seeing a population boom. But we ARE seeing a boom in the number of people moving to Chicago. It's just that we're seeing a lot of people move away at the same time, so the NET inflow is low. But I don't think any other city has seen a bigger increase in the number of college educated individuals in the last decade. And it's similar for the change in percentage of high-earning households. If you add 100,000 engineers, lawyers and MBAs and lose 95,000 retired postal workers to Arizona, the magnitude gain is small. But it would be difficult to look at those numbers and not understand why you would need to add 20,000 apartments and 20msf of office space.
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