Quote:
Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright
Yeah, residential side streets tend to be heavily forested in Chicago while commercial corridors suffer. They spend all kinds of money as they streetscape the streets they are replacing utilities on and then they don't come back to even check in for a decade or more. Meanwhile a bunch of healthy maturing trees are choked off at the base or irreparably scarred because no one bothers to reduce the size of tree well grates.
It's also worth remembering that most of Chicago was only built 125 years ago or less. The area where I live on the NW side is about 100 years old on average meaning that 100 year old trees are rare and 150+ years old is unheard of as this area was Prairie before it was settled. If you are familiar with how trees grow, there's a big difference between a bunch of 25-75 year old trees and 75-150 year old trees like you might see in Lincoln Park or unburned areas in certain Chicago neighborhoods and a few early suburban cores like Evanston or Oak Park. The trees on my street are just now coming together to completely enclose my street, given another 25 years, I expect my street will feel more like Edgewater Glen or Lincoln Park than the scrubby Logan Square side street vibe it is throwing off now.
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Chicago forestry department is actually pretty progressive on street tree planting techniques that include below grade soil vaults, root paths, etc that will allow trees to thrive in tree-grate scenarios, but until the last 10 years or so no one at CDOT cared. So, they'd stick these little 2" trees in 5x5 grates and they'd all die after 4-5 years and sometimes get replaced, sometimes not.
That has definitely changed as CDOT's complete streets policy has been developed. Every new streetscape project in Chicago includes measures to ensure successful tree growth. Forestry now requires larger grates (most new projects are getting 5x10's now) in urban areas that will allow trees to actually grow and mature a bit more.
Any sidewalk/parkway wider than 9' gets new trees 25' on center whenever work on the buildings is done. This is required to get a building permit and isn't something limited to residential areas.
Some of the ordinance is already superceded by newer requirements, but you can get an idea of what is required for street tree planting here:
http://www.cityofchicago.org/content...nanceGuide.pdf