CHICAGO | General Developments

[ChiPsy]

Originally Posted by honte

Given HOK's recent Chicago work, I do not have high hopes at all for the replacement building.

Yes -- and I'd also remove the words "recent" and "Chicago" from that sentence.

Thanks for the illustrative pix, btw.

[Mr Downtown]

Originally Posted by emathias

Why is the government requiring people to build in parking anyway?

Because of the bad experiences when they didn't. Certainly the high-end market in most parts of the city would provide parking as an amenity to help sell units. But you always have guys on the edge or in oddball locations doing projects that bring lots of new residents and new cars to neighborhoods where parking is a problem. That leads to resentment from current residents, and to opposition to new development.

During the zoning reform debates, passionate arguments were made on both sides. Some people made the dubious claim that available parking causes people to buy cars and drive them when they otherwise wouldn't. Other people made the dubious claim that a lack of parking would cause drivers to give up their cars.

[VivaLFuego]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

During the zoning reform debates, passionate arguments were made on both sides. Some people made the dubious claim that available parking causes people to buy cars and drive them when they otherwise wouldn't. Other people made the dubious claim that a lack of parking would cause drivers to give up their cars.

Yeah, in the 80s when the city allowed major widespread downtown parking garage construction after a decades-long moratorium, and transit ridership was decimated....total coincidence, right?

To the extent the claims are 'dubious,' it's that of course both car ownership and mode choice are more complex decisions than merely parking availability, but you write as though neither claim has any merit despite past experience showing otherwise. Parking price and availability do have a major impact on both car ownership rates and trip-level mode choice decisions, it's strange to imply otherwise. But they are only contributing factors among many.

[BVictor1]

I thought this was a bit important even though it has nothing to do with construction...

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmi...o_Chicago.html

Obama moves DNC operations to Chicago

In a major shakeup at the Democratic National Committee -- and a departure from tradition -- large parts of the committee's operations are relocating to Chicago to be fully integrated with the Obama campaign.

The DNC's political department, housed in Washington, D.C., will be dramatically rebuilt, with staffers offered a choice of moving to Chicago, joining state operations, or staying in Washington, DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney said.

But the power will clearly be shifting to a centralized Chicago hub.

The DNC's key role in coordinating political operations with state parties is expected to largely be taken over and overseen by Obama's senior staff in Chicago, state party officials said.

[cbotnyse]

Hyde Park will be the new Crawford Texas.

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

[EDIT] ^ HA! BVic, we must be reading the same sources. I deleted the reference but left my cursory analysis:

In some of the SSC threads, there's discussion about the kind of culture necessary to raise the profile of the city. Los Angeles has Hollywood, Washington is this country's political epicenter, and New York, well, it seems to have a little of everything. More and more, Chicago is becoming synonymous with a mounting Barack Obama -- dare I say? -- revolution. The pragmatism with which he operates is something I think we all recognize here as quintessentially Midwestern.

Exciting times to be a Chicagoan.

[Taft]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

During the zoning reform debates, passionate arguments were made on both sides. Some people made the dubious claim that available parking causes people to buy cars and drive them when they otherwise wouldn't. Other people made the dubious claim that a lack of parking would cause drivers to give up their cars.

I fail to see how either of those claims are dubious. They sound like quite sensible market-based claims to me.

Parking in the city is a huge part of the expense of owning a car and is a finite product. If supply of that product starts to exceed demand, prices will be pushed down making both car ownership and car use less expensive. The reverse is also true: as demand rises or supply shrinks, prices go up. We are currently seeing the same effect with ever-higher gas prices: Americans are changing their driving habits and choice of cars do to the prices.

As Viva said, there is more at work here than pure parking economics (price of cars, gas, insurance, the "allure" of a car, individual need, congestion, etc.), but don't be fooled into thinking the cost of parking isn't a factor. And IMO, any decision by local gov. that makes car ownership less expensive should be avoided.

Taft

[Nowhereman1280]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

Other people made the dubious claim that a lack of parking would cause drivers to give up their cars.

That is ridiculous. Just as a thought experiement, imagine a neighborhood where there is zero off street parking. There is a total of 1000 units and only 100 spaces on the street. How many people in the neighborhood are going to own cars? Hmmmm considering there is physically no room to put the cars, they don't even have a choice in the matter...


The only reason there is a parking problem in Chicago is that people think they are entitled to a parking space, when they are not. If there is only a 1/10 change of you finding a parking spot at any given time, what are you going to do? Just drive around and wait for someone else to leave? No, because then 90% of the neighborhood would be forced to sit in their cars and wait for someone else to leave. In such a circumstance, owning a car becomes impossible...

IF America ever falls from economic grace, it will be because of all the morons out there who think they are entitled to things, no, you only get stuff if you work for it. The two principle assumptions of economics are A. Constraints (resources, in this case parking spots, are limited) and B. Everyone wants more of those resources... Unfortunately the City government has show a dedication to trying to override the rules of economics and will eventually pay a price for it (we already do in the form of increased congestion, pollution, and environmental decay). You can't have your cake and eat it too...

[Mr Downtown]

I think Chicago's rather modest (4 percent) drop 1980 to 1990 in journey-to-work by transit primarily reflects the loss of outlying manufacturing jobs rather than construction of downtown garages as surface lots were developed. The nationwide figure for the same period was an 18 percent drop.

[VivaLFuego]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

I think Chicago's rather modest (4 percent) drop 1980 to 1990 in journey-to-work by transit primarily reflects the loss of outlying manufacturing jobs rather than construction of downtown garages as surface lots were developed. The nationwide figure for the same period was an 18 percent drop.

At least as far as CTA rail is concerned, ridership peaked around 1984 and lost 20% before bottoming out in 1992, and didn't start recovering until 1998 even with the opening of the Orange Line in 1993. And it wasn't just the flood in 1992, it was an 8-year downward trend, through both good and bad economic times, following a period of relative stability from the mid-70s to mid-80s when there was no downtown garage construction. Causational proof? Of course not. But to say it's a total coincidence would be....dubious.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by cbotnyse

Hyde Park will be the new Crawford Texas.

I didn't get that far through the zoning and other ordinances, but I don't think Chicago currently allows ranches ... although maybe there are remnant laws left over from stockyard days ;-)

[emathias]

Originally Posted by VivaLFuego

...Zone every surrounding parcelfor maximum-intensity porn shop with permits for neon signage.

Finally, a solution to bring back the old Times Square ...

[Alliance]

Originally Posted by BVictor1

I thought this was a bit important even though it has nothing to do with construction...

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmi...o_Chicago.html

Obama moves DNC operations to Chicago

In a major shakeup at the Democratic National Committee -- and a departure from tradition -- large parts of the committee's operations are relocating to Chicago to be fully integrated with the Obama campaign.

The DNC's political department, housed in Washington, D.C., will be dramatically rebuilt, with staffers offered a choice of moving to Chicago, joining state operations, or staying in Washington, DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney said.

But the power will clearly be shifting to a centralized Chicago hub.

The DNC's key role in coordinating political operations with state parties is expected to largely be taken over and overseen by Obama's senior staff in Chicago, state party officials said.

Great. They should build a DNC tower lol.

[wrab]

Wow - so the Obama/Chicago connection is already producing dividends for the city. It's gonna be very interesting to watch how this connection continues to play out.

[the urban politician]

Great news about the DNC move. Unfortunately if Obama doesn't win, the DNC will surely high-tail it right back to Washington.

[schwerve]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Great news about the DNC move. Unfortunately if Obama doesn't win, the DNC will surely high-tail it right back to Washington.

the dnc will high-tail it back to washington regardless of the outcome of the election, the purpose of the move to chicago is better integration with the obama headquarters streamlining operations. these types of organizations in non-election years need to be in the washington bubble so this isn't permanent but still a nice little boost to the city.

[Eventually...Chicago]

Maybe da'Mare can get a couple of his union buddies to make the DNC some concrete shoes and keep 'em here!!

[dagobert]

Originally Posted by VivaLFuego

At least as far as CTA rail is concerned, ridership peaked around 1984 and lost 20% before bottoming out in 1992, and didn't start recovering until 1998 even with the opening of the Orange Line in 1993. And it wasn't just the flood in 1992, it was an 8-year downward trend, through both good and bad economic times, following a period of relative stability from the mid-70s to mid-80s when there was no downtown garage construction. Causational proof? Of course not. But to say it's a total coincidence would be....dubious.

Association is not causation, or a more statistical term Correlation is not Causation. In any introductory statistics or econometric analysis course you would learn that there are a number of dependent variables that impact the independent variable.

To say that their is a relationship between amount of parking downtown and public ridership you would have to do a bit of cross-sectional time series data analysis (also known as panel data or longitudal data analysis) which also looks at other contributing factors such as price of oil (we saw a big decline in price of oil in mid 1980s through late 1990s), amount of jobs downtown vs. suburbs, amount of people living downtown vs. suburbs, amount of crime recorded in the city vs. suburbs, amount of crime on CTA trains, cost of driving one mile in a car vs. cost of taking CTA train one mile, cost of parking, etc. Maybe a bigger contributing factor to a decline in ridership after 1984 was decline in price of oil and thus cost of drving and not building of parking in the loop. I might poke around some databases to see if such a study had ever been done for any major American city.

We also have to worry about omitted variable bias (or confounding) since we aren't talking about a controlled experiment but an observational study (looking at historical data). For example we can't measure perception of how safe people feel taking CTA trains as opposed to a car.

Also social attitudes (towards driving, commuting downtown, living in the city) in mid-70s might have been similar to those in early 80s since social attitudes are fairly similar from one year to the next, but they may vary considerably over longer period of time. So if this is true that social attitudes in late 90s are different than in 70s and assumption of independent error terms across observations in a time series is violated. The reason why this is important is because under the classical econometric model error terms for each observation need to be independent of one another. Otherwise error terms reflect omitted variables that influence the demand for parking or public transit ridership. This could also lead to autocorrelation and other problems.

Hope this helps you understand the sheer complexity of analyzing such complex problems as this one, those results are scientific and unbiased.

[alex1]

Originally Posted by Ch.G, Ch.G

[EDIT] ^ HA! BVic, we must be reading the same sources. I deleted the reference but left my cursory analysis:

In some of the SSC threads, there's discussion about the kind of culture necessary to raise the profile of the city. Los Angeles has Hollywood, Washington is this country's political epicenter, and New York, well, it seems to have a little of everything. More and more, Chicago is becoming synonymous with a mounting Barack Obama -- dare I say? -- revolution. The pragmatism with which he operates is something I think we all recognize here as quintessentially Midwestern.

Exciting times to be a Chicagoan.

unfortunately, the country over equates Chicago with corruption. Personally, it's great that Obama has made the city ground zero for hopefully toppling over mcCain and the GOP but many democratic voters aren't so happy about this decision.

but to hit upon your smaller point, I'm amazed at how little the local population actually knows about Chicago's populist roots. Many "revolutions" have taken place in Chicago.

[Steely Dan]

PERSONAL INSULTS ARE FORBIDDEN ON THIS FORUM.

also, this thread is getting into off-topic territory. take cta discussion to the the cta thread. and this is not the thread for obama/national politics talk either.