Quote:
Originally Posted by Stockerzzz
Thanks for going to the development meetings and advocating for density. We appreciate it.
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Motion Seconded.
Hopefully everyone will indulge a newbie on a little rant on this topic:
These constant appeals to "open space" are such a mystery to me.
If you think about the places that people seem to really like to congregate (Clark in Andersonville, Division in Wicker, Armitage in Lincoln Park, Bucktown and Belmont Cragin, Augusta in West Town, 53rd in Hyde Park, Wentworth in Chinatown) or some of the most enjoyable streets to just take a walk (Lawrence, Armitage, Kimball, Foster), the thing they all have in common is that they are human scaled and there is no forced "open space" between the structures. Things are close by and the re-enforcement of street activity and lots of people leads to a variety of businesses in a small area, which is enjoyable to walk through and fun to experience.
But we have examples of the opposite of this kind of development right here in Chicago too--the Prairie Shores complex. Tall buildings spaced far apart with nothing but open space and yet it feels oppressive and barren. Everyone drives in and out of it with good reason! It's crazy pedestrian hostile, and the streets around it are dead.
Obviously these are two extremes but what it demonstrates is that human scale development with easy access to buildings makes existing in that environment enjoyable and fun! Building it is perhaps more chaotic but the what we end up with is just a much nicer place to be.
I read an interesting masters thesis on this topic recently, which attempted to define the proportion of open space that maximizes individual urban property values. The author found that 1-5% of total land as open space ended up maximizing property value, but subjectively people want a lot more--so much so that nearly every city surveyed were heavily oversupplied with it. Chicago was one of the worst offenders. This disconnect deserves a lot more research.
Given the choice of building something new, I can't fathom why anyone would push for fewer tall buildings further apart over more shorter buildings closer together. I'd much rather have a 6-8 story absolute height limit with no open space requirement than dedicating tons of land to gaps in the urban fabric.
For me, the most tangible impact of "density" is making long walks feel short. Towers in the park Le Corbusier style are the antithesis of this type of design. Unfortunately the renderings of Lincoln Yards resemble this kind of thing a bit too closely.