Quote:
Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright
^^^ If only the West Loop could look like Toronto!
|
Well... the Toronto photos do actually show what looks like a vibrant neighborhood along Queen West and surrounding blocks. But it's a different animal than West Loop. They were both once warehouse districts, but that's where the similarities end. The Toronto example has lots of legacy small houses, 2-flats and 1-story taxpayer buildings mixed in with the warehouses and highrises on big lots, so there's a fine grained urbanism and plenty of accommodating spaces for independent businesses. Plus Toronto kept its streetcar system and failed to build a vast expressway system, so developers can safely assume that their residents will be working downtown and using cars rarely or never.
In the West Loop, we basically made the whole neighborhood single-use industrial a whole century ago, and any of those smaller scale structures (townhouses, etc) were torn down and replaced with big brick warehouses. The first rounds of redevelopment were mostly single-use residential, and with the neighborhood still sketchy (Skid Row!) they were designed assuming everyone would drive. Blank first floors, lots of garage entrances, not much thought for pedestrians. Even today West Loop developers still can't break away from cars entirely, because many people still work in the suburbs or outer neighborhoods where transit isn't really a good choice.
The one bright spot in West Loop with genuine independent businesses and not well-capitalized techbro joints is Madison St, which is not coincidentally the only part of the West Loop to retain those small-scale buildings.
Lastly Toronto is a massive immigrant hub and so there are plenty of enterprising immigrants willing to take a chance opening a Chinese restaurant, nail salon or kabob place. Chicago gets less immigrants overall, and they largely end up in the suburbs. Opening businesses downtown or downtown-adjacent is usually just not feasible for them. For example, Chicago as a city has
so much authentic Mexican food, but just try getting some authentic tacos anywhere downtown. It doesn't exist, you have to go to some white-girl taco place like Broken English or a sad lunch oriented place like Taco Fresco or Burrito Buggy (gag me with a spoon). New York has similar issues in Midtown, but at least they sorta solved the problem by allowing carts and food trucks so that even the fanciest downtown lawyer can grab some tasty, cheap foreign grub.
Prev
Linear Mode
