Quote:
Originally Posted by Kilgore Trout
Yeah it feels totally different. I have a very limited experience – just a very jetlagged afternoon on a long layover from Hong Kong to Montreal. But walking from Logan Square to Wicker Park, it felt a little more vast, a little more empty, a little less lived-in. It was a bit like walking down Sherbrooke in NDG if you removed half the businesses and tidied everything up.
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This is a great description of the differences.
I thought of it more in terms of variance between Toronto, but my main takeaways from my many times in Chicago is that the main streets are a bit... stretched out? Wider building footprints than here, more gaps, more residential interludes. Things are centred around nodes a bit more. Everything looks surprisingly tidy even in the bombed out areas.
Toronto and Montreal seem to have grown in tune with their commercial mainstreets. Here due to streetcar fare return most of all, not sure about Montreal and other Canadian cities. Chicago (and many other American cities) had massive residential growth and the commercial buildings followed over time. Leaving lots of gaps.