Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
^ Most of Chicago was built by speculative developers. That was not different 120 years ago.
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Undoubtedly, and nothing in my statement says otherwise. The difference is in the characteristics of those speculative developers....a redundancy I might add....
...my comment was in reaction you your use of the term "retail center" which at least in my mind called to mind mega-block development not the plot by plot development or perhaps a few plots by a few plots that was more characteristic when Chicago's more successful neighborhood retail strips were built.
Are you in fact claiming that policy makes no difference or that aldermanic perspective is irrelevant? That it is all simply the market doing its 'magic'? I mean your commentary re regulatory burden I think is case in point to an environment that favors national chains as they have deeper pockets etc. That needs to be changed to put smaller retailers and smaller developers on a more equal footing.
I mean I was at a meeting with my parents...they are quite old.....with their alderman. The topic being discussed was development in WR near the peterson / western corridor along both western and peterson. Someone in trhe crowd brought up andersonville......one of the more successful small parcel primarily local retail / commercial strips in the city. They wanted to know why their area couldn't foster more style retail like andersonville versus things like the new parko-Walgreens and now apparently a drive thru Starbucks.
The Alderman's answer was "Why do we need that. We already have andersonville. If you want local restaurants go to Andersonville......" (this is a paraphrase I don't recall the actual quote.
With aldermanic perspective such as that it is not coincidental that we get what he wishes for.
As for "work-live" "live-work" etc here are a few quick articles. It is not quite as straightforward as you apparently envisage:
http://www.worldchanging.com/local/c...es/005442.html
http://www.skylinenewspaper.com/News...here_they_work
http://www.chicagoartistsresource.org/dance/node/8686 for an into into the real life influence of the zoning code
an interactive map of zoning. Note the strip of western is almost entirely c2 classification all but assuring suburban autocentric strip development vs the bx-x zoning of most of devon for instance.
https://gisapps.cityofchicago.org/zo...?Submit=Accept
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