I love this place

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to really love a place. Love, after all, might be the most irrational of emotions, and that is further amplified when trying to explain why you are attached to a particular neighborhood or city — or something bigger.

You see, this is my final contribution to Main Street Beverly. My wife, my daughter, and I are moving to Galena, a place that has always existed as much in our imaginations as it has in the real world. This is a longtime daydream that is finally coming true, and it seems appropriate to say goodbye to this blog and its readers with some reflections on the idea that perhaps the image we have of a place in our minds matters just as much as the realities on the ground.

Young love

I fell in love with Chicago as a child when my parents, my brother, and me would pile into our van at Christmastime and make the trip from Antioch — a place that exhibits equal parts small-town charm and suburban ennui — to the Magnificent Mile.

While the sights and sounds of the holiday season are typically enough to make a child giddy, I was more taken with the city itself: the bustle, the buildings, the possibilities. I knew that one day I would have to live there. It was the life for me.

You could say that I actually fell in love with cities at that point in my life, but at the same time, there was something about Chicago specifically that I wanted to be a part of, even more so than flashier places like New York and San Francisco.

That feeling stayed with me as I got older. As a young adult, I found myself attending Columbia College right in the thick of urban Chicago. As a budding journalist, I became obsessed with learning as much as I could about the city — its people, neighborhoods, politics, cultures, and history.

And as I got older still and saw friends decamp for other parts of the country, I never wanted to leave Chicago. I’ve always stood up for it even as outsiders have tried to tear it down (and badmouthing Chicago could practically be a full-time job). In fact, I’ve been a staunch supporter of urban living even as some question the practicality of living in the city. (I would question the practicality of living in the suburbs, but that’s a different story for a different time.)

Yet I know my love is completely irrational. There are as many reasons to hate Chicago as there are to love it. And I’ve never ignored the reasons why people hate Chicago — or simply choose to live elsewhere. In fact, they are some of the same issues I have with it: the political system, the social inequities, the violence. But those things always strengthened my resolve to stay and, perhaps, play some small role in change.

New love

So why is my family leaving now? Well, the most “rational” explanation would be that our circumstances have changed. My brother was the first to decamp to the so-called “Driftless Region” around Galena and Dubuque, Iowa. Then, a few years ago, my mother-in-law moved from her suburban-Chicago home of 40 years to an apartment in the heart of Galena. Finally, my parents have decided to retire to the same area this summer. With such an extensive family network between Dubuque and Galena, it almost seems crazy for us not to move there.

However, there’s another reason. A less rational one. One that exists on a deeper level than our desire to be near family. You see, Galena became a sort of second home to my wife after she spent six years living there and working for the local newspaper. At first, she thought she might stay a year or so before moving on to other opportunities.

But, as I can attest, Galena grabs a hold of you from the minute you roll over the bluffs and into town. Soon, you are wishing a weekend vacation can extend to a week or a weeklong vacation can last a month. Next thing you know, you are thinking about living there. That’s how my wife’s one-year plan turned into six and how even after leaving the desire to return remained strong.

My wife loves Galena the way I love Chicago, and from the first time we visited Galena together at the beginning of our relationship nearly nine years ago, I fell in love with the town, too.

We have talked for years about moving there, sometimes against our better judgment: We could quit our jobs and open a store. We could run a B&B (maybe even with alpacas). We could live like hobos until the right opportunity comes along. At times we would talk about moving to Galena the way some people talk about moving to New York, saying we would scrape by just to live in such a beautiful place. No idea seems too crazy when you are in love.

Fortunately, the right opportunity came along before we actually moved. I applied for and was offered a great job in the region, meaning we could live stably and have access to the types of resources our daughter needs. Now, the hardest thing to believe is that the dream is coming true.

Unconditional love

At the root of all of this is a deep love for a place. Of course, we love the people in Galena. But the place wouldn’t be what it is without the people. They are part of the love.

And we might not be doing this if we didn’t think the school system could provide what our daughter needs or we couldn’t access good medical services. Yet, good schools and good medical services exist in many places. You don’t have to live in Galena to find those. It comes down to something more instinctual, maybe even irrational.

Typically, I have focused my blog entries on ideas that are more concrete: Are we making decisions that are good for the fiscal health of the community? Can people cross the street safely? What is the “right” amount of parking? Who has access to our neighborhood? And those are all important questions that I hope the people of the 19^th Ward continue to ask of themselves and their leaders. They are fundamental to the very concept of a neighborhood, an urban ecosystem.

But even more fundamental must be love. All the practical thinking in the world can’t bring change, improvement, and stability in a community without some irrational love for that particular place. People don’t invest their time and energy into things like attending public meetings, turning out for tree planting events, or even protesting questionable policies and decisions if they don’t care about where they live.

The challenge, though, is to not allow love for a place to be blinding. Love a place for what it is today but also for what it could be tomorrow and what it was yesterday. For better and worse, no place remains frozen in time. Once you accept that, you will love a place more deeply because you will be invested in its future, not just financially (with mortgage, rent, etc.) but also emotionally.

For those of us who love Chicago, we understand this intimately — you accept a lot of baggage when you love Chicago. And for that reason, my moving from Chicago doesn’t exactly feel like I’m leaving it. It exists in my heart and in my dreams. I will visit, and when I do, it will be different than when I moved away. And I will still love it.

But right now, it’s time to explore other cities, other communities, other places. For years now, my wife and I have loved Galena from afar; we are ready to call it home.

* * * * *

Until we meet again…

Now, on to the nuts and bolts: Since you are reading this, you are probably wondering what will happen to Main Street Beverly now that I’ve told you this is my final post.

I intend to keep the site up as an archive. I hope there are the seeds of new ideas for the 19^th Ward buried somewhere within my ramblings. It’s also possible I could link the archived Main Street Beverly to some future blog of mine that is yet unplanned. I’m sure I will get the itch to blog again, possibly about urbanism, possibly about my other passions, music and record collecting (particularly vintage soul and R&B).

I plan on keeping the Main Street Beverly Facebook page live for a short period of time, but I will eventually shut it down. There are many online forums for conversation and debate in the neighborhood, and I encourage you to seek them out if you haven’t already.

Finally, thank you to each and every one of you who has read this blog and also to those who have engaged in discussion or taken action based on what you have read here. When I launched Main Street Beverly, I set out to shift the conversation about development and planning in our neighborhood and possibly even change some hearts and minds in the process. I hope that has happened to some extent.

I know that not everyone has agreed with everything I have written, but I believe most disagreements have been civil. You don’t need me to tell you there is a lot of passion for this neighborhood among those who live here, and with passion always come disagreements. Keep that passion alive and keep pushing for the greater good.

All the best.

Jeff

The chicken and the bicycle

We all know why the chicken crossed the road, but why did the chicken ride its bicycle on the sidewalk?

I’ll take a stab at that one: Because the street wasn’t safe.

By now, many 19^th Ward residents have seen or heard about the new dockless bike share systems that have launched in our Divvy-starved neighborhood. These bikes — many bright green or white — dot the areas of our community that tend to see the most activity: Metra stations, busy shopping corridors, major intersections.

Personally, I’ve already seen a good number of people riding them. I’ve seen young teens riding them for after-school transportation; I’ve seen older adults riding them for what appeared to be errands (or just out of curiosity).

What I suspect (and this is just based on anecdotal evidence) is that we are noticing what a number of people in the neighborhood have already expressed — that there is a latent demand for bike sharing in many parts of the South Side, including Beverly, Morgan Park, and Mount Greenwood.

But after seeing these bikes in action around the neighborhood, one thing has stood out to me: Everyone I have seen on one of these bikes has been riding it on the sidewalk. And I can tell you why.

If you’ve never ridden a bicycle on one of our main thorough like Western Avenue, 111^th Street, or 95^th Street, you probably don’t know what it’s like to take your life into your own hands just to run to the store, or come home from the Metra station, or have a leisurely ride on a Saturday morning.

Or, maybe you do know what that’s like because you know how unsafe many or our streets can be for people who aren’t in cars. Maybe you’ve seen some close calls and decided for yourself, “I will never ride a bike on one of these streets.”

To go back to the joke about the chicken, it’s completely logical that a person would come to that conclusion. Heck, I advocate for bicycling and even I can come to that conclusion.

But the demand for something different than the status quo, for something other than a neighborhood where a car trip for every outing feels like the only option, is so strong that people want to hop on these new bikes anyway, even if it means riding on the sidewalk where, theoretically, they could receive a citation from police.

It makes me think of another chicken-related adage: What came first, the chicken or the egg?

What came first, bicycles or safe streets?

Do we need the bikes to spur changes that make our neighborhood streets safer? Or, would we see more people using the bikes — or riding them on the sidewalks — if we implemented some traffic calming measures?

As we have seen with Divvy, the greatest successes occur in the neighborhoods with the infrastructure and design needed to support a robust bicycling culture. On the other hand, Divvy struggles in areas where barriers — both physical and cultural — hinder its use.

I worry about what happens when the novelty of our neighborhood’s dockless bike share network wears off and we come face to face with its practicality.

Don’t get me wrong — I fully support this initiative and think it has the potential to be a positive for the 19^th Ward. But I think that as we marvel at the people using it (or use it ourselves) we need to pay close attention to the behaviors we see on the streets and try to understand what they are telling us about the design of our community.

My hope is that the bike share system does lead to positive changes in the neighborhood, not because I want to make sure the system benefits but rather because I want to make sure our neighborhood as a whole benefits.

Since the system launched, it’s gotten a good amount of positive press. The rest of the city is watching. Let’s make sure they continue to see something good taking shape.

Where baseball and urbanism meet

My interest in baseball ranges from indifferent to mildly curious. But the intersection of professional sports stadiums and urban planning? That’s something I can can sink my teeth into.

You don’t need to be an urban planner or even have a passing interest in urbanism to understand the differences between the neighborhood around Wrigley Field and the neighborhood around Guaranteed Rate Field (or Comiskey Park or U.S. Cellular Field or whatever you choose to call the place where the White Sox play). One is vibrant, full of shops, homes, and people walking around; the other is a full of a lot of parking lots for cars that sit in place of buildings razed long ago.

I’m going to make this a short post today and let this recent CBS Sports article speak for itself:

The White Sox ballpark in Chicago that never was and could have changed history

It’s an excellent piece about urbanism disguised as a story about a baseball stadium. The author clearly understands the value of neighborhood and community, and where professional sports fit in (right in the middle, as you will read).

Two key quotes (emphasis mine):

“I realized that baseball fans were a kind of community. And the thought occurred to me that you can make this argument about buildings as a form of community and make that point by using baseball parks and advance the larger idea.”

“We weren’t advocating to save the ballpark [Old Comiskey]. We were advocating to save the neighborhood. A reason for gravitating toward Philip’s design is that he clearly got baseball. But most of all he clearly had a scale and a footprint that the residents liked.”

Enjoy.

Where is Main Street Beverly?

Western Avenue. 103rd Street. 95th Street. 99th Street. Which on is Beverly’s “true” main street?

It’s a question I’m asked frequently by readers of this blog and others who learn about it through our conversations. Many people insist on labeling 103rd or Western as the neighborhood’s main street. Or, they assume that since I live near 95th and often write about it that I’m anointed that thoroughfare as Beverly’s main street. I’ve probably even referred to some of these from time to time as our main street.

But if I am being true to the spirit of this blog and the mission I laid out three years ago when I started it, the answer to the question, “Where is Main Street Beverly?” is, “Everywhere.”

You see, Main Street Beverly isn’t a place — it’s an idea, an ethos, a philosophy about what a community is, how it looks, how it functions, and how it supports the people who call it home. It’s also the inverse. It’s about the people who shape it — the residents, business owners, civic leaders, and policy makers.

The underlying philosophy of this blog and every piece posted on it has always been that the traditional pattern of development, the one you see when you look at Main Street, U.S.A., or any pre-World War II city throughout the world, provides a strong foundation for building and sustaining a healthy, productive, and stable community of diverse people. It is a place that is fiscally sound and supports a strong social and civic fabric.

When we break down the components of the traditional development pattern, we see common elements that include, but are not limited to:

• Walkability (pedestrian safety and comfort; convenience and accessibility of destinations)
• Adaptability
• Incremental growth
• Diverse uses, mixed together

All the other neighborhood components people love to wring their hands over, from population density and building height to public transit and bike-friendliness, stem from those foundational elements.

And the best way to lay a solid foundation — or in the case of many communities, stabilize a damaged foundation — is through policy and legislation. That means substantial change will come by tackling zoning, financing, and other forms of regulation.

You could almost say Main Street Beverly is more about policy than place. Or at least it’s about the policy of place.

But remember how I also said Main Street Beverly is also about the people? They just might be the most important elements in this whole philosophy. Improvement comes from the bottom up, not the top down.

A community’s physical character, as well as the laws that govern that character, should reflect the values of all the people who live and work there, not the will of a powerful few.

Main Street Beverly is a philosophy that either lives and prospers or shrivels and dies based on people’s willingness to not just consider it but also better it. In that sense, it has the potential to be bigger than just one particular street. It could shape the entire neighborhood if we want.

Small Change (Makes Us Richer)

Above: Shops along Walden Parkway south of 99th Street.

 

The other day, I hopped on the train at a different station than my usual one, and I spotted signs of subtle but positive change taking place.

A vacant building on Wood Street appears to have been renovated, and a sign in the window indicates that it will become the new home of Sweet Freaks, currently located on Hale Avenue, just on the other side of the tracks.

This would be good news on its own, but the fact that this improvement comes on the heels of another building upgrade in the area — Tranquility Salon’s renovation of a different building on Hale — seems to suggest signs of a trend in the works.

These two renovations stand out to me, because they are shining examples of how neighborhood change is supposed to work: incrementally, and driven by locals. The 99th and Hale area, like most older business districts across the country, is made up of a mixture of structures, typically built on small lots, that feature storefronts of modest sizes that open out to the sidewalk.

For centuries, this development pattern served communities well. The smallest spaces served as incubators for new businesses, which could then upgrade to a larger storefront in the same area as they grew, making way for new upstarts in their former spaces.

This is what we are seeing now with Sweet Freaks and Tranquility, and it probably couldn’t happen if the 99th and Hale district had met the fate of similar business districts both locally and nationally.

A shift in thinking

In the past several decades, the traditional American business district — which, remember, also included a mixture of residences and civic institutions — has been decimated by top-down planning decisions (often heavily subsidized by governments at all levels). Such decisions have resulted in parking lots where buildings once stood, wide roadways unsuitable for valuable foot traffic, and larger retail spaces more suited to national chains, which move farther away to newer and cheaper land after a generation or so, leaving massive “X-Mart”-shaped voids that most entrepreneurs can only dream of filling.

As many communities are now realizing, they can get a lot more out of the traditional development pattern than the more recent suburban sprawl model. Not only does it boost the tax base, but it is also perfect for fostering small, homegrown business activity — establishments that put down roots in and form ties with a community.

In addition, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that the “invisible” forces of banks and the government don’t make this type of development — or redevelopment — easy. Since World War II, America has streamlined a sprawling, suburban development pattern, with government entities at all levels essentially codifying it into law through measures like parking minimums, building setbacks, and strict separation of uses.

I’ve also written in the past about how getting a loan to fund traditional, mixed-use development is exceedingly difficult. Federal restrictions on lending for mixed-use development signal to the private market that this type of development is overly risky, despite evidence to the contrary. As a result, it’s often easy to approve a new subdivision of McMansions in a cornfield than a single, small storefront with apartments in an existing business district.

Needless to say, with so many archaic ideas about development that have been made into law, the process of renovating an older building or constructing something new in a traditional style can be long and expensive. So, I look at developments like Sweet Freaks and Tranquility as minor miracles.

It’s important to remember, too, that the developments that have captured our community’s attention in recent years are not of the cookie-cutter, national chain variety. They are establishments like Open Outcry, Pizzeria Deepo, Quilter’s Trunk, and Ain’t She Sweet Café — businesses that make use of existing buildings with smaller spaces built, to varying degrees, in a more traditional style.

And existing businesses that have stood the test of time — from Top Notch Beefburgers to your accountant’s office — have largely succeeded within the context of traditional development.

Change, from the bottom up

Let’s also not forget that at a time when the narrative of mega-projects driving economic development continues to exert a significant amount of power over leaders in many American communities, the work of grassroots organizations play an immense role in bringing traditional neighborhoods back to life.

In the case of Sweet Freaks, the work of the Beverly Arts Alliance has been invaluable. The last time I went on the annual Beverly Art Walk, I spent some time in the building that will become Sweet Freaks’ new home. While the art on display was impressive, it was the image of the building and the possibilities it offered that lingered in my mind. It had the ambiance of a loft building in a quaint, neighborhood atmosphere. I loved it and knew it could become something special.

That’s a long way of saying that the Arts Alliance has been incredibly instrumental in drawing attention to the forgotten corners of our neighborhood and offering a vision for what the community could be. When incremental development like this occurs, the community becomes richer not just through the money invested in the project, but also through the social capital.

Over the years, we’ve done out best (worst?) to shape our neighborhood into something it’s not by demolishing buildings for parking lots; subsidizing low-value developments; and accepting wide and dangerous roadways as the norm.

Fortunately, though, we have people and organizations that understand where our neighborhood’s strengths lie and actively work to engage the community around those strengths, driving change and creating long-term value.

That’s something that can’t be written into a zoning code.

Roll out the bulb-outs

Greetings, readers!

I know — it’s been awhile. The past year has been a bit of a whirlwind. My wife and I became parents last spring, and you don’t need me to tell you how much that changes your life. What originally began as a few weeks of a blogging break morphed into a full-blown hiatus so subtly that I just realized that I haven’t posted anything since last March. I can’t guarantee that I will be posting as frequently as I was before our little peanut came along, but I hope to get back to somewhat regular postings.

What pulled me back in was an experience I recently had on 111^th Street while on a post-work mission to bring home tacos for dinner, and what I thought about for days afterward was how even the best parts of our public realm need to be tweaked over time to keep them inching ever closer to their full potential. These tweaks are low cost, common-sense features that improve safety, property values, and the quality of life in the area.

I was driving west on 111^th when I noticed a pedestrian waiting on the north side of the street (my passenger side) to cross at Campbell, at the crosswalk. So, I stopped and waved, giving him the signal that I was letting him cross. Well, the traffic in the eastbound lane wasn’t stopping, and the man clearly saw this, as he stayed put. But after a couple seconds, the eastbound traffic did come to a halt due to a traffic signal ahead. Great! He can cross safely, I thought.

What I didn’t expect was for driver after driver behind me to start steering around my car and passing me on my passenger side, between me and the pedestrian. I was stuck, and so was the man I had stopped for. About 10 cars finally passed before a break in the traffic flow came.

By this point, I knew I needed to just move on. The pedestrian was clearly not ready to step into the crosswalk after what had happened, and the best thing to do was just clear the roadway so he could cross in peace.

But that wasn’t the end of the experience. When I got to my destination, El Gallo restaurant, a block away, I spotted a parking space across the street on the north side, pulled into it, and hopped out of the car. Now, it was my turn to be the pedestrian. I looked around for a crosswalk. Although I was at an intersection — 111^th and Maplewood — there was no marked crossing.

I could go back a block to Campbell or up two blocks. Of course, both of those routes would be silly. My destination was across the street. I waited for a lull in traffic and crossed mid-block, scratching my head and wondering why this section of the street, an otherwise pleasant place for walking with businesses on one side and multifamily dwelling units on the other, wouldn’t have marked crosswalks.

Subtle signals

As I’ve written before, 111^th is one of the most pedestrian-friendly districts in the 19^th Ward, whose highly walkable environment is undermined by an archaic master plan that puts an cars and out-of-scale suburban-style development over people. While I was previously focusing on the heart of Mount Greenwood around 111^th and Kedzie, similar principles could be applied to the area to the east in Morgan Park where I encountered the aforementioned flaws in pedestrian infrastructure.

In regard to the situation with man in the crosswalk, I am hesitant to express frustration with the drivers who passed me, failing to give the pedestrian his six seconds to cross the street. Many people are quick to express blame close calls and collisions on those who don’t follow the rules of the road, and sometimes, I’m right there with them.

But most drivers are following what I’ll call the “unwritten rules” of the road. These are the visual cues they absorb unconsciously that tell them what type of driving feels safe. These cues come from all the decisions made by engineers and planners that are “baked into” the street design. These include wide lane widths, lack of street markings, extra lanes so drivers can jockey around each other, and corners that permit wide, fast right turns.

Often, these factors work against the “written rules” of the road, which include speed limits, traffic signals, and crosswalks, because they suggest that motorists drive in a manner that is unsuitable for the environment. In other words, all the visual cues suggest that you drive fast and aim high when you really need to slow down and be aware of your surroundings.

What happened at 111^th and Campbell was an example of drivers following the visual cues and maneuvering as they felt comfortable. There was an obstruction in the roadway — me, stopped for a pedestrian — and there was a lane’s worth of space between the obstruction and the curb for other drivers to swerve and continue on unimpeded. They probably didn’t even see the man waiting to cross.

Alternative scenario

Now, what if there wasn’t a lane’s worth of space? What if there were, say, curb extensions at the corner that gave the pedestrian a little more visibility and forced drivers to think twice before taking a shortcut, lest they jump the curb? Well, that would simply change how we think about traveling along 111^th — as pedestrians and drivers.

Curb extensions — often known by other terms, such as “bulb-outs” — are pretty much exactly what they sound like: A little extra concrete that extends the sidewalk into the roadway. They have been implemented successfully across communities in Chicago and beyond in an effort to enhance pedestrian safety and make a place more comfortable for walking. The desired effect is that they help define the roadway for all users. Pedestrians get a little more visibility, parking motorists can visualize their on-street spaces, and drivers get the signal to “hey, stay in the lane.”

By Richard Drdul (Traffic Calming Flickr Photoset) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Studies that look at traffic calming and pedestrian safety measures, which include curb extensions, show that, on the whole, they tend to work. This report, by the Institute of Transportation Engineers, explains how such measures have reduced collisions when implemented in U.S. and European cities, both between multiple vehicles, as well as vehicles and pedestrians.

Looking at curb extensions exclusively, researchers in Oregon concluded that after installing them, fewer drivers would pass a pedestrian waiting to cross the roadway than before the extensions were installed, due to enhanced visibility of the pedestrian. They also concluded that more drivers tended to yield for pedestrians, although when examining driver behavior on roadways with more than two travel lanes, the researchers found that drivers in the lane closest to the curb were more likely to yield than the drivers in the lane farther from the curb. (To me, this is an expected result. We see this frequently on 95^th street, where a driver in the right lane might stop, but others swerve around into the left lane. This suggests that curb extensions alone can’t solve safety issues on wider streets. But they should help on two-lane 111^th.)

Beyond safety

For many, myself included, simply improving safety would be reason enough to start installing these immediately across the 19^th Ward. After all, who wants to walk around the neighborhood when they feel they could be struck crossing the street? And I wouldn’t just stick to four-way intersections. Curb extensions are needed at the three-way ones, too, including 111^th and Campbell, where I would have had to take a roundabout pat to get to my destination. (It goes without saying, but I will, anyway: Please paint a crosswalk here, as well.)

But others probably need more evidence that curb extensions aren’t just frivolities that make things look “nicer” but just inconvenience drivers and have little economic impact. Well, I’m here to tell you that even aside from the safety improvements, they are worth the investment.

The ITE report notes that comprehensive studies on the effects of traffic calming on property values are difficult to come by — and the ones cited don’t specifically deal with curb extensions. (They look at traffic diverters and speed humps, which I believe people overall are less receptive to. Such measures are seen more as “punishment” to drivers, where subtle design changes like curb extensions seem less punitive. They are a visible sign that we care about the pedestrian experience.) However, the anecdotal evidence about traffic calming measures impacting property values is powerful.

In West Palm Beach, Florida, the same report notes, traffic calming changes on one main street had a significant impact on the rise in property values and commercial activity in just a few years. Retail space occupancy rose from 30 percent to 80 percent, and the price of commercial space rose from $6 per square foot to $30 per square foot. Home sale prices also rose from an average of $65,000 to $106,000.

The ITE report also notes a similar positive impact on traffic calming measures in a Grand Rapids, Michigan, neighborhood, which were implemented after a fatal crash. To be fair, it also notes that traffic calming measures had little impact when implemented in one Georgia county. But as I mentioned before, these measures included components I believe people react negatively to, such as speed humps. Plus, judging by the photos, they appear to have been focused primarily on residential neighborhoods with auto-centric design rather than mixed-use and commercial districts where pedestrian activity is high. Plus, even if there is zero impact on property values, we should consider the safety improvements to be reason enough to implement traffic calming measures, including curb extensions.

Change, little by little

Finally, what about the cost? Good news once again: We don’t have to spend a fortune. The first thing we do is “install” curb extensions on a trial basis to see if they have the desired safety impacts. Our neighborhood is full of people who are incredibly passionate about the place they live, and this could even begin as a community-based effort (with city approval, of course). Start on a weekend. Residents could place traffic cones and use temporary street markings to indicate where the curb extensions would be. Then, spend a couple days observing to see if the project has the desired effect.

The next step is to make it slightly more permanent. Get the city to install plastic bollards (the types of posts you see around some protected bike lanes) and paint the extension area around them.

A similar project, known as the Lincoln Hub, was recently done in the Lakeview neighborhood at the six-corner intersection of Lincoln, Wellington, and Southport. During this stage, planners and engineers can see how the project is taking shape and what tweaks need to be made before making it permanent.

When the time comes, the concrete curbs extensions can be poured and graded. Traffic signs noting their presence of a crossing could even be installed.

We have the opportunity here to take on a truly incremental project that has a small scope but a potentially major impact on how the neighborhood functions and is valued —from an economic perspective, sure, but also from social and safety perspectives. And what starts with one intersection can be replicated in similar places throughout the neighborhood. Our shared public space becomes a point of pride when we all have a hand in improving it.

Can’t Catch a Break

Above: A block of small storefronts on 95th Street is prepared for demolition to make way for an auto parts store and a parking lot. Is this what passes for economic growth in our neighborhood?

The more I think about the intersection of economic growth and the physical development of neighborhoods, the more I come to see that the cards are stacked against the little guys. Small-scale developers, entrepreneurs, people who rent their residences by choice or necessity — the converging systems of finance, zoning and planning are almost always set up to limit access to personal or community economic development. Sometimes it is intentional, such as when communities enact large-lot, single- family zoning in order to ensure that their neighbors are only the types of people who can afford such a property. Other times, the little guy is collateral damage, the unintended consequence of good intentions gone bad, such as when we sacrifice walkable streets for high-speed, high capacity thoroughfares, ensuring that a resident of the area must spend a sizable chunk of his or her income on a car just to take care of routine errands.

Consider two stories:

• In one, a man sets out to buy a small, run-down, mixed-use building in a Cincinnati-area neighborhood and turn it into a property that not only generates income for himself but also can serve as an affordable residence and commercial space for the neighborhood that could use a refresh of its infrastructure as well as new services. However, he can’t get a loan, not because he’s a bad businessman, but because the bank has strict rules about lending for what it considers “investment properties” (typically mixed-use buildings) — minimal loan amounts, commercial vs. residential space, etc. Nevermind that properties in many mixed-use urban neighborhoods are appreciating in value faster than their suburban counterparts and serve as viable fixtures in their communities. So, the man backs away from his plan, opting to buy a residential property instead, leaving the future of the mixed-use building and a good commercial space for a local entrepreneur up in the air.
• In another, a developer in Cleveland proposes a building with 34 apartments and no parking spaces, a type of traditional building that exists in many cities (think about Chicago’s courtyard apartment buildings), yet has been difficult to build in the past 50 years due to minimum parking requirements written into zoning codes. The Cleveland Board of Zoning Approvals recognized that this type of development would enhance its neighborhood and approved the proposal. But the lending bank was another issue. Without the parking, the bank didn’t think the development would be feasible and refused to grant a loan. The city was forced to write the bank a letter assuring them that the lack of parking wouldn’t be an issue.

These are just two examples of the barriers to economic growth in traditional neighborhoods as well as communities that want to make room for the little guys, the small businesses, the risk takers, the people who add value to a neighborhood little by little. Cities leaders and residents are beginning to see the advantages of walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods and the role they play in fostering entrepreneurial development. Yet a web of policies at all levels of government combined with large financial institutions that are skittish about disrupting the post World War II status quo of development threaten to snarl the sort of growth that would produce the kinds of places Americans increasingly say they want to live in. Whether people live in the city, suburbs or rural hinterlands, they are asking for walkable neighborhoods but being force fed the same pattern of suburban development that we are now realizing costs more to maintain than we are often willing to pay.

Last month, a widely circulated report by the Regional Plan Association explained how the policies of Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Housing Administration, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac policies favor single-family, low-density housing developments over their mixed-use counterparts, thereby limiting development opportunities, housing choices and options for commercial space, such as the classic Main Street building that offers a storefront below, dwelling space above. By placing regulatory limits on the amount of non-residential space in a building, these agencies hinder the development of many small-scale, mixed-use projects and re-investment in traditional neighborhoods by curtailing access to federally guaranteed loans and loan insurance. The report notes that 81 percent of federal loans and loan guarantees support single-family home ownership. The rules that these institutions are guided by limit the amount of non-residential space in a building to about one-quarter. In other words, good luck getting a loan for a two-apartment, one-storefront building. Or for adding a residential unit or two above your shop to bring in extra income. But as long as you want a to construct a single-family house or have the means to build a large-scale mixed-use building, congratulations! You’re in good shape. Given what neighborhood politics and zoning ordinances are in many American communities, you’ll probably be less likely to build the latter, though, so the former will continue to proliferate. If we don’t have (smaller, local) financial backers willing to support those in-between projects, we will always get more of the same and continue to prevent opportunities for those who want to do something different. (I highly recommend reading the full report I linked to above — it isn’t terribly heavy on jargon. But if you’re strapped for time, check out the abridged version.)

I’m often asked what we can do to encourage more development in our neighborhood, and the glib answer would be, “Do the opposite of everything we’ve been doing.” I don’t consider myself a deregulate-everything-type, but when you see that existing policies might be doing more harm than good, it might be time to think about switching gears or putting a different set of policies in place in order to get the result you want. In some cases, such as the aforementioned bias against small-scale mixed use, the policies are at the federal level, making change a difficult, highly political process. What we can do in that case is make sure we are asking our elected officials where they stand on these issues and electing the people dedicated to turning things around. It’s already becoming clear that some people at the federal level are noticing that antiquated rules are having negative consequences. Even HUD has already relaxed its regulations regarding the commercial space to residential space ratio.

But that is more of a response to the question of what can we as a society do. (The “royal ‘we,’” as one Jeffrey Lebowski might say.) The question I hear most often, though, is in regard to the more local “we,” the residents of Beverly, Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood. I often feel that people who ask this are interested in some type of financial incentive. While I’m not totally opposed to incentives, I tend to think that in many cases they mask larger issues. Tax increment financing (TIF), for instance, asks the government to pick winners and losers when it comes to development, and often, the winner is the person with the time and resources to devote to an extensive review and approval process and create a large-scale, quick-fix project. Done in a vacuum outside of a more comprehensive redevelopment plan, TIF ignores factors like street design, zoning, population density and access to transit that might also be part of the reason development just isn’t happening. And when our officials favor large scale projects, they take on huge risks — like the fact that a bankruptcy doesn’t just impact one parcel, it can impact a whole community. Governments that give these types of incentives are often like failing restaurants who try to attract customers by constantly offering low price specials while refusing to consider that maybe the food just isn’t that good

The most basic thing we can do is simply build a better, more resilient neighborhood — or at least advocate for one. Think about this: One of the key aspects of a community businesses look for when considering where to open is placemaking, or what can commonly be referred to a quality of life issues. Can people easily access things in the neighborhood? Are there amenities nearby that attract new residents, enhance property values and foster a sense of place? Can a person walk to the potential new business safely and conveniently? Can an entrepreneur easily start up a small business that can grow and build wealth over time?

These are things that we can tackle at the city and neighborhood levels, making our community a better place little by little. We can paint narrower travel lanes on our streets to help calm traffic and make being a pedestrian safer. We can take a “complete streets” approach to our wide arterials to accommodate multiple modes of transportation, including bikes. New York City is doing this perhaps better than any other place in the country, and officials there recognize the economic benefits. At one busy intersection in Harlem, traffic reconfiguration and new public space resulted in a 48 percent increase in retail sales.

We can tie together corridors that are disjointed patchworks of parking lots and single-use buildings. Taking a comprehensive look at the parking we have and how it can best serve the needs of the entire area is a more responsible approach to accommodating motor vehicles that blindly requiring developments to include a minimum number of on-site spaces. Parking spaces in general are expensive ($29,000 per above-ground garage space in Chicago), and while surface parking lots are cheaper, they still are barriers for small-scale developers and entrepreneurs: Is it more valuable to put money into your business or buy another lot next door to fulfill a zoning requirement for parking? Is it more valuable to devote half your parcel to asphalt or 100 percent of your site to a profitable service?

I could go on, but the message will remain the same: Remove barriers that prevent the small scale developer and the entrepreneur from getting into the game and building local wealth, and strengthen the public realm to foster vibrancy. The key thing to remember, though, is that this type of growth takes time. It requires patience and the implementation of many inexpensive, low-risk changes primarily aimed at remedying an extensive, decades-old system that favored a single form of growth — suburban sprawl — above all else, long-term liabilities be damned. It’s easy to attract big names with the promise of public money or a blank canvas to construct their megastore. But these places don’t stick around forever. They have little allegiance to the community. When they leave — and they will leave — all they have to offer are gaping holes in the economic and social fabric of the neighborhood.

We’ve had some economic wins in recent years with entrepreneurs who have managed to work within the system to bring something fresh to the neighborhood, whether it be delicious sweet potato creations, craft beer or quilting supplies. But we also continue to bank on the status quo with drive-thru fast food joints, Walgreens and an auto parts store that is one of the more misguided developments I’ve seen in recent memory. (As recently as February, business reporters were talking about Advance Auto Parts’ weak sales and whether O’Reilly Automotive, which operates a store just a few blocks from the future Beverly Advance site, would buy out the company.) It’s as though we are so hungry for new development that we are willing to settle for those that are less than optimal. Instead, we should be priming our neighborhood for what’s good. It’s time we worked toward a new paradigm for economic growth in the 19th Ward.

‘It’s Your Own Fault’

Quick post today. I have some more detailed, analytical pieces planned, but it’s just a matter of finding the time in my hectic schedule to sit down and write them. I was walking to work and thinking about a piece I read that morning on “beg buttons,” those buttons at intersections pedestrians must press in order for a walk signal to appear. They commonly appear in places that would otherwise be inhospitable to pedestrians, and if the place already seems dangerous and/or unpleasant for those on foot, they arguably don’t improve the situation much.

The argument for them is that they are needed to protect pedestrians — and drivers — because one errant step could mean certain doom. Yes, that means supporters of the buttons feel that, in these places, pedestrians are the problem.

I get a big smile on my face anytime a real life scenario aligns with a gag from “The Simpsons,” and thinking about this argument reminded me a bit of this classic:

Bart: On my way, I’m gonna be doing this [swings arms in circles as he walks]. And if you get hit, it’s your own fault.

Lisa: OK, then I’m gonna start kicking air like this. And if any part of you should fill that air, it’s YOUR own fault.

Are there beg buttons here? Take a wild guess.

The arguments for and against beg buttons would be moot if we just designed a better street. For decades, oversized roadways that carry high-speed traffic have been rammed through the hearts of our neighborhoods, the places where people have long walked, shopped and lingered. But, if you get hit by that traffic, well, like the Simpsons kids say, it’s your own fault. Beg buttons are symptoms, not causes, of an inhospitable environment. They are primarily located in places that serve to move many cars quickly — usually stroads. Pedestrian activity was an afterthought long before the buttons were installed.

We aren’t talking about climbing Mt. Everest, the type of activity that inherently carries a significant amount of life-threatening risk. We are talking about walking across the street in our own neighborhood, which should carry risk that is or is extremely close to zero. I’m not suggesting that we forget about being aware of our surroundings as pedestrians — “look both ways” is still a helpful rule. But it’s also important to create environments where drivers must be hyper-aware, and that’s just not possible at 40-plus mph on a four- to six-lane roadway. Beg buttons are just one more way that we attempt to remove “impediments” (humans, in this case) from the driver’s milieu, enabling the very high-speed traffic that poses a danger.

A healthy street is not one where pedestrians are at odds with cars zipping through the neighborhood. A healthy street fosters activity. You don’t have to press a button to participate — you just show up on your own two feet.

We Know Where to Walk — And It’s Not Always Where We’re Told

We haven’t had much snow this winter, but what has fallen on our neighborhood has spoken volumes about the way we transport ourselves from one place to another.

I snapped the photo above in January, but the story of what you see dates back months prior. Last fall, People’s Gas performed extensive infrastructure work in my neighborhood (and elsewhere in the area), and this required that portions of our sidewalks, parkways, and lawns be torn apart. After the work was complete, crews replaced the sections of missing sidewalk and sodded over the missing patches of grass. For the most part, everything went back to looking as it had before — except for the corner of 92nd and Leavitt streets.

Long before People’s Gas came to the neighborhood, the sidewalks along of 92nd extended all the way to the curb, where the street dead-ended at Leavitt. The crossing was never completely “official” — the curbs were not graded to be wheelchair accessible and on the west side of Leavitt, driveways served as unofficial crossing points. Still, given that these two streets border Kellogg School and serve as heavily trafficked routes to Christ the King and the 91st Street Metra station, the crossing points have always seen a good amount of pedestrian activity.

While walking down the street somewhere, I saw a sidewalk that wasn’t there…

To complete their work, People’s Gas crews removed the sidewalk portions that extended to Leavitt. But when it came time to replace them, the neighborhood got patches of sod instead, effectively removing any semblance of a crossing for walkers.

In the weeks and months after, though, something interesting happened: No one changed their behavior. People still crossed where the sidewalk used to be, as it likely felt safer than walking in the street and around the corner to get to the next accessible section. This became even more evident after snow fell around the holidays, as the slushy, muddy footprints left by pedestrians clearly marked where their familiar sidewalk was. In the photo above, you can see the tracks left in the snow and the damage to the freshly laid sod after the snow melted.

…It wasn’t there again today. Why on earth did it go away?

This got me thinking about how people actually navigate the public realm versus how engineers, planners and the like expect people to navigate it. I cannot say for certain what happened on the corner in question — maybe it wasn’t a deliberate attempt to force pedestrians to change their behavior, but it could be a case of cutting corners, no pun intended. But what is clear is that pedestrians aren’t stupid. They know the best way to get from point A to point B, and it isn’t always the path that engineers and planners want them to take. As a society, we need to make better observations about how people walk around their own neighborhoods and design our infrastructure accordingly to make sure the walk is safe and pleasant.

At the 91st Street Metra Station, off in the distance, people take the most convenient route to the platform.

Last spring, a short story appeared on the site of the organization Strong Towns (which I know I refer to a lot on this blog, but it’s only because they are one of the only organizations I’ve come across that truly knows how communities function) that relates a story about Walt Disney. The tale goes that one day, Disney noticed some workers erecting a fence at Disneyland. When he asked why, the workers told him it was because people were taking a shortcut and trampling the grass. Disney’s reply: If that’s where people are walking, they need a path, not a barricade. The workers removed the fence and rerouted the path.

Now, the 19th Ward isn’t completely dominated by “barricades,” but it is overwhelmed by partial “paths,” or places that appear on the surface like they are accommodating of pedestrians but fail miserably when actually put into practice. Crossing five-lane Western Avenue, for instance, is a harrowing experience, even if you’re using a crosswalk. White stripes on the pavement don’t protect you from 45 mph traffic that won’t stop or slow for pedestrians. We’ve told people “walk here” but scared them away from ever wanting to actually do so. (Let’s be thankful we don’t have to deal with many situations like our suburban neighbors Evergreen Park and Oak Lawn, where 95th Street becomes seven lanes at some points, dividing neighborhoods with crosswalks striped only every third-mile or so.)

When our planners and engineers don’t design for pedestrian safety, the consequences can be fatal. Just the other day, for example, a pedestrian was killed in Lakeview, one of Chicago’s most walkable neighborhoods, while crossing at an unstriped corner that nevertheless is a common spot for pedestrians to get to their shopping destinations on the other side of the street.

In a tragic incident in suburban Atlanta several years ago, a child was struck and killed by a driver after exiting a bus with his mother and siblings and walking across the street to his apartment building. The mother was convicted of vehicular homicide, despite being on foot, and at one point faced jail time. At the intersection where the crash occurred, there is no crosswalk — or any type of safety control — despite the presence of a bus stop and residences. The nearest crosswalk is three blocks away.

A safe crossing for a busy street.

Now, take a look at how a frequently congested part of The Loop was handled. This scene is on the west side of City Hall, obviously a major destination. Workers come and go throughout the day. Citizens stop by to pay their water bills. I’m sure that in the past, pedestrians would take any route possible to get there, even if it meant avoiding controlled intersections. The city could have put an end to this by putting a median down the entirety of LaSalle Street, forcing pedestrians in other directions. Instead, the city obviously encouraged mid-block crossing by striping a crosswalk. Now, even when traffic is at its worst, people can cross safely by City Hall.

This post isn’t a call to have the sidewalk in my neighborhood replaced (although that would be nice), and it isn’t a call to further segregate walkers from drivers. It’s a call for all of us to be more cognizant of how people actually use the streets in our neighborhood and what purpose those streets serve. Yes, there will continue to be a need to circulate vehicular traffic — but we can’t do that at the expense of our pedestrians’ safety. People on foot say a lot with each step they take. It’s time we paid attention.

Winter Reflections

As in most years, I find myself in reflection mode the closer we inch toward the holidays, and this year is no different. The latter part of 2015 has been filled simultaneously with some of my highest highs and lowest lows, which is why I’ve been fairly quiet lately. Frankly, there’s been a lot going on that has taken precedence over this blog, and I feel that all of us deserve time to take stock of what’s important in life in order to be the best people we can be.

That said, I’ve still been spending a good amount of time thinking about our built environment. Pretty much every trip I’ve made outside the house has been an opportunity to consider what makes our neighborhood special and what can be improved in order to allow it to function better for the people who live here.

To close out 2015 at Main Street Beverly, I’d like to share some thoughts about what I’m thankful for in the 19th Ward and what I would love to see in the coming year (all focused on urbanism, of course).

I’m thankful for…

Our good bones. Possibly our neighborhood’s greatest asset, one that drew me and likely many others here, is the fact that it was laid out in an era before planners began overcompensating for personal automobile use. Unlike many areas on the edges of other major U.S. cities, Beverly, Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood feel more like traditional neighborhoods rather than sprawling suburbs. We have a strong street grid that accommodates pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists (to varying degrees depending on the area). We have a fairly high-functioning commuter rail line with hubs of activity centered around the stations — or at least a strong potential for such. We are served by two different bus lines. We have many buildings and trees that help frame the public realm and create a sense of place. In other words, we have the makings of a neighborhood that in most places is illegal to build due to modern zoning codes. The neighborhood’s “good bones” are worth nurturing because they are what differentiate us and what will make us successful for years to come as more Americans seek out the types of vibrant, walkable communities that are in short supply. That leads me to…

Every 19th Ward and nearby community Metra station and the area within a 15 minute walking distance.

Our public transit connections. Few American cities have the type of extensive network of trains and buses that Chicago has. And on the South Side of Chicago, few neighborhoods have the abundance of transit options the 19th Ward has. We have eight Metra stations — and more if you count ones in abutting communities — where residents can hop a train that takes them downtown, in some cases, in less than 30 minutes. Each trip on Metra is one trip that isn’t being taken by car, which keeps our streets safer and encourages the kind of foot traffic that proprietors of small businesses love. Additionally, a bulk of our residents live within a 15 minute walk of a Metra station and many also within a 15 minute walk of a major bus route. That’s the type of transit network many communities in Chicago elsewhere in the United States would kill for. We have it. Every day. With better planning around it, we can make it work in our favor. I briefly mentioned it above, but I also love…

Trees along 92nd Street.

Our flora. Trees might be the most misunderstood part of a neighborhood. Used in the wrong way, such as in newly built exurban subdivisions, they are little more than “nature Band-Aids” — greenery that masks poor planning decisions in a half-hearted effort to make people feel as if they are living in a rural community. And in some cities, trees can be an afterthought, something planners feel is better left out in nature where it belongs. (Until recently, Virginia road regulations infamously referred to trees as “fixed and hazardous objects.” Buzzkill.) But trees play a vital role in neighborhood-building in part by cleaning the air and also by working in tandem with the surrounding built environment to create a strong sense of place. In our neighborhood, trees are typically more than just nature Band-Aids, and they are certainly not an afterthought. They line our streets and frame our parks. While nice to look at, they also provide a sense of enclosure and comfort, forming the walls of outdoor rooms and corridors. But they would be less effective if it weren’t for… 

Kellogg Elementary School sits at the heart of North Beverly. Just on the other side lies Christ the King, another neighborhood focal point.

Our mix of uses. It’s true that I can be critical of the reluctance to build in a mixed-use fashion in our neighborhood. This is particularly true of our main streets, which would benefit from an injection of uses beyond single-story commercial buildings and parking lots. But as you wander around the neighborhood, it’s clear that putting different types of uses next to each other — or even on top of one another — was once viewed as the positive attribute it is. Take, for instance, the location of some of our most beloved institutions: Our schools and our churches. They are nestled among our homes; they are the focal points of neighborhoods. In a day and age when a new school or church is built in a far-off field to attract the maximum number of people in a sprawling region, the simple placement of an institution in the center of a community almost seems radical. But think about how your family gets to church on Sunday or how your children get to school during the week. I’m sure that in many cases walking is the preferred choice, giving families and friends the opportunity to bond over a shared activity. Elsewhere, streets and (sometimes) sidewalks just lead to these places. Here, those paths instead form an interconnected network around them, reminding us that education and spirituality aren’t just values we reflect on at specific times of the week. They are always with us. Speaking of our streets and sidewalks, I have to give a shout-out to…

Our residential streets. When we think about the state of many of our main corridors, we should look to our residential streets for inspiration. It’s clear that these streets were designed with pedestrian safety — and pleasure — in mind. Already narrow travel lanes become even narrower when cars are parked on the street. Intersections are frequent. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s these types of obstacles and interruptions that make streets safe. On many streets it’s next to impossible for a motorist to travel faster than about 20 mph, and often one driver has to pull to the side to allow another to pass. The design of most of our residential streets forces drivers to be alert. If our streets absolutely have to carry motor vehicle traffic this is a good way to allow it. Low traffic speeds combined with a solid if utilitarian set of sidewalks and the aforementioned mixture of uses make our side streets pleasant places to walk and bike. In cities and villages across the country, rules about engineering prevent these types of narrow, complex streets from being built today. We have them, and we are all the better for it.

In the coming year, I wish for us to…

Embrace the “urban” in “urban village.” “Urban village” is a great, catchy moniker, but I don’t know that it is always applied accurately in the case of our neighborhood. We tend to throw it around when we try to keep out elements we consider incompatible with a “village” atmosphere, such as apartments and mixed-use development, when the truth is that those very things would fall perfectly in line with a traditional village (see my earlier piece on the characteristics of a more traditional village.) As a result, we end up looking and operating more like a decentralized suburb, and there can be little to differentiate us from Evergreen Park, Oak Lawn and the like. Being an urban village also entails building on our amenities and infrastructure that are uniquely urban, such as our transit network, a hugely important piece of life in the 19th Ward that must be treated as a driver of activity, particularly around our Metra stations. We can turn to other “urban villages” for inspiration, such as the neighborhoods of Seattle, or we can look closer to home. Chicago encompasses numerous other “urban villages,” including Ukrainian Village, Roscoe Village and Andersonville, all of which more closely resemble the traditional villages we strive to be like. Perhaps the most successful one is Little Village, the vibrant Mexican-American neighborhood on the Southwest Side that was recently the subject of a very flattering photo essay in Crain’s Chicago Business. There, pedestrian-focused design, public transit, mixed uses and proximity to amenities have helped make its main thoroughfare, 26th Street, the greatest generator of sales tax revenue for the city after the mighty Magnificent Mile. A good start would be to…

Recognize that everyone is a pedestrian. At some point on most days, virtually every resident of Beverly, Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood is a pedestrian. Even those who drive to most destinations likely encounter the public realm on foot, however briefly. Knowing this, it is essential to consider how we want people interacting with the built environment as they walk from place to place. Are they more likely to have a pleasant experience navigating parking lots or passing storefronts? Will they enjoy strolling our shopping districts if they have to cross wide stroads carrying high-speed traffic or narrower corridors that tame vehicular traffic and provide safe crossings?

From this perspective, we should also consider pedestrians to be key drivers of activity and commerce and think about ways that we can enable them to move around as such. It’s easy to get lost in traffic counts and the number of vehicles per household and come to the conclusion that driving (of the high-speed, high-volume variety) must be accommodated and eased at all hours, and it might be easy to say, “Well, people just don’t walk here.” But that would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Create an environment that fosters walking and change the game. And part of doing this requires us to…

If you have to push a button for the “OK” to cross the street, you know something is wrong with your pedestrian environment. What if drivers had to push a button to get a green light?

Think of business activity as a consequence or function of a well designed neighborhood rather than a driver of revitalization. That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? But it’s something I’ve thought a lot about in the past year every time I hear about a new business moving in that residents wish was something else (i.e. a dollar store or an auto parts store) or a business that residents want to attract to the neighborhood (i.e. Trader Joe’s). Essentially, you get what you design for. While some chain/big box stores have begun adapting their exurban, auto-oriented models for older urban neighborhoods, most are looking to move to a fringe suburb where they can build cheaply, not an established neighborhood like ours with smaller buildings and lots that must be acquired through extensive negotiations with multiple owners.

However, many parts of our neighborhood don’t fit the model for smaller businesses and start-ups, either. The stroad environments of Western Avenue and the like, in their current state, don’t really lend themselves to the foot traffic that small and specialty businesses thrive on. In other words, I’m not really surprised that a dollar store filled the former Ace Hardware building on Western Avenue in Morgan Park as opposed to something more “desireable.” (For the record, I have no problem with a dollar store moving in.) The built environment along that stretch of road is like economic purgatory: Too auto-oriented and too large a space to be attractive to a smaller business yet too fine-grained to draw large national chains. At the same time, it would serve us well to not think about “scoring” certain types of businesses in hopes that their mere presence will trickle down to the surrounding area. Borders may have been a nice place to hang out while it existed — a so-called “third-place” for neighborhood residents — but it didn’t exactly turn 95th Street into the next State Street.

Instead, we should think about what makes for an attractive, well functioning neighborhood and take inexpensive, incremental steps toward creating it. Let’s look to a wonderful example in Lakeview: Business and property owners around Lincoln and Wellington avenues voted to impose a slight tax on themselves to fund street markings designed to calm unruly vehicle traffic and make the area more attractive for pedestrians. This is a fantastic example, because it is incremental. Right now, the project is in the pilot stage. Maybe it’s tweaked before it becomes permanent; maybe it doesn’t become permanent at all. But it allows for people to experience the change firsthand, while an innovative funding mechanism helps add value at a minimal cost. Let’s follow this lead and work to make our neighborhood attractive to people and businesses, because they will take notice. And as we become more attractive, we will hopefully…

New condos and storefronts near the Ravenswood Metra station, a model for growth.

Get more — and different — residents. Right now, we do a great job of attracting families, particularly those who want and can afford a detached house. It’s mostly what we offer, and a detached, single-family house isn’t a bad thing. But we are also missing out on other types of people who can help our business districts and institutions thrive, from single, young professionals not yet ready to take the plunge and buy a house but looking for a smaller apartment near public transportation to get them to their job downtown, to empty-nesters and retirees who want to sell the large house where they raised three kids but also stay in their longtime neighborhood. (Bonus: Both of these demographics have disposable income to spend at local businesses.) We have ample room to accommodate apartments, condos, live-work spaces and other housing types that aren’t single family homes along our main corridors and near our transit hubs. (You can read more about this issue, often described as the “missing middle,” as it concerns housing options that fall on the spectrum between single-family homes and large apartment towers, at the excellent City Observatory.) This helps diversify our population, add pedestrians to our sidewalks and create walkable, mixed-use environments without drastically altering the character of our neighborhood. By diversifying our housing options, we open our neighborhood to people at various stages of life and provide the ability for people to cycle through different types of living arrangements accordingly — without having to move out of the neighborhood. But to truly set ourselves on a good path for the future, we have to do one thing:

Strike the phrase “That won’t work here” from our collective vocabulary. There’s a story I love from urbanism history about New York City’s West Side Highway. In the 1970s, the elevated freeway in Manhattan was in need of repairs when a truck carrying asphalt to do the work crashed through it. Suddenly, a road that carried 140,000 cars per day was closed and carmageddon was predicted. But after a brief period of traffic backups, something amazing happened: The gridlock simply disappeared. People found new ways to get around the city. Last year, reporter Peter Simek wrote a piece for his audience in Dallas, a city that was having its own freeway debates, about the New York event:

“After decades of political wrangling, in the 1990s, New York decided to tear down the West Side Highway and replace it with a boulevard. The neighborhoods formerly divided by the road boomed and blossomed.”

I can only imagine the conversations in New York at the time: “You can’t tear down a highway here — it just won’t work! Too many people rely on that road! The city can’t function without it!” I bring up this story because I routinely hear the “it won’t work here, we’re different” argument when it comes to rethinking the status quo in relation to the way our neighborhood is designed. And to be fair, it’s not unique to our neighborhood. The status quo is familiar and change is scary. But people are pretty amazing creatures. They adapt very well when faced with changes, and often they like the new arrangement because it brings opportunities that previously eluded them.

So if we, say, put Western Avenue on a road diet, would the neighborhood collapse? If we put mixed use buildings on the parking lots near the 95th Street train station, would chaos ensue? At first, I can bet that things would be a little hairy as people worked to navigate the new arrangement. But I have no doubt our future would be brighter as a result.