Do you think the EL will ever be expanded or new lines added? (Addison: loan, organic)

[via chicago]

Originally Posted by Lookout Kid

Today's suburban houses are islands. Instead of being a singular part of a cohesive neighborhood whole, these houses are individual objects that have no relationship to one another within a sea of green lawns. People get up, walk to the garage, drive to work, and drive home at night--all without any real public intereaction, save the strip mall or Wal-Mart parking lot. The public realm and community are dead in these types of suburban communities. Sidewalks are now a rarity--and are even frowned up in some areas. The garage is the prominent feature on the front of most houses, and functions as the real front door (which has been reduced to a cartoon-like presence).

I think this video lecture perfectly sums up what youre talking about:

James Howard Kunstler: The tragedy of suburbia

[chet everett]

Again, I think the vitality of many of the Chicago region's non-urban villages, towns, and small cities ARE places worth caring about. The "public realm" of the places I am talking about are nothing like the nightmare of inhospitable vehicular-centric that self-congratulatory pseudo intellectuals would like to imagine everything outside their own privileged enclaves are.

I have no problem saying that most of the portions of the City of Chicago that would be linked by someone's idea of a rail based transit are in MOST WAYS does less "to inform us" of where we've come from /what kind of people we are than the authentic nature of the suburbs that do fully afford us a glimpse of where we are going.

Clearly I am talking about the featureless towns that even residents could not identify without having lived on a street, but the sort of town in which I live, where everything from the edge finish on the roadsides to the street signs, house setbacks, curve of street and maturity of the trees makes me enjoy dwelling in hopeful present, I think my posts mostly reflect this spirit.

I have no such contempt as the esteemed James Howard Kunstler who damns the places a mere two miles north of his idllyic adode. I would love to here his views on the "public space" of the library in my town vs that of the Harold Washington Library.

There are lots more examples of "good buildings" in suburban areas of Chicago than most people realize. There is far less "inarticulated agony" out here than along the hodge podge of industrial spaces that "connected guys" get their alderman to approve for what ought to be retail corridors of Chicago. Even worse are the recent in fill projects that raised rents to astronomical level to plunk down a White Castle or Starbucks where once there was a locally owned enterprise. I can state empathetically that there are far slimmer odds that 14 year olds are less likely to be turning tricks in my neighbors' houses than in dwellings in the City ruled by corrupt alderman that would rather protect illegals from seven continents than clean up the cess pool that their own arrogance has created...

Similarly all the school in my home district are in the State's Top 50 and none of them look like a place that would house Hannibal Lecture with the possible exception of the the one designed in the 70's by someone not quite as full of himself as James Howard Kunstler...

btw _ I posted something about redeveloping "dead malls" in a thread about bankrupt retailers last week..

[Avengerfire]

Originally Posted by Lookout Kid

I'm pretty sure that's a frozen canal.

I think so too.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by via chicago

I think this video lecture perfectly sums up what youre talking about:

James Howard Kunstler: The tragedy of suburbia

Yeah, this guy is sort of the leading sprawl basher these days, and can be quite humorous. I think he actually takes it a bit too far, but that video is hillarious. And like the New Urbanists, he tends to favor historical architectural styles over modern ones, which I think isn't necessary to the arguments against sprawl. You can have a modern building that is respectful to its surroundings and has a good relationship to the street, after all.

[Lookout Kid]

Pointing out flaws in Chicago (which has many) doesn't make srawl zones any better. Urban troubles in large cities like Chicago should not be emulated in new neighborhoods. But it is possible to build neighborhoods that are BETTER than what we are doing today, and that is the point of this entire thread.

We have two choices. We can either continue down the current path of car domination, even though it is proving disaterous to do so... Or we can make a break with the mistakes of the recent past and start planning for the future. This doesn not necessarily mean that we all live in crowded cities and take the train. In the 20th Century vast amounts of money and resources were dedicated towards making the automobile king. But now that we see this isn't going to take us into the future with good results, we need to make the sacrifice NOW and spend the money to change our future trajectory. We're smarter than we were fifty years ago, and we have learned from our mistakes. In a parallel world (Japan, Western Europe) transportation dollars have been spent over the years (some of it Marshall Plan money from the U.S.) to build strong transportation networks that include both automobiles and viable public transportation. High-speed rail may sound like a pipe dream to Americans who aren't used to having reliable rails service, but it's a reality for most of the other countries that are close to our economic status. The technology is there and the knowledge is there, so we need to use it. NOW is the time to make the changes. If we wait another half century, it will be too late.

Will some new post-oil technology be developed that allows us to continue our happy motoring ways? We've developed dozens, and none have proven to be economically viable on the scale that we are currently using oil. The only technology that has worked in the marketplace is the hybrid car, and this is still reliant on oil--just less of it. Perhaps this will be enough to stretch out oil supplies for decades, or perhaps we will face shortages and price spikes. I do believe that people will still drive cars long into the future, but the EXTENT that we drive cars will likely have to be reduced. It's silly to develop neighborhoods where every adult NEEDS a car just to get a bite to eat or to pick up a loaf of bread. We need to start developing other options and planning our cities and towns differently if we are going to survive the coming troubles.

[via chicago]

Originally Posted by Lookout Kid

Yeah, this guy is sort of the leading sprawl basher these days, and can be quite humorous. I think he actually takes it a bit too far, but that video is hillarious. And like the New Urbanists, he tends to favor historical architectural styles over modern ones, which I think isn't necessary to the arguments against sprawl. You can have a modern building that is respectful to its surroundings and has a good relationship to the street, after all.

No, I agree. I personally prefer modern myself, at least if its a new design. All you have to do is look at Julius Schulman photographs to know how beautiful and elegant modernism can be, when done right.

[chet everett]

I dunno LK, I really think most "conspiracy theories" are hooey. Sure GM might have done some things to try and promote its diesel bus division, and maybe it did work against some electric rail commuter services, but they still DO make / refurbish the "heavy" ElectroMotive units that started with the Santa Fe War Bonnet & New York Central Black & Greys some 50 years ago...

I think "consumer preference" is a whole lot more important that some "sinister plot" in explaining why there is not more rail based transit. People LIKE to get stuff done on their own schedule and not wait around for some "schedule".

Like I said, if something makes it SUPER CHEAP so people could decide "hmm FREE transit service or $xx worth of energy costs + $xx worth of parking costs + $xx worth of ownership costs" than yeah. maybe that shifts their preference. Saying "we'll RAISE your taxes to FORCE you onto into having no money to CHOOSE private transit" is the extreme example of another way to shift people's thinking...

[Lookout Kid]

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and think the GM action to destroy street car lines (which is well-documented) is merely a historical footnote in what was at least partially a consumer-driven trend. But you can't deny the impact of governmental actions in the creation of sprawl. The Insterstate Highway system was perhaps the largest contributor. But there were also banking practices that red lined urban areas, FHA and VA loans that made newly-constructed homes attainable for the masses, and the zoning codes that separated uses and mandated lot dimensions, FAR, setbacks, etc. Sprawl was artificially engineered and created by "experts", and was not just some organic extension of free-market principles at work. And it will take large sweeping government action to dismantle sprawl.

[Chicago60614]

Originally Posted by chet everett

I dunno LK, I really think most "conspiracy theories" are hooey. Sure GM might have done some things to try and promote its diesel bus division, and maybe it did work against some electric rail commuter services, but they still DO make / refurbish the "heavy" ElectroMotive units that started with the Santa Fe War Bonnet & New York Central Black & Greys some 50 years ago...

It was pretty bad though:

The Great American streetcar scandal (also known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy and the National City Lines conspiracy) is a conspiracy in which streetcar systems throughout the United States were dismantled and replaced with buses in the mid-20th century as a result of illegal actions by a number of prominent companies, acting through National City Lines (NCL), Pacific City Lines (on the West Coast, starting in 1938), and American City Lines (in large cities, starting in 1943). National, which had been in operation since 1920, was reorganized into a holding company. General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack, and Federal Engineering Corporation made investments in the City Lines companies in return for exclusive supply contracts.[1]
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Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines bought out more than 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities,[2] including Detroit, New York City, Oakland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles,[3] and replaced them with GM buses. American City Lines merged with National in 1946.[1]
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On April 9, 1947, nine corporations and seven individuals (constituting officers and directors of certain of the corporate defendants) were indicted in the Federal District Court of Southern California on two counts under the U.S. Sherman Antitrust Act. The charges, in summary, were conspiracy to acquire control of a number of transit companies to form a transportation monopoly, and conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies to companies owned by the City Lines.[citations needed]

The proceedings were against Firestone, Standard Oil of California, Phillips, General Motors, Federal Engineering, and Mack (the suppliers), and their subsidiary companies: National City Lines, Pacific City Lines, and American City Lines (the City Lines).



They bought out the streetcars by the dozen each year and immediately tore up all tracks and scrapped entire fleets of vehicles. They then had exclusive rights with the companies they were heavily invested in to replace all transit networks with their vehicles, thereby making everyone involved a profit.

[via chicago]

Originally Posted by chet everett

I dunno LK, I really think most "conspiracy theories" are hooey.

What they did is not theory. Its a historical fact.