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This is a really good debate. I am sort of torn between the two. I have spent time in both cities. On the ground level, the Loop is more urban to me than CC. Parts of Chicago are extremely urban and comparable to parts of NYC. But if you venture on the southside, some of the neighborhoods are really suburban looking. I was in the 70's on Pulanski and it reminded me of the burbs on the east coast. The streets on east coast cities are not that wide for one. Chicago's streets are wide as ever and this decreases its urban flavor. Philly's residential sections trump Chicago's residential sections for urbanity. That's my opinion. I know some of you have posted pics showing row homes in Chicago but that is not an accurate description of the city. Like I mentioned, those Bungalows don't do it for me.
Chicago is a mixed bag, even on the same block. I like the "mixed bag" as far as high rise development goes, but I admit, I am not a fan of the all kinds of development on one residential street. You'll have like 3 row homes, 2 bungalows, then 2 court yard buildings, and maybe a church on the end, all on the same block. I much prefer the aesthetic look in residential areas that SF/Boston/Philadelphia/others have where there is a uniform building style.
Some of the wide streets in Chicago are pretty unnecessary... Instead of making them all the same some could have been the boulevards and kept the others small like Paris does for example. I think DC has the same layout with wider boulevards then smaller streets. Chicago is more of an even grid.
Post script on that, they are unnecessary as it is NOW and can make it feel less dense and congested than it naturally would be. The city planners built for very long term steady growth and that didn't happen. Chicago lost about 1 million people in a smaller at that time city area, and were expecting it to get as big as NYC, but has since gained a few thousand of that back. Chicago as it is built out right now should be around 5 Million people.
This is just going back and forth so much. They're really two totally different cities, and you could easily argue one way or the other based on what criteria you use.
Chicago tends to have wider streets lined with millions of trees, and back alleys. It has more breathing room. Philly has very tight streets and much less tree cover. The streets look much different. Chicago also has more detached housing with a 3-4 foot gangway between buildings that may look completely different. It gives the feel of more spaced out housing, although those "houses" tend to be cut up into 2-4 different units. They were built for entire famlies, but when a lot of families moved away post-WWII, they cut them up into multiple smaller dwellings of 1/2 bedrooms.
Chicago also has bungalows and detached housing that looks much more 1950's tight suburban, but then again those areas are many times 15-18 miles away from downtown. Chicago is physically 75% larger than Philly. Chicago also has the O'hare airport area that's 10 square miles, and almost another 10 square miles just in the Wolf Lake vacant land area on the south side. Plus Midway, the huge industrial areas along I-55, blah blah blah.
There are too many issues here to ever decide a "winner". I guess I would give it to Chicago overall because it's urban areas of dense streetwalls and pedestrian zones are larger than Philly. I agree though that treeless streets with solid tight streetwalls also give an edge to Philly. There are still more people buzzing around in Chicago though, and it's hardly like Chicago away from downtown is some auto-dependant area or void of pedestrians. I haven't owned a car in 7 years, and I've never lived closer than 4-6 miles away from downtown Chicago. There is always a sea of pedestrians everywhere on the north side of the city. Less on the south side since that's the less dense side that developed last.
Depends on what your criteria for "urban" is. If a large number of connected rowhouses/lack of greenspace are your primariy benchmarks for urbanity, then I suppose Chicago doesn't make the cut. I would dispute, though, that Chicago lacks density once you get a couple of miles from the CBD. I lived in Rogers Park, one of the furthest neighborhoods from downtown, a good nine miles north. Our housing was all 3-, 4-,5-, and 6-flat brick walkups set closely enough to one another that you could reach across side windows and shake hands with the person in the next building if you were so inclined. Not rowhousing, but throw a couple of feet of brick in to fill the gaps, and the effect would have been the same. I lived off a main arterial, Clark Street, every bit as lined with shops, restaurants, services, storefront churches, groceries, laundromats, etc. as in the pictures posted here of Philly.
Differences in architectural styles/eras does not make one city more or less urban than the other. At any rate, Chicago is MASSIVE. not NYC or LA massive, but far more massive than anything else between these coastal cities. Sheer size and the population that entails alone speak to its urbanity.
Depends on what your criteria for "urban" is. If a large number of connected rowhouses/lack of greenspace are your primariy benchmarks for urbanity, then I suppose Chicago doesn't make the cut. I would dispute, though, that Chicago lacks density once you get a couple of miles from the CBD. I lived in Rogers Park, one of the furthest neighborhoods from downtown, a good nine miles north. Our housing was all 3-, 4-,5-, and 6-flat brick walkups set closely enough to one another that you could reach across side windows and shake hands with the person in the next building if you were so inclined. Not rowhousing, but throw a couple of feet of brick in to fill the gaps, and the effect would have been the same. I lived off a main arterial, Clark Street, every bit as lined with shops, restaurants, services, storefront churches, groceries, laundromats, etc. as in the pictures posted here of Philly.
Differences in architectural styles/eras does not make one city more or less urban than the other. At any rate, Chicago is MASSIVE. not NYC or LA massive, but far more massive than anything else between these coastal cities. Sheer size and the population that entails alone speak to its urbanity.
Correction, Chicago is more massive than LA inside LA city borders. Where LA wins is that their MSA/CSA are both significantly larger, respectively.
It was to question the validity of what row houses have to do with being urban, its just a building, as are skyscrapers. They are equal quantifiers of urbanness, b/c they both in the case of Chicago and Philadelphia happen to be in an urban environment...
If we wanted to do "vibrancy" or anything like that, there are statistics down to the level which track # of people to cross certain intersections. Businesses have this data in order to know where to open a new retail shop for instance.
I agree, they are both urban... if we want to talk which is more urban than the other, I believe that it is a topic that can not be done! You would have to go to another way of describing the two as they are both urban as it gets, by any definition of urban. A place is either urban, or it isn't. They are both easily in the urban category both by the requirements of most sane persons, as well as the US Census Bureau of Urban Area statistics. So how do we define that? Density? # of Subways? # of buildings? Narrowness of thoroughfares? CBD Size? CBD Daytime Population? # of daily subway ridership? How much of a good time a certain poster had when visiting?
I don't think that either city can get any more urban, given that Chicago is the most urban, over the larger scale, I casted my vote for Chicago.
Would rep you if I could. It really is this simple. Chicago is 'urban' over a greater area, therefore it is a more urban city. What else is there to argue about? If we are talking about street level vibrancy, again, Chicago has neighborhoods 10 miles form the core that are just as vibrant as many US cities downtowns.
Its all aesthetics apparently. Some are arguing Philly looks more urban in the residential areas, but those residential areas are less dense than chicagos, so who cares if it 'looks more urban', that is subjective anyway. So old style east coast cities will automatically always be more 'urban' according to this definition due to the type of structures and because they fill up to the lotline? IMO Chicagos mix of highrises, 3 flats, courtyard buildings, greystones, detached frame houses and bungalows are just as urban as Phillys rowhouses.
Would rep you if I could. It really is this simple. Chicago is 'urban' over a greater area, therefore it is a more urban city. What else is there to argue about? If we are talking about street level vibrancy, again, Chicago has neighborhoods 10 miles form the core that are just as vibrant as many US cities downtowns.
Its all aesthetics apparently. Some are arguing Philly looks more urban in the residential areas, but those residential areas are less dense than chicagos, so who cares if it 'looks more urban', that is subjective anyway. So old style east coast cities will automatically always be more 'urban' according to this definition due to the type of structures and because they fill up to the lotline? IMO Chicagos mix of highrises, 3 flats, courtyard buildings, greystones, detached frame houses and bungalows are just as urban as Phillys rowhouses.
Exactly my point. If that is the quantifier of urban.. I could argue hundreds of old cities in Europe that have small foot prints, even narrower streets and tightly configured residential areas. Are they more urban than the WIDE by comparison Philadelphia residential areas? No way. It is just a different building style. Is this more urban than Philadelphia?
Would rep you if I could. It really is this simple. Chicago is 'urban' over a greater area, therefore it is a more urban city. What else is there to argue about? If we are talking about street level vibrancy, again, Chicago has neighborhoods 10 miles form the core that are just as vibrant as many US cities downtowns.
Its all aesthetics apparently. Some are arguing Philly looks more urban in the residential areas, but those residential areas are less dense than chicagos, so who cares if it 'looks more urban', that is subjective anyway. So old style east coast cities will automatically always be more 'urban' according to this definition due to the type of structures and because they fill up to the lotline? IMO Chicagos mix of highrises, 3 flats, courtyard buildings, greystones, detached frame houses and bungalows are just as urban as Phillys rowhouses.
I agree both are urban and to a similar degree - not sure one is really too much more than another
Are they urban - check
Are they large - check
Chicago is bigger - so more urban - the argument could be made that bigger = more
This is a really good debate. I am sort of torn between the two. I have spent time in both cities. On the ground level, the Loop is more urban to me than CC. Parts of Chicago are extremely urban and comparable to parts of NYC. But if you venture on the southside, some of the neighborhoods are really suburban looking. I was in the 70's on Pulanski and it reminded me of the burbs on the east coast. The streets on east coast cities are not that wide for one. Chicago's streets are wide as ever and this decreases its urban flavor. Philly's residential sections trump Chicago's residential sections for urbanity. That's my opinion. I know some of you have posted pics showing row homes in Chicago but that is not an accurate description of the city. Like I mentioned, those Bungalows don't do it for me.
Why not? Chicago is a very varied city. Greystones, rowhomes, bungalows, flats, four square apartments and more.
What's funny is that D.C. can lool very similar to many parts of Chicago.
Chicago is a mixed bag, even on the same block. I like the "mixed bag" as far as high rise development goes, but I admit, I am not a fan of the all kinds of development on one residential street. You'll have like 3 row homes, 2 bungalows, then 2 court yard buildings, and maybe a church on the end, all on the same block. I much prefer the aesthetic look in residential areas that SF/Boston/Philadelphia/others have where there is a uniform building style.
Some of the wide streets in Chicago are pretty unnecessary... Instead of making them all the same some could have been the boulevards and kept the others small like Paris does for example. I think DC has the same layout with wider boulevards then smaller streets. Chicago is more of an even grid.
Post script on that, they are unnecessary as it is NOW and can make it feel less dense and congested than it naturally would be. The city planners built for very long term steady growth and that didn't happen. Chicago lost about 1 million people in a smaller at that time city area, and were expecting it to get as big as NYC, but has since gained a few thousand of that back. Chicago as it is built out right now should be around 5 Million people.
I've said the exact same thing on this site countless times! Chicago should honestly have a population of ~4 million now. Chicago was built to be larger than it is. Traffic within the city is still a nightmare though, despite the improvements made by city planners years ago.
I wonder what went differently in Chicago than in New York to allow New York to grow so large in population. Maybe it's Chicago's fairly low rise method of development away from the lake.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dncr
I wonder what went differently in Chicago than in New York to allow New York to grow so large in population. Maybe it's Chicago's fairly low rise method of development away from the lake.
Wall Street & Immigration entry from Europe. New York City & the Northeast established large prominence from European trade and immigration, just as the West Coast did from Asia & the Gulf Coast is now doing with Latin America. Chicago started to fall behind as more areas of the USA were discovered (the West) & more areas became hospitable to living (sunbelt).
New York City also had key industries that linked American economy with trade over the world, and that prominence kept them afloat.
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