Sides, neighborhoods, & suburbs most like Chicago's (Naperville, Joliet: low income, condos)

[edsg25]

Call this one the companion piece to the cities similar to Chicago tread.

All you have to do here is to identify one of the three sides (or 5 if you include NW and SW) of Chicago, a Chicago neighborhood, or a Chicago suburb to its counter part in another city/metro area.

As in....

South Side: a bit like Cleveland, or a little less so, like Detroit

Hyde Park: Cambridge (at least parts closest to Harvard)

Evanston: Clayton, MO, Silver Springs, MD

Gold Coast: Upper East Side

(I don't know if these were the best to use; just providing as examples of what I mean)

[Tex?Il?]

Originally Posted by edsg25

Call this one the companion piece to the cities similar to Chicago tread.

All you have to do here is to identify one of the three sides (or 5 if you include NW and SW) of Chicago, a Chicago neighborhood, or a Chicago suburb to its counter part in another city/metro area.

As in....

South Side: a bit like Cleveland, or a little less so, like Detroit

Hyde Park: Cambridge (at least parts closest to Harvard)

Evanston: Clayton, MO, Silver Springs, MD

Gold Coast: Upper East Side

(I don't know if these were the best to use; just providing as examples of what I mean)

This sounds like a good list.

Good list, I would agree with most of these, except:

I thought Clayton, MO was just a modern, huge edge city built to "replace" downtown St. Louis. Are there historical neighborhoods and a university there?

From what I know about Manhattans Upper East Side, the Gold Coast is a THIN slice of that.

I agree with the south side comparison. I may also add the west side too. Generally, the south and west sides have Detroit-like characteristics except they are in a bit better shape for simply fact they are part of Chicago.

(IE: the city government has money and organization to pick up trash, tear down abandoned properties, and patrol streets, and low income people can take the red line to the Loop and serve drinks, whereas in DET, they can barely do that).

I still think its cool though, that downtowns Detroit was laid out like the diagonal streets of Paris. With large traffic circles that serve as parks. (Grand Circus and Campus Martius). Oh the potential that has been squandered and left to rot in that city!

On the same Michigan thread, I would say the lower Des Plaines river (Summit through Lemont, Locport, Romeoville) is a little like metro Detroits downriver.

I think Macomb county, MI reminds me of the SW suburbs of Chicago. with Burbank/ Chicago Ridge/ Oak Lawn like Warren; and Orland Park/Tinley Park like Sterling Hts.

While Oakland County, MI is a lot like northern Cook and Lake county.
where:

Troy = Schaumburg
Auburn Hills = Hoffman Estates
Rochester/Rochester Hills = the more modest parts of Barrington
Novi = Buffalo Grove/Vernon Hills

The downtowns of Des Plaines, Arlington Heights, Palatine, etc. are a much like a lamer version of Royal Oak/Ferndale/Birmingham. In Chicago area, all the young people take metra to go to the city to play (if they don't live there already).

The North Shore of Chicago = Gross Pointes, plus Bloomfield area, except that again, north shore much integrated with the Chicago scene.

Pontiac, MI = Joliet, IL or maybe North Chicago/Waukegan

Ann Arbor? = closest would be Evanston, but Madison, WI would be a much better comparison.

[Tex?Il?]

I would also add, that the north side (east of the north branch, the "core" of gentrified Chicago) is in general a bit more like Toronto than New York. These days there are fewer African Americans and Hispanics, but still plenty of Asians: Obviously the Indo-Pak corridor of Devon Ave., and little Vietnam on Argyle (many of which are actually ethnic Chinese, but born in Vietnam). This is a bit more like Tororonto While Lincoln Park and Lakeview are mostly transplanted educated midwesterners mostly with western European ancestry (yet of course with everyone still represented there).

Couple with the fact that even the densest areas do have a couple streets of single family homes (on small lots) with residential high rises that soar in slight isolation (not shoulder to shoulder as in Manhattan). This is what I remember from Toronto (as in Chicago).

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by Tex?Il?

This sounds like a good list.

Good list, I would agree with most of these, except:

I thought Clayton, MO was just a modern, huge edge city built to "replace" downtown St. Louis. Are there historical neighborhoods and a university there?

From what I know about Manhattans Upper East Side, the Gold Coast is a THIN slice of that.

I agree with the south side comparison. I may also add the west side too. Generally, the south and west sides have Detroit-like characteristics except they are in a bit better shape for simply fact they are part of Chicago.

(IE: the city government has money and organization to pick up trash, tear down abandoned properties, and patrol streets, and low income people can take the red line to the Loop and serve drinks, whereas in DET, they can barely do that).

I still think its cool though, that downtowns Detroit was laid out like the diagonal streets of Paris. With large traffic circles that serve as parks. (Grand Circus and Campus Martius). Oh the potential that has been squandered and left to rot in that city!

On the same Michigan thread, I would say the lower Des Plaines river (Summit through Lemont, Locport, Romeoville) is a little like metro Detroits downriver.

I think Macomb county, MI reminds me of the SW suburbs of Chicago. with Burbank/ Chicago Ridge/ Oak Lawn like Warren; and Orland Park/Tinley Park like Sterling Hts.

While Oakland County, MI is a lot like northern Cook and Lake county.
where:

Troy = Schaumburg
Auburn Hills = Hoffman Estates
Rochester/Rochester Hills = the more modest parts of Barrington
Novi = Buffalo Grove/Vernon Hills

The downtowns of Des Plaines, Arlington Heights, Palatine, etc. are a much like a lamer version of Royal Oak/Ferndale/Birmingham. In Chicago area, all the young people take metra to go to the city to play (if they don't live there already).

The North Shore of Chicago = Gross Pointes, plus Bloomfield area, except that again, north shore much integrated with the Chicago scene.

Pontiac, MI = Joliet, IL or maybe North Chicago/Waukegan

Ann Arbor? = closest would be Evanston, but Madison, WI would be a much better comparison.

no. Clayton is pure suburban. Like Evanston, it has a major downtown. Actually more major. That's because it took some of the role of a major big city downtown because of the decline of St. Louis and how the metropolitan area became centered around St. Louis County of which StL is the core. Chicago, of course, would never need to generate such a place.

Thus this is no edge city having been a well settled place before the DT area grew into something really out of the ordinary. That's one side of the coin. The other is, downtowns aside, Evanston is both bigger and more of a city than Clayton.

Another connection is between them being college towns. Evanston, of course, with NU, and much of WashU is in Clayton (although both St. Louis and Univ City share the campus).

[terramama]

Originally Posted by edsg25

Call this one the companion piece to the cities similar to Chicago tread.

All you have to do here is to identify one of the three sides (or 5 if you include NW and SW) of Chicago, a Chicago neighborhood, or a Chicago suburb to its counter part in another city/metro area.

As in....

South Side: a bit like Cleveland, or a little less so, like Detroit

Hyde Park: Cambridge (at least parts closest to Harvard)

Evanston: Clayton, MO, Silver Springs, MD

Gold Coast: Upper East Side

(I don't know if these were the best to use; just providing as examples of what I mean)

I would compare Evanston to Bethesda with maybe with a dash of Takoma Park thrown in rather than Silver Spring.

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by terramama

I would compare Evanston to Bethesda with maybe with a dash of Takoma Park thrown in rather than Silver Spring.

My impression of suburban DC (or at least the MD portion of it) is that there are a number of Evanston like places out there, vastly different from sububan Chicago.

It seems to me that with the DC height limits, there is much more of a push for suburban high rise condos than in Chicago and that they tend to cluster in the established suburbs' downtown areas. These downtowns themselves differ from DC in that they tend to have more upscale national chains than our suburban downtowns do. Here in Chicagoland, our malls (mainly Oakbrook, Old Orchard, and Northbrook Court with a bit of Woodfield thrown in) are the locations for these.

Here in Chicago, we have such a thriving downtown retail core with so many high end stores in the Michigan Ave part of downtown. DC has nothing comparable as downtown Washington is not a power center and the city's most exclusive shopping areas are outside of the core in Georgetown or smack on the MD line n.w. of the city.

And, of course, another major factor is that Metro unlike CTA is an extensive system that gives equal service to DC, MD, and VA. Sure we have major downtowns based on location on our Metra lines, but rapid transit like Metro is more likely to build these major clusters and build them bigger since it, unlike Metra, provides a blanketed service to the DC area and stations as such are higher prized. Metra stations are great, of course, but they are really nothing more than the spokes of wheels that can get you downtown and don't give the options Metro does. I would say that with CTA and Metra, Evanston and Oak Park are unique in the type of comprehensive transit options they offer here in Chicagoland.

The need for high end retail in a walkable DT setting is greater in DC than it is in Chicago where downtown is available.

Evanston is an anamoly in the sense that it is our own true college town in the suburbs (no, I'm not going to consider Naperville or Lake Forest the real things) and, as such, has a downtown core that reflects both the city and the very Northwestern University it was built around.

[southsidehitman]

u forgot about the south east side

[Avengerfire]

Originally Posted by southsidehitman

u forgot about the south east side

Good eye.

[Irishtom29]

Originally Posted by southsidehitman

u forgot about the south east side

You mean the East Side, south and east of the Calumet River? I'm kind'a surprised edsg25 missed that. Maybe he doesn't know as much as I thought.

[Tex?Il?]

Originally Posted by Irishtom29

You mean the East Side, south and east of the Calumet River? I'm kind'a surprised edsg25 missed that. Maybe he doesn't know as much as I thought.

I assume he included the southeast side with the "the south side = Clevelend, a little less like Detroit" which is sort of accurate.