Quote:
Originally Posted by pleasepleaseme
Anyone who thinks SF or CHIs downtown is bigger than Phillys has never been to Philly. Its really that simple. You can walk for hours from neighborhood to neighborhood in Philly and its all totally urban
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I've been to all of these cities and I am from NYC, east village. Philly is the closest thing to nyc you will find in the US.
Chi is the most boring city I've ever been to. Its boring and Midwestern.
SF is also very boring and empty and the homeless there are violent and dangerous.
Philly is bigger, better, more vibrant, more of a melting pot, and much much more walkable than both SF and Chi.
And you don't realize this YOU HAVENT BEEN THERE.
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In street-grid, Grittiness, Attached Residential housing? Yes Philly is more East-coast style, feel and NYC flavor. No one denies this.....
All know about Philly's quaint, very old stock, low-rise, row-housing, Colonial era neighborhoods in it Center City boundaries and similar of Colonial and later eras in its Greater CC also.
But in Chicago's CBD no quaint blocks of row-housing unless you find high-rise, warehousing to lofts, and skyscraper living quaint?
What Chicago did gain in as NYC-like is a Manhattanizing of its core. From the high-rise living in its Gold Coast of the 60s 70s rise to 80s and today high-end skyscraper living second most after NYC in its CBD and certainly looks it as pictures can show.
Its CBD border officially is almost defined by where high-rise living is and ends. Exception is areas that continue high-rise living but NOT included in its official CBD. Like most of the Gold Coast lakefront neighborhood just north of it, the New Near Southside (unofficially) of a area of skyscrapers and high-rises just south and east of the Loop and Grant Park. It was built over rail-beds by air-rights in part.
Now just south of the Loop and official CBD is some new quaint town-housing very green and low-rise.
So it's in anyone opinion to claim a city's CBD is boring in architecture, activities, and housing too quaint or quiet? But of Chicago's CBD it:
- overall never ordinary or average
- won't get labeled quaint and homey
- certainly looks like a core and downtown
Chicago's CBD will gain generally terms as:
- grandiose and elegant NOT BORING
- with class and polished grit by restorations complete
- clean and value given to adding green and flowers to street-level.
- wider streets with architecture of the American skyscrapers evolution world renowned.
- a financial district second in the US and one of its shopping boulevards top three in the nation.
For Philly's CC you might get:
- very narrow street-grid not car friendly
- quaint neighborhoods with its Colonial era housing
- its shopping streets also narrow as not on a grand boulevard
- gritty and sometimes un-polished but great architecture throughout its core
Chicago comes across as more -- Grand, Classy, Elegant, Broad and Open Historic skyscraper American Architecture World Renowned, Wider streets still too much traffic in scope
Philly comes across as more -- Quaint, Gritty, Historic Early American Colonial Architecture, Great examples of 19th into 20th century architecture, with Neighborhoods of quaint residential row-housing, tight-knit streets walkable but more prone to grid-lock
These pictures give aspects of Chicago street-level vibrancy in traffic
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