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Chicago's zoning will never allow for skyscrapers in outer neighborhoods. The north shore's tallest building (570') is still from the 1970's. Developers do not have even a fraction of the weight to impose their will as they once did. Now politicians and NIMBY's shape our city.
Wicker Park residents successfully blocked 12 and 16 story buildings within the past year. Neighborhoods like Wicker and Lincoln Park would be filled with high-rises if we opened up our restrictive zoning. A few exceptions here and there have slipped through the cracks but in general multi-family housing is limited to between 4 & 6 stories except TOD which is still restricted through aldermen and resident associations although there isn't supposed to be any height limits for TOD.
L.A., Atlanta and Houston are of course much more similar to following the same model as Toronto seeing they developed after the automobile.
As for Toronto, Mississauga and Yonge isn't what I was referencing.
I was speaking to the many examples of these types of areas:
Toronto is developing the way it is because the province of Ontario placed artificial restrictions on sprawl with the greenbelt legislation. This essentially killed SFH starts in the city.
Eventually I would imagine something similar would take place in Chicago since limitless sprawl is both impossible and undesirable in urban planning. When that happens it could drive changes to zoning laws and promote higher density development in satellite nodes once costs in downtown go up.
At some point population goes up but you cant keep building houses farther and farther away from the central core, and the city must become decentralized to make it all work.
Lol, NYC has all its skyscrapers/highrises in Midtown, right...honestly what a stupid assessment.
I know you're hurt by my comment... but it's simply a fact that Toronto is superior along this metric.
Don't worry though, it's nothing to get upset about. This is the topic of discussion here..
What American really cares about how many highrise clusters are spread throughout a metro? Urbanists don't care for towers-in-park or corporate office park settings. This isn't a metric that any urban enthusiast would aspire to lead in. In Chicago, nobody cares if 800'ers are built in Naperville and Skokie. There isn't a Chicagoan or New Yorker in their right mind that would trade cityscapes with Toronto.
I'd never consider high-rises set hundreds of feet back from six-lane roads looming over tract-housing, strip malls and parking lots "mind-blowing."
Well, peoples feelings or what you think people care about isn't relevant to the discussion.
An objective question regarding multiple skylines was posed as the topic of this thread.
The answer to that question is that no American city compares with Toronto along this metric.
Nothing to get upset about...
But as to your assumption that no Chicagoan or New Yorker would trade cityscapes with Toronto, you're wrong.
I'm born and raised in New York...and I find Toronto to be superior along more than a few metrics, cityscape included....
Toronto is developing the way it is because the province of Ontario placed artificial restrictions on sprawl with the greenbelt legislation. This essentially killed SFH starts in the city.
Eventually I would imagine something similar would take place in Chicago since limitless sprawl is both impossible and undesirable in urban planning. When that happens it could drive changes to zoning laws and promote higher density development in satellite nodes once costs in downtown go up.
At some point population goes up but you cant keep building houses farther and farther away from the central core, and the city must become decentralized to make it all work.
Chicago is very much a NIMBY city where residents are intent on preserving the single-family-home make-up of it's neighborhoods. Community organizations successfully put a halt to new high-rises being built in Lincoln Park for the last 30+ years and with mass deconversions/demolitions there's 3,800 units less today than in the 1980's. Meanwhile the demographic that can afford to live in Lincoln Park has exploded over the past decade.
The most significant development there in the last twenty years is two 20 story buildings that was scaled back from 4 buildings on an old hospital site. That project had over 60 public meetings and over 3 years of law-suits before gaining approval. The city/developers just fought residents in Logan Square for 2 years to build an 8 story affordable housing complex on a city owned parking lot. Multi-family is highly restricted and limited to major corridors.
All of these practices directly conflict with the stated mission of growing the population back to 3 million and increasing the tax-base. This is why I say Chicago will never allow such zoning to provide for these satellite clusters to form and will never become decentralized. The core can keep expanding outward naturally with an abundance of underutilized lots and ex-industrial land to swallow up.
Evanston has had the opportunity to build a new tallest building quite a few times and they have all been opposed. Many other projects have been killed as well. It could have a significant skyline but this is just the way it works. The further out you go the more anti-height/density it gets.
Well, peoples feelings or what you think people care about isn't relevant to the discussion.
An objective question regarding multiple skylines was posed as the topic of this thread.
The answer to that question is that no American city compares with Toronto along this metric.
Nothing to get upset about...
But as to your assumption that no Chicagoan or New Yorker would trade cityscapes with Toronto, you're wrong.
I'm born and raised in New York...and I find Toronto to be superior along more than a few metrics, cityscape included....
I said Chicagoan or New Yorker "in their right mind." If you think number of nodes is some metric that urban enthusiasts aspire to then this clearly isn't the case.
I know you're hurt by my comment... but it's simply a fact that Toronto is superior along this metric.
Don't worry though, it's nothing to get upset about. This is the topic of discussion here..
I just think it’s vastly oversimplifying NYC. There’s plenty of skylines outside of Manhattan below 59th. There’s Long Island City, Downtown Brooklyn, Williamsburg Waterfront, Jersey City Waterfront, Journal Square, Downtown Newark, Fort Lee, White Plains, New Rochelle, Coney Island.
That being said...after thinking about it a lot more compared to the beginning of the discussion. I think Toronto does have the most skylines in North America, or at least it’s comparable to NYC. Not really saying it’s the best skyline. But the layers make it feel like a massive city. I know this is different from what I was saying earlier but I’ve come around. Vancouver is also another city with lots of skylines, throughout its metro area.
Chicago is very much a NIMBY city where residents are intent on preserving the single-family-home make-up of it's neighborhoods. Community organizations successfully put a halt to new high-rises being built in Lincoln Park for the last 30+ years and with mass deconversions/demolitions there's 3,800 units less today than in the 1980's. Meanwhile the demographic that can afford to live in Lincoln Park has exploded over the past decade.
The most significant development there in the last twenty years is two 20 story buildings that was scaled back from 4 buildings on an old hospital site. That project had over 60 public meetings and over 3 years of law-suits before gaining approval. The city/developers just fought residents in Logan Square for 2 years to build an 8 story affordable housing complex on a city owned parking lot. Multi-family is highly restricted and limited to major corridors.
All of these practices directly conflict with the stated mission of growing the population back to 3 million and increasing the tax-base. This is why I say Chicago will never allow such zoning to provide for these satellite clusters to form and will never become decentralized. The core can keep expanding outward naturally with an abundance of underutilized lots and ex-industrial land to swallow up.
Evanston has had the opportunity to build a new tallest building quite a few times and they have all been opposed. Many other projects have been killed as well. It could have a significant skyline but this is just the way it works. The further out you go the more anti-height/density it gets.
Yep, I know what you mean about Evanston. The building where Evanston Pub(formerly World of Beer) currently stands, is where that 20-35 floor(however many floors it was) building was proposed. I remember reading that building was very controversial, when it was proposed in Evanston's city council. Not sure if it ever was approved, myself.
That said, the newer Optima condo buildings in downtown Evanston are nicely constructed IMO. And several of those buildings were built, as I remember on the west side of Evanston's downtown.
For Logan Square, were you talking about those highrises(6-8 floors tall or whatever that was?) on Milwaukee Ave just east of California? Yeah, I remember that project had a lot of debate before it was approved. Also I'd agree a lot of neighborhoods are NIMBY when it comes to small highrise proposals, since a 5 story building that was proposed for a block of Clark Street just south of Wilson is attracting intense debate. Though to me not sure why that was proposed for there in the first place, considering no nearby buildings are taller than 3 stories. I think you are right, that a lot of Chicago neighborhoods are NIMBY, and look at proposed buildings that are slightly taller than the average height a little suspiciously.
Chicago is very much a NIMBY city where residents are intent on preserving the single-family-home make-up of it's neighborhoods. Community organizations successfully put a halt to new high-rises being built in Lincoln Park for the last 30+ years and with mass deconversions/demolitions there's 3,800 units less today than in the 1980's.
There is a saying that "Chicago is a city of neighborhoods" because residents are fiercely loyal to their neighborhood and love the prairie home character that defines residential Chicago. Also Obama was able to learn about leadership in those community organizations and networking with others to start his short political career to the top.
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This is why I say Chicago will never allow such zoning to provide for these satellite clusters to form and will never become decentralized. The core can keep expanding outward naturally with an abundance of underutilized lots and ex-industrial land to swallow up.
Chicago lacks the "edge cities" (secondary business districts) that the Sunbelt cities (L.A., Houston, etc.) have built. All the white collar activity is concentrated in (and around) The Loop. The closest that Chicago has to an edge city are the few low-rise buildings along the south side of the Kennedy, just outside of O'Hare airport.
I would say that the O'Hare business area is more similar to Greenway Plaza in Houston. Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, up the highway, is very similar to The Galleria with plenty of offices surrounding the mall. I must say that the Zurich HQ is very stunning!
I’m not going to get into this debate, but I wanted to say that there are places around the GTA where you can see these skylines blooming from horizon to horizon and it’s very cool. Especially heading south on the 400, somewhere between Major Mack and Steeles, you can see the Toronto skyline, and many kms of urban development and highrise nodes stretching north and west to the Mississauga skyline, which admittedly is more impressive at a distance than it is up close. If you catch it at the right time of day and the air is clear, it is a really cool panorama.
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