city

Crain’s:

Then, starting in September 2006, the housing crash hit.

A decade later, at least 150 of the lots at Ashwood Park are empty, homes built since the crash come in at price points as much as 40 percent below those built in the heady days of 2006, and the handsome $7 million Ashwood Park clubhouse, built to provide recreational facilities to the occupants of several hundred high-end homes, is staffed only eight hours a week.

New York Times:

But the brown rats of Europe became the true globe-trotters. As Western European countries colonized other parts of the world, they took the rodents with them.

The brown rats of New York and other Eastern American cities trace their ancestry to those in Western Europe. So do brown rats in South America, Africa, New Zealand, and isolated islands scattered across the Atlantic and Pacific.

Even today, the ports of New York City are visited by rats from around the world.

Maya Dukmasova in the Chicago Reader:

But while the towers of Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes were torn down, [Bertrand Goldberg’s] Hilliard conspicuously survived. Today the quality of life at the development flies in the face of conventional wisdom about high-rise public housing and serves as a call to reexamine the root causes of dilapidation and despair at CHA’s more infamous projects.

“Hilliard is here to prove to you that it can work, and will work,” as one longtime resident puts it.

Opened in 1966, and still going strong.

Chicago Magazines’s Whet Moser on the undertaking to produce a 3D map of Chicago’s underground spaghetti of pipes, tunnels, and cables:

Underneath that [ordered street] grid, though, is the chaos of the underworld: gas, electricity, water. And it can be dangerous. The most famous example is the Chicago flood of 1992, when miscommunication over the location of an abandoned freight tunnel, among many other things, allowed pilings to be driven into the ground next to it, causing the tunnel to fail and flood much of the Loop.

Man, I hope this project is completed. I would love to pore over a map of Chicago’s (and eventually other cities’) underground, including, of course, the Pedway.

See also this excellent podcast retelling of the 1992 Loop flood in which, as ever, Chicago is second to New York.

Emily Badger in the NYT:

But that’s the power of this perception. The phrase “inner city” is often used to suggest that the historical image and the modern place are one and the same — or even that the “inner city” is still a meaningfully identifiable place at all, with clearly implied demographics (black, poor) and connotations (violence, decay). It still evokes the particular context when the phrase became popular in the 1960s and’70s.

In reality, the central neighborhoods of many major American cities are thriving. A recent analysis by researchers at the Federal Housing Finance Agency found that home values had risen faster in the heart of big cities than anywhere else in the country over the last 25 years, a sign of their turnaround and a trend Mr. Trump, as a real estate developer, is likely to be aware of.

I’ve not been the only one cringing at this political season’s application of “inner city.” It’s reminiscent of how the word “blight” was used in the 1950s and 60s.

(link h/t Gordon Venturella)

Richard Florida in CityLab on the intersection of urbanization and globalization, citing data from Brookings:

Globalization might make us feel small in a growing world, but the lessons of urbanization should remind us how much more powerful we can be when we get connected. Together, these 123 global cities power global competitiveness. They generate a third of global economic output, account for nearly two-thirds of all innovations (based on patents), and represent more than 80 percent of all venture-capital investment in high-tech startups, while housing just 13 percent of the world’s population.

h/t Brent Storms

Ted Hesson in The Atlantic:

But immigration, on the whole, bolsters the workforce and adds to the nation’s overall economic activity. Look at the impact on cities that attract the most foreign-born residents. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston are all major immigrant destinations and also economic powerhouses, accounting for roughly one-fifth of the country’s gross domestic product.

This article is about a year old, but the data points it contains are good to remember as political rhetoric ramps up over the next couple of months.

Richard Florida in CityLab:

The top ten metros account for nearly a third (30.7 percent) of the world’s super-rich, while making up less than two percent of the world’s population. The top twenty account for more than 40 percent (43.5 percent), while making up just 3.5 percent of the world’s population. And the top 50 metros account for nearly two-thirds (63.6 percent) of the world’s billionaires, while making up just seven percent of the world’s population.

Vikki Ortiz Healy for the Tribune:

When two Pullman residents, the Rev. William Cowardine and Jennie Curtis, a seamstress, brought the unfair work conditions to the attention of the American Railway Union in 1894, it prompted a nationwide shutdown of railways that begged action from then-President Grover Cleveland.

(h/t Lindsay Greer)

Robert Loerzel for WBEZ:

And another reason to look at the Ike [I-290]: It was the first superhighway in the heart of Chicago. However, by the 1960s — after more expressways were built, more neighborhoods were torn up, and traffic stayed as terrible as it was before — grassroots groups began fighting against these projects and even managed to kill one off.

It’s difficult to pinpoint data about precisely where the people displaced by the Eisenhower’s construction ended up. No one tracked their whereabouts. But we do have an answer for Jillian. After talking with historians and people who lived through the upheaval, a picture emerges of how the expressway reshaped the Chicago region, scattered some of the city’s ethnic communities and forever changed many lives. That picture’s best consumed in parts. We’ll move east to west along the Ike.

Excellent article and accompanying photos and graphics.

Estately’s blog:

• Bay Area
• Boston
• Chicago
• D.C.

Jessica Hullinger in The Week:

Relationships — with other humans, and with physical places — are really complicated. They require vulnerability and persistence and trust. You cannot just wait around hoping one will blossom before you. The only way to truly foster and nurture a long-lasting stable romance is to experience it with an open heart and an enduring sense of optimism. It takes time, but that’s okay. Eventually you get to the really good stuff.

Such a great piece on knowing and loving where you live, and getting through that difficult period between honeymoon and long-term romance.

Update: Hullinger’s move from New York to London reminded me of the phenomenon of migration between the two cities (and among cities generally). It’s so common, in fact, that it’s generated its own portmanteau: NYLON. (And nylonkong if you throw in Hong Kong.) And then there’s the acronym, filth for “failed in London, try Hong Kong.”

Bloomberg:

Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, crossing an important milestone that no automotive or technology company has yet achieved. Google, widely regarded as the leader in the field, has been testing its fleet for several years, and Tesla Motors offers Autopilot, essentially a souped-up cruise control that drives the car on the highway. Earlier this week, Ford announced plans for an autonomous ride-sharing service. But none of these companies has yet brought a self-driving car-sharing service to market.

This, of course, has enormous implications: for jobs, for city planning, for parking and roadways, and for cultural norms like the teen rite of passage of getting a driver’s license.

CityLab, discussing newly developed tool that demonstrates Aaron Renn’s “new/old donut” models:

A new study published by the Demographics Research Group of the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service analyzes the demographic trends of 66 major U.S. metros, measuring how they change with distance from the city center. The report’s charting tool helps visualize the data on an “objective, intuitive spatial scale” rather than on subjective “urban”/“suburban” categories…

It’s fun to select your city and see the charts. One of the most interesting tables for Chicago, for example, is population density: it shows a 10,000 person per square mile increase in the city center from 1990 to 2012.

NYT cites current zoning laws mean that “40% of the buildings in Manhattan could not be built today,” and rightly points out that it’s precisely these “too tall” or “too dense” structures that make Manhattan great:

New York’s zoning code was the first in the country, meant to promote a healthier city, which was then filling with filthy tenements and office towers. Since it was approved in 1916, the ever-evolving, byzantine code has changed many times to suit the needs of a swollen metropolis. Just in March, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio won approval for a vast citywide plan that would encourage sleeker, more affordable developments.

Full article has some great infographics.