Okay so Chicago is an amazing city, we all love her right. Well here's the thing, the Chicago we all love did not exist 25 years ago. This was the Chicago of the 1970s
The riverfront was neglected and the much of the lakefront was inaccessible covered by a rail yard and parking lots .
Chicago has had some of the most successful Urban projects of the century happen in its downtown. And their gorgeous too. More impressive is the fact that they gave the city more open space and made it more livable for citizens. I am of course referring to 3 park projects, the Chicago River Walk, Millennium park and Daley Park, and the conversion of Meigs Field.
First Up let's look at the conversion of Meigs Field into a park, it was an artifical island built for a the century of progress exposition that was converted to an airfield following the exposition. In 2004 due to political corruption mostly it was converted into a park when Mayor Daley ordered construction crews to demolish the airstrip due to his dislike of the noise the air field made. It was turned into a more natural setting and left to nature, to slowly erode back into the lake, here it is below
Next up is the Chicago Riverwalk which began construction in phases in 2001 with phase 1 ending construction in 2005. It began as part of a project to reconfigure wacker drive and to make the river a more inviting place. It expanded the walking space by the river, added new shops and greenery to the space. The initial phase of the Riverwalk was split into 4 distinct segments, called Confluence, Arcade, Civic and Market.
Finally we have Millennium Park.
Millennium Park was built as an expansion of the existing Grant Park Northwards, covering up Parking lots and a rail yard on the lake shore as was shown at the start of the post. Millennium Park began construction in 1997 and opened in July of 2004 with many of the delays attributed to political corruption, poor planning, and bad contractors that raised the coat of construction from 150 million dollars to 475 million dollars, bit like many things, people don't care about how much is cost to build because it is now an incredibly popular public amenity. Also it gave us the bean, so aren't we all happy. It is also the world's largest green roof.
The construction of Millennium Park also included the reconstruction of Millennium Station which services the South Shore Line and several Metra lines such as the Metra Electric
I think that the lesson to be learned from this is that Chicago is the best city in the US I mean that we should work to improve our cities and try to redesign things that aren't good for our cities to be better because cities are living and changing organisms and we should fight for positive change
I love boston but chicago is the only place I have ever been where I truly felt like if I dug deep enough under the city I would find organs
I feel like that’s true for most of Chicago, but the reasoning for the placement of the Organs in the dirt varies heavily based on neighborhood
