Uptown

At a community meeting Wednesday on the upcoming reconstruction of the Red Line’s Wilson stop, 46th Ward Alderman James Cappleman argued that one of the best things about the new station is that it will encourage walkable, transit-friendly development.

Yesterday DNAinfo reported that a block club is pushing to expand permit parking in Uptown and Andersonville, in response to complaints that workers at a nearby office building are taking up too many parking spaces on side streets. The Illinois Department of Human Services recently took over three floors of a ten-story building at 5050 North Broadway, owned by Imperial Realty, to house about 400 workers. The building is otherwise largely empty.

On a recent bicycle trip, I came across a Dutch-style woonerf or "living street,” in the western suburb of Batavia, where Streetsblog Chicago reporter Steven Vance attended high school. The street layout blurs the line between pedestrian and vehicle space, encouraging drivers to proceed with caution, creating a more pleasant environment for walking, biking, shopping, and relaxing at sidewalk cafes. It’s a good preview of the proposed layout for "shared streets" in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood.

[This piece also runs in Checkerboard City, John's column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.]

The Chicago Department of Transportation has proposed to build the city's first-ever traffic diverters and bike-friendly speed humps, as part of the Leland Avenue neighborhood greenway through Uptown. The traffic diverter at Beacon will block cut-through car traffic, making Leland a quieter, more comfortable street for bicyclists. Speed humps would replace stop signs, and feature a gentle "sinusoidal" hump – quite a change compared to the "hitting the wall" feeling of the city's current speed humps.

It’s an exciting time to be in Uptown. The Broadway streetscape and road diet, which will hopefully be completed within a few months, as well as the reconstruction of the Wilson ‘L’ station have the potential to transform the center of the neighborhood. This potential has not gone unnoticed by the Metropolitan Planning Council. On Thursday evening in the Clarendon Park Community Center, MPC hosted the first of three community workshops to gather input on how residents would like to see their community develop.

A new interactive map shows what transportation mode people use to get to work in each neighborhood in Chicago, while also identifying the share of Chicagoans who don't own cars. Shaun Jacobsen -- who writes the Transitized blog and occasionally freelances for Streetsblog -- created "How Chicago Commutes" to show that many residents will benefit more from walking, bicycling, and transit improvements than free curbside parking, which tends to dominate the discussion at public meetings.

At the site of the former Cuneo Hospital and Maryville Academy in Uptown, slated to be demolished shortly, JDL Development has proposed building 749 apartments in two buildings, along with 30,000 square feet of retail space. In addition, 554 parking spaces will be constructed, the minimum required by Chicago’s zoning code.

Shaun Jacobsen is the author of Transitized.