In May, I was back in the city of my birth, Chicago. With a metro area population of 9.5 million people, the third biggest in the USA, Chicago is a real city. It has a large and dense urban core, filled with businesses, residential areas, and all the wonderful things associated with a great city. It's the only other place in the United States, in my opinion, to have a similar big-city feeling as New York City. It's a city that's easy to walk around in, and in the center at least, public transport is quite convenient.  

I hadn't spent any significant amount of time in Chicago since the late 1980s. It was a nostalgic experience to revisit old haunts (my childhood neighborhood is virtually unchanged) and a surprise to see how many areas of the city have positively evolved over the nearly 30 years since I left it.  I found it exhilarating, often beautiful, lively, and on the whole a place in which I imagine it would be interesting to live.
 
With Chicago, I took my usual approach of getting off the beaten path. To me, understanding a city does not come from visiting its museums or famous tourist sites. Instead it's essential to visit a range of neighborhoods, across ethnic and socioeconomic lines. My wanderings revealed a city more complex than the image a casual tourist might bring home.

While in the Chicago area, I was lucky enough to stay with my very kind sister and her husband, who live in the western suburb of Elmhurst. I always rely on public transport, bicycle or walking to get around a city, and from my suburban base, I stuck to my normal procedure. Every day I took a suburban bus to the beginning of Chicago's elevated metro system. Although there are commuter trains from Elmhurst that go to the city center, I took the bus, as that stopped conveniently in front of my sister's house and took me not to the business center, but instead to the edge of the city. This was a perfect starting point for seeing the many faces of Chicago.

Each of my multiple trips into the city focused on in-depth walks through particular neighborhoods. Over two weeks I visited Hyde Park, Washington Park, and Chinatown in the south, Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, Wicker Park and the Near West Side in the west, Norwood Park, North Park, Andersonville and Lincoln Park in the north, and the Near North Side and Loop in the center. These neighborhoods differed greatly from one another structurally, architecturally, ethnically and socioeconomically. I believe they give a representative view of life in the city, skewed somewhat to higher socioeconomic groups. 

A particularly striking thing about my journey into the city every day from Elmhurst, an upper-middle-class older suburb, were the quick transitions I experienced from an almost idealized American suburban scene to poorer suburbs and then the very poor west side of the city of Chicago itself. To get to the beginning of Chicago's metro train system, I took the suburban PACE bus, which passed my sister's home every hour or so, for the nearly 30 minute ride to Oak Park, the last suburb before the city of Chicago begins. My first ride on the bus was an educational experience.  Although my sister's town has an African American population of under one percent, the demographics of Pace bus riders was the complete opposite. I was normally the only person of European descent on the bus, and almost all the other passengers were black Americans. It was an unreal experience to be riding through wealthy, white suburbs and see only black Americans at each bus stop. This reminds me of the buses going through wealthy suburbs of Johannesburg. 

Although the Chicago area appears to have a comprehensive public transport system, in comparison with other wealthy metro areas I've lived in or visited, Chicago's system is a disappointment.  When I investigated the time it takes to get from Elmhurst to parts of Chicago other than the very downtown core, I was astounded. To get from my sister's house in Elmhurst, an inner suburb west of the city, to the neighborhood of North Park, on the north side of Chicago, it takes about 45 minutes by car. To go by bicycle takes about 2 hours. With public transit, if you make the right connections, it would also take two hours. This for a distance that, as the crow flies, can't be much more than 10 miles.  I've never seen anything like it in any major city in the developed world (outside of the United States, that is). I calculated trips of a similar distance in Tokyo and Berlin (from a suburban town on a main train line into the center and then to another neighborhood in the city) and here's what I found: in Tokyo a similar trip would take 40 minutes by car and 38 minutes by public transport.  In Berlin, it would be 34 minutes by car and 42 minutes by public transport. With an inadequate system like this, only the poorest, those without cars, would ever choose to use public transport to go anywhere other than the downtown core in Chicago. With freeways and free or highly subsidized parking in many parts of the city, driving is a no brainer in Chicago. Highways in Tokyo have tolls and in both Berlin and Tokyo, parking can get expensive quickly, so you really have a disincentive to drive and save little or no time by doing it.

Below are some views of the rather antiquated metro system.  

Every day, as I entered Chicago on the elevated train system from Oak Park, I felt immersed in forlorn scenes of urban decay. The far west side of Chicago is bleak. 

This is a very poor area with, I believe, a predominantly black and Hispanic population. Infrastructure has obviously been neglected for years (decades) and housing generally appears often on the point of collapse. I have not found corresponding areas of blight, such as you see in an American city like Chicago, in any other wealthy country.

I imagine that this area was once, maybe over 60 years ago, a working-class neighborhood of European immigrants, Today the once dense and probably lively neighborhoods seem depopulated and abandoned. I tried to imagine what these streets might have been like in their heyday. I wondered what could have gone so wrong to produce a fantastic crash in neighborhood vitality and health. White flight is one part of the explanation, but it's hard to avoid wondering how city government could have let things fall to such a state of degeneration. Did they have no resources?

A key characteristic of these desolate neighborhoods is the huge number of vacant lots where apartment buildings and houses once stood. It puzzled me to think about the incredible waste of what should be valuable land. The areas I visited on the West Side are less than 30 minutes from downtown Chicago by public transport, yet they are really a virtual wasteland. 

The layout of the streets, however, and even the style of the remaining buildings is often very pleasant. The streets are generally tree lined and the old brick buildings could be attractive, even elegant, if rehabilitated. But the empty lots, boarded up windows and shamefully run-down infrastructure - in conjunction with what are almost certainly pretty horrific social circumstances - make for an insurmountable barrier to revitalization. This area will probably remain a kind of no-man's land for decades to come. I should mention that these neighborhoods are generally well served by large parks which, sadly, are also derelict. 

Here are some more street views from the west side of the city. 

Evidence of neglected city infrastructure surrounds you in the poorer neighborhoods of Chicago. This is a common feature, of course, of large areas of many American cities. Sidewalks are cracked and uneven, streets are rough, and maintenance of public spaces, such as parks, is deplorable. It all adds up to a kind of depressing bleakness. I can't help but wonder what impact an urban environment like this has on the psychology, and aesthetic development, of children. There is so little beauty, so few examples of excellence that might raise aspirations. 

The most frustrating part of it, for me, is that the basic elements required for a beautiful city are here. It's not as if these neighborhoods are cursed structurally. There are green medians planted with trees, streets with ample space for bike lanes, expansive parks all around, and even reasonable public rail transport within walking distance. What's missing is security, decent maintenance and, most importantly, quality housing at the density required to bring the streets to life. Could the problem be that the city simply doesn't need more affordable housing and hence can ignore large swathes of its area? 

In many parts of the world, the physical endowments of these blighted neighborhoods would be envied. What wouldn't be envied is the catastrophic social disaster that seems to be taking place here. America's cities are a reflection of its society, and the reflection is a pretty awful one.   

Scenes of decay, below.

I started this posting with what struck me most forcefully upon my return to Chicago: the glaring urban maladies the city faces in many areas. But there is another side of Chicago, one that gradually emerges out of the vast areas of unsightliness, that is vibrant, beautiful and, improving markedly. 

Chicago is a city known for, and blessed with, excellent architecture. Certain areas can have the elegant feeling of nice neighborhoods in European cities, with lovely brick buildings that seem to have been built with high-quality materials and care. I imagine that many of them were, in fact, built by European immigrants around a century ago and they continue to be the domain of the better off in the city, with a high proportion of white residents. It's been very encouraging to see the most beautiful of Chicago's neighborhoods undergoing a revitalization. Many young people are settling in the city and bringing vitality back to once great neighborhoods. 

A surprise to me was that new housing in Chicago is frequently built in the old, beautiful styles of the past (see the far right picture below). Neighborhoods are retaining their original character and because of the beauty and detail of the older style of buildings, the streets are regaining a density of attracive detail that draws in people who come to just to stroll and enjoy the ambience. The streetscapes are an attraction in themselves.

Below are a few shots of the beautiful buildings and streets in Chicago.

Along with the rejuvenation of great residential neighborhoods in Chicago comes a rebirth of commercial streets. 

Better neighborhoods in the city now are full of a wide range of restaurants, stores, and other businesses that put them on par, in terms of commercial life, with streets in a city like Amsterdam. 

Where the streets don't match up to what's on offer in a great city like Amsterdam is in their dispoportionate allocation of space to auto traffic and parking for cars. The streetscapes of Chicago are dominated by cars. There are few dedicated bicycle lanes (I saw almost none), and sidewalks are narrower than they should be. In fact, sidewalks here are unattractively made of poured concrete and offer almost no interesting details to draw pedestrians in. They create few meeting spaces for people (there are few benches and quiet nooks), and they provide very limited space for restaurants and cafes to use for outdoor seating. This makes the streets of the nicer neighborhoods of Chicago, in general, much less lively and attractive than those of Amsterdam and other great cities of Europe. Chicago needs to put pedestrians first to get its streets right. 

In my opinion, a lower density of detail is what often sets American cities apart. It's a function, to a great degree, of the auto dominated landscape. If you're passing through quickly in your car, the small details don't matter. If you're walking, however, the details make all the difference in a street experience. Because of America's car-centric culture, sidewalks and other pedestrian areas have gotten short shrift. We don't invest in them because we don't walk. It seems the emphasis is on quick, cheap, easy-to-maintain pedestrian areas that are devoid of artistry and charm.

Below are a couple of fairly pleasing street scenes in Chicago.

In the richest suburbs and wealthier part of American cities, street design can sometimes rise to a high level. The picture to the left is from the business district of Oak Park, an old suburb directly abutting Chicago's West Side. 

The examples of beautiful streetscapes are, however, the exception. What would be the average standard in cities in most of the rest of the rich world are in America the domain of the wealthy. 

Extraordinaly high income and wealth inequality in America, in conjunction with an auto-dominated transport mentality, leads to cities that are largely unattractive and often jarringly ugly. 

I'm thrilled that many areas of Chicago are moving in the direction of complex, detail-rich, pedestrian-oriented streets. But I'm afraid that the beautiful streetscapes I've seen here are going to remain the realm of the the privileged. 

I started this posting upon arrival in the United States at the end of February of this year.  As my re-entry to American life continued, I decided to hold off on publishing.  Now I retrospectively add it to my blog.  In total, I’ve spent over 3 months in this country, with month-long stays in Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, and shorter stays in Chicago, Columbus, Ohio and New York.  This posting may surprise some Americans, but that’s great.  I want my postings to be provocative and I would love to stir up a bit of controversy. 

Coming back to the USA and its cities always presents me with a perplexing mix of feelings.   There are certain delights, some incredibly alive and exciting neighborhoods, and abundant areas of promise.  On the whole, however, I am left wondering why American cities seem to be so far behind other wealthy cities around the world in terms of physical infrastructure and the attractiveness and liveliness of their streets.  I’m writing about this because I believe we as Americans can and should do far better.  Somehow we have generally forgotten how to grow and sustain great cities, the kind of cities where streets don’t simply serve as corridors for getting from one place to another, but are engaging destinations in themselves.  I recognize that many cities in the US are enjoying a revival, but they have a long way to go to compete with the most livable cities in the world. 

In light of our long history of economic advantage (the US was the world’s wealthiest society for most of the 20th century), American cities should be vibrant places that lead the world in terms of quality of life and beauty.  We’ve decided to settle for something far less.  The majority of American urban environments don’t engage and delight, they don’t respect their vibrant pasts, and very often they feel lifeless, lonely and forlorn.  More importantly, they are environments that perpetuate divisions and social problems.  

There are many ways to evaluate urban environments, such as the methodologies used in livability rankings by firms such as Mercer and the Economist Intelligence Unit.  In my research I focus on my own subjective experience as a pedestrian, cyclist and public transport user in a broad sampling of a given city’s area.  I never drive a car, although I occasionally become a passenger in one.  I don’t gravitate to tourist attractions (what do they really tell you about a city?), but instead try to see the face of urban life across socioeconomic lines through a kind of random sampling and, honestly, aimless wandering.   I think I’ve developed a good nose for sniffing out interesting and representative areas wherever I go.  I try to put my observations into a more objective context through reference to statistics and other information about a city.  My goal is to get closer to understanding how the ‘whole’ of a city comes together and how smoothly it functions for all its inhabitants, especially those at lower income levels.  In fact, as I’ve written before, I believe you can learn far more about a city and society by observing how the lower socioeconomic classes live than by observing how the wealthy live.    

If I’m pressed to come up with a set of characteristics that typify the backwardness of American cities, I would include a combination of poor space utilization, shoddy building construction, a general roughness and sloppiness in terms of infrastructure (and  even institutions), and gross social inequality and its concomitant social problems.  

You can see the poor land utilization in the unsightly parking lots that line streets and often dominate suburbanized city centers.  You can see the shoddiness in new construction that utilizes low-grade materials that are not designed to last and improve with age.  The roughness is clearly evident in the poorly paved streets and sidewalks.  You can experience the backwardness on the generally outdated, unattractive and inconvenient public transportation systems.   Most jarringly, perhaps, you are faced with the astounding social inequality whenever you leave behind the enclaves of the middle class and wealthy, especially when out of the isolating cocoon of an automobile.   The social problems are not impacting merely an isolated fringe.  Statistics on urban crime, health, homelessness and education put American cities into a league of their own in the developed world.  In fact, it is the huge gap between wealthy areas and the rest, combined with auto-centric transport, that most uniquely identifies American cities.

Improving urban quality of life in the US will depend on grappling with our enormous social problems, returning to a more inclusive, equal society, and shifting away from the auto as a primary means of transportation.   Moving away from the auto will allow us to bring our cities back to a human scale. Human-scaled cities accelerate positive social change.   They provide for stronger local communities and increased safety.  With excellent public transport, cities and their regions become better integrated and urban social connectivity rises.  This increase in social connectivity provides new opportunities for the poor and fosters increased civic participation and pride.  This 'reconnectedness' and revitalization, along with increased investment in infrastructure and improved institutions such as schools, will support healing of the damaged social fabric.

When I ask Americans about the problems facing American cities, I quickly realize how foreign my view of American cities is.  Americans are generally proud of their cities and have few suspicions that they suffer in comparison with cities in Europe or other wealthy countries.  Ask a western European, Canadian, Japanese or Australian for their candid opinions on US cities, however, and an array of negative characterizations arise.   Beyond conversational anecdotes, American cities do rather poorly, as I've pointed out, in the most famous international livability rankings.  When considering America's long history of wealth, it’s rather astounding to realize that no American city makes it to the top 20 cities in the world (Honolulu makes it in one ranking) in terms of quality of life, while almost all of Canada’s and Australia’s major cities do. 

Presented with this information, many Americans are defensive.  They are loathe to consider the relatively poor standing of American cities in comparison with their global peers.  Maybe this is because we grew accustomed to seeing ourselves as number one in the world and are uncomfortable with the reality that our position has slipped rather dramatically by so many measures. 

Americans have come to settle for a kind of rough functionality in their cities without focusing on the finer points of city life.  Maybe Americans tend not to notice the details of their cities because they are generally racing through them in their cars.  If they took more time to walk, ride a bicycle, or use public transportation, their views would probably change.  In fact, one of the reasons automobiles may be so popular in the US is not only that they provide the quickest or only means of getting around, but they also provide a relatively safe isolation from the frequently unattractive urban reality they traverse.  

Cities are a reflection of a society's values.  As the US has its own set of values, I don't expect American cities to be replicas of cities in Europe or elsewhere.  But are our values so different from countries such as Canada and Australia that our cities should present such a different face?   Most cities in the US seem downright rough, unpolished and run-down compared to those in their rich-country peers.  Outside of the wealthier neighborhoods and suburbs, streets, highways and sidewalks are in generally poor condition, there are large areas of urban blight with little street life to speak of, and there is poor public transportation to connect the disadvantaged with opportunities in other areas.  Overall it's an aesthetic embarrassment and livability challenge.  The roughness adds stress to the daily life of city dwellers and degrades their quality of life.  What's more, I believe a society's values are also be formed by the nature of its physical environment.  The roughness of American cities is not only a product of the country's social problems, but actively creates and perpetuates these problems.  
This state of affairs is an unnecessary shame, as American cities still have many positive qualities that could be leveraged to create pleasing urban environments.  These qualities include remarkable friendliness, a lot of green space, cultural diversity and economic dynamism.  

At least superficially, American cities have to be among the most friendly and welcoming in the world.  Outside of big eastern cities such as New York (and even there, really), people are not afraid to smile at, or talk with, perfect strangers. This is an important, but maybe undervalued, element of urban quality of life. America, in my experience, is at or near the top in this hard-to-measure attribute.  I find it addictive.  It seems to happen in all sorts of places: a person you pass will say hello, a fellow customer in line will strike up a conversation, or a fellow passenger on a train or bus will ask you a question.  

American cities also tend to have a lot of green, particularly in their residential neighborhoods.  Green right-of-ways are common in most cities, which often support a healthy canopy of street trees.  In denser cities in Europe, this is often not the case. 

Another hallmark of many American cities is incredible diversity.  There are often large ethnic, racial and cultural minorities.  In most major cities there is no longer a white majority.  This diversity creates a dynamic social atmosphere full of all sorts of surprises including a huge range of authentic ethnic restaurants. I believe it's rather easy to find a niche and feel at home in many American cities.

Finally, it's obvious that the American economic system is overall very productive.  There is a general feeling in wealthier and middle-class districts of incredible material abundance. This wealth, combined with a relatively low population density in most areas, makes for generously proportioned homes surrounded by green.  It's rather stunning to see how well so many people live on a continental scale.  

In my postings that follow on four American cities, I will delve further into these thoughts, try to get to the bottom of what ails America's cities, and look for examples of both troubled and thriving streets and neighborhoods.