The Conflict Wracking Downtown Chicago

Posted by Sheila Redick on March 13, 2006

Chicago Tribune's very fine architecture critic Blair Kamin writes about the changes in booming downtown Chicago...

"Call it gentrification, yuppification, corporatization, whatever.  But the problem -- and admittedly, it is the right problem to have, compared to downtown Detroit and other struggling Midwestern urban centers -- is this:

"Now that we've figured out how to get people to invest in downtown, how do we maintain its diversity and vitality so it doesn't become a sterile home for the super-rich?  At issue is the survival of texture -- the urban texture that makes cities endlessly fascinating, quirky, exotic and even a little wicked. "

Kamin lays part of the blame for sterile spaces on the fact that "today's national retailers have a strong image they want to protect."  And office building developers want to wow prospective tenants with soaring, dignified lobbies which don't easily accommodate small, one-off shops.  As Kamin put it, "What self-respecting law firm wants the themed, old-timey look of a Potbelly Sandwich Works just off its crisply modern grand entrance?"  (Of course, Potbelly is not exactly a mom and pop shop.)

"Resolving messy urban vitality and architectural grandeur is an eternal challenge," Kamin writes.  ".... character can't be manufactured or legislated or drawn up in some architectural recipe book.  It comes from a long-simmering intermingling between a building and the human activity that goes on inside it."  (And I would argue, what goes on outside it.)