by Joel Reese
To hard-core Chicagoans, the word "suburb" conjures a vision of cookie-cutter houses surrounded by bright green lawns, all connected by smooth, wide streets that lead directly to shopping malls. Devoted suburbanites harbor similar disdain for the city, viewing Chicago as dirty, overcrowded and unsafe. Sure, the night life and museums are nice, they say, but the parking and the congestion are awful. The suburbs are home precisely because they aren't like the city.
But the differences between the city and the suburbs are starting to blur. The strip mall by the Sears Tower, with its chain stores and ample free parking, looks quintessentially suburban. The high-rise condominium on Northwest Highway, in the heart of Arlington Heights, speaks just as quintessentially of city living. What's going on here?
Strip malls are sprouting in Chicago like dandelions in a suburban lawn. These days, the Chicago Planning Department entertains more than 300 strip mall proposals a year. Meanwhile, land-locked suburbs like Arlington Heights, Wheaton, Des Plaines and Mount Prospect are growing up, literally and figuratively, by constructing enough high-rise apartments and condos to produce miniature skylines. The blurring of city and suburban identity distresses urban dwellers and suburban residents alike, but longing for the good old days is pointless. As time passes, thecity and the surrounding suburbs will--indeed, must--become more and more alike. "The demarcation between city and suburb is increasingly irrelevant," said urban analyst Frank Beal.
Since his election in 1989, Mayor Richard M. Daley has buffed up Chicago's image by repaving streets, planting flowers and trees, improving the schools and rejuvenating neighborhoods such as Roscoe Village west of Wrigley Field and Wicker Park on the Northwest Side. Now, he's turned his attention to strip malls, those hallmarks of the suburbs that are flourishing in Chicago.
To some members of Daley's administration, they aren't very attractive. They point, for example, to the intersection of North and Clybourn avenues, where hundreds of parking spots sprawl in front of megastores like Whole Foods, The Gap, Crate & Barrel, Crown Books and The Container Store. Other strip malls, they say, including the massive one on Fullerton and countless smaller ones along Irving Park Road, would look right at home in Schaumburg. These relative newcomers to Chicago's landscape don't look much like Chicago, according to the City Council, which recently passed an ordinance regulating landscaping, lighting and store signs and ordering developers to show they fit in with the "existing pattern of development in the neighborhood.."
The ordinance's most important element strikes at the very heart of strip mall culture: parking.
Strip malls thrived in the suburbs because free parking is so appealing to motorists. People wanted to park right in front of the store, and the shopping centers made that possible, too. City dwellers--many of whom have recently returned from the suburbs--drive cars too, and they also use strip malls. But when they shop, they're going to have to walk a little more. Under the ordinance, parking will have to be put at the side of the mall, rather than in front.
"We want to de-emphasize the car," said Becky Carroll, spokeswoman for the Chicago Planning Department. "In the city, there's more of an emphasis on the pedestrian experience."
Some residents are willing to forego convenience for character. "It's really frustrating to want to go somewhere and not be able to park, but the city isn't set up for putting stuff in your car," notes Chicago photographer Bob Thall. "But when you try to make that convenient, that's when you end up with the suburbanization of the city. You can't satisfy both." As planning and development department chair Christopher Hill puts it, "We're trying to distinguish the city from the suburbs."
Meanwhile, some suburbanites are trying to resist the intrusion of high-rise buildings into their placid communities.
The suburbs experienced explosive growth after World War II, when the word "sprawl" sounded like a synonym for healthy growth. Moving to the suburbs seemed like a natural progression. Why stay in a cramped, loud apartment in the city when spacious homes at reasonable prices were available in the suburbs? The whole point of leaving the city was to escape overcrowding, traffic and noise. The suburbs offered a pastoral vision of back yards with barbecue pits, quiet cul-de-sacs and good schools. Life could be very fine, indeed.
Now the suburbs have come full circle. Downtowns are losing business to shopping malls. Suburban leaders hope to rejuvenate them by adding more people, gambling they'll attract people who want to walk to shopping and trains. In several instances, they built upwards--just as cities have done throughout the 20th century. "There's not a lot of land left to develop in these built-out suburbs," said Frank Pons, a consultant with Ernst and Young-Kenneth Leventhal Real Estate Group in Chicago. "Condos and town houses are one way they can build."
Arlington Heights is a perfect example of "the new urbanism," as this school of thought is known. Currently under construction in downtown Arlington Heights is the Arlington Town Square, a 13-story condominium; the 80-unit Village Green; and the eight-story loft-condo Metropolis Performing Arts Center.
Like most of the suburban high-rise projects, those in Arlington Heights met vehement opposition. "I'm not opposed to development as long as it's not excessive or unreasonable," said former Arlington Heights Village President Ralph Clarbour. Arlington Town Square's 138-foot height, though it is no taller than the 140-foot existing Dunton Towers, "is a very serious concern of mine," Clarbour said. "It's extremely excessive. Once the precedent is set, everyone uses that as an excuse. I contend when you've made a mistake once, why make it two or three or four times?"
Similar criticisms have been heard in neighboring Mount Prospect and Des Plaines, which also have sprouted high-rise living units. Wheaton has built the whopping 22-story Twin Towers downtown near the commuter train station. And both Naperville and Roselle have built more modest high-rises. Such high-density development, however, has many proponents, including Vice President Al Gore. Now stumping for his own presidential bid, Gore has made "sprawl" a villain in his early speeches and suggested one remedy is exactly the kind of change Arlington Heights has undergone.
"Acre upon acre of asphalt have transformed what were mountain clearings and congenial villages into little more than massive parking lots," Gore said at a recent speech on American urban planning. "The ill-thought-out sprawl hastily developed around our nation's cities has turned what used to be friendly, easy suburbs into lonely cul-de-sacs."
That is better than turning once-bucolic villages into bustling mini-cities, Clarbour said. "I don't care at all for us to become a city of Chicago," said Clarbour. "Most of us moved from Chicago to get away from there. I don't see why it should come out and find us."
City dwellers can continue to resist strip malls and other symbols of suburban life. Suburbanites can continue to curse the appearance of each new high-rise. But they would achieve far more if they recognized the vital interests the city and suburbs have in common.
That's the hope of Beal, executive director of "Metropolis 2020," a study by the Commercial Club of Chicago that suggests a regional government to oversee decisions affecting the city and suburbs. It would guarantee that local decisions took into account regional concerns, said Beal, whose group consulted more than 400 of the area's political and business leaders.
"Regional government scares people," Beal concedes. "It scares me. I don't want it. But we are still faced with issues that are multi-jurisdictional in nature."
Among them: environmental quality, education, taxes, transportation, housing and land use.
Beal isn't advocating a massive "Big Brother" government to micro-manage the six-county Chicago area. But noting that the territory includes some 1,246 governmental taxing bodies, Beal advocates a "regional coordinating council" to oversee issues of concern to all. "We are an intertwined, interdependent and interconnected region," he said. "We don't make a lot out of the city-suburb dichotomy that was once so important."
In the end, the city and suburbs might have to end their long-standing resentment and accept a frightening prospect: they're bound to become more similar than either ever hoped. "Clearly the city-suburb animosity is still there," said Jerry Adelmann, executive director of the Openlands Project, a regional nonprofit conservation group. "But people are beginning to realize we have a shared destiny. I'm not saying everything is apple pie and motherhood, but it's emerging."
Joel Reese is a writer living in Chicago. This article originally appeared in the Chicago Daily Herald.