Chicago Pioneered Transit Oriented Design – Where is it Now?
Monday, April 4, 2005

A quick look at Chicago’s urban archeology reveals pockets of older homes close to train stations that are surrounded by newer housing stock – the original Transit Oriented Development.

Much has been said about Chicago’s rebuilding efforts at the time of the great fire – a period from the 1870’s to the 1890’s. At a certain point, the city’s development could ‘spread’ no more, because of limitations of transportation. At that time in history, walking was the most effective transportation over short distances in a crowded city. Trains were around, but lacked physical infrastructure like elevated tracks – or even a certain density of tracks - to be viable over short distances. Chicago’s urban development pattern started to use trains to bring people out to a new stop in the hinterlands, where one would get off the train and walk or take a horse to their eventual destination. Good examples still may be visited in Old Irving Park, Oak Park, Beverly, Evanston and Pullman.

 American cities of that era with a certain population mass and accessibility to trains developed this same way. New York City, Philadelphia and Boston all show patterns of a self contained central city being surrounded by separate , viable towns, all feeding off of each other. Open space and agricultural lands filled the areas between the towns and cities, so that all segments of economy were being produced and served within the new metropolis, it was self sustaining.

This model of development found itself being described and promoted by British planner Sir Ebenezer Howard in his 1902 book ‘Garden Cities of Tomorrow’, based on an earlier thesis he produced in 1898. Coincidentally, Howard immigrated to the United States and lived in Chicago for a time after the Great Fire. His development model of growth in limited sized, self contained towns found practical applications in the British ‘New Towns’ postwar movement, notably in the design of Letchworth.

Identifiable towns that developed close to train stations, scattered around the main city, came to form the genesis of the American suburb. An “interurbanity”, if you will, a group of identifiable urban centers that complement each other. That vision, however, is far different than the sprawl known as suburbia today. New modes of transportation – the automobile – brought about a randomness of destinations, giving way to infilling sprawl. This in turn, eradicated the agricultural belt that fed the city. Some argue that undefined sprawl led to a certain “anonymity” that ate at the liveability of our communities. Perhaps anonymity eats away at liveability, whereas urban identity feeds the liveability of our neighborhoods?

Trends are a fascinating to map and predict. We’ve gone through an interim time of bedroom communities, and commuting to work in far flung centers. Corporate America is seeing value in not concentrating brain power in one location; 9-11 made that point much clearer. Many people desire quality of life issues and are working closer to their homes. Indeed, sprawl has become so far flung that it is unfeasible to live on the very edges of development and commute to a central city daily. This decentralizing trend is seeing more employment centers put back in neighborhoods, thus a resurgence of suburban town centers. Some are even working from their homes. Perhaps this will strengthen the traditional Chicago urban model of ‘the neighborhoods’.

After all, what’s old comes around again brand new.

Darrel Babuk, AIA, MRAIC, LEED AP, is an Architect, and a noted speaker and writer on issues combining architecture & transportation. He is a Senior Associate at DLK Civic Design in Chicago, Illinois, and works with clients in their Transportation and Transit Planning department.