Sprawl

Chicago blossomed from a small frontier town to the largest metropolis in its region over the course of two centuries. It grew at a rate that is unheard of by today’s standards and began to push the boundaries of the city limits and then continued to grow beyond. The urban sprawl of Chicago has been allowed and encouraged to happen at a scale that few other cities have experienced. Its site as a transportation hub and its early status as a frontier town have encouraged growth from the start. With this impressive growth and prosperity comes points of neglect and problems within the metropolis. Issues such as an empty inner city and moving many people over large areas across the city. How has Chicago become as sprawling as it has and how has this sprawl lead to many of the issues of modern day Chicago? While sprawl is not to blame for all of Chicago’s problems, is it fair to say that they exasperated many of them?

Chicago began as a small frontier town on the edge of settled US land. In an era in which manifest destiny was incredibly strong, the US was pushing west and looking for the best transportation routes to move through North America. Chicago was in a prime location for transit from the great lakes (New York) to the Mississippi River (Gulf of Mexico) and thus why a settlement was established there (Fort Dearborn). While Chicago began at a small scale, the land was readily available and real-estate became one of the early industries in the area beginning in the 1830’s (Lewinnek, 3-4). As lots were sold sprawl began to occur as people pushed further and further out. This was common in many frontier cities in the west, however many of them became less sprawling than Chicago as they grew, which brings the question of why this occurred in Chicago. What allowed sprawl to occur on such a large scale in Chicago?

Transportation has always been one of the most important reasons Chicago is where it is. It was a transit hub when it began and remains so today. As Daniel Burnham and Robert Kingery stated, transit began “at first by water and wagon route, then by railway and finally by motor highway and through the air” (Cutler, 301). As railroads began to make their way across the US, Chicago became one of the early railway centers (Cutler, 312). While this is great and brings both industry and people to the city, it also causes sprawl. Each rail station along the line leaving the city will begin a small town where people will find it easy to commute to the city for work while having the benefits of not living in the inner city. The issue being that now a single rail line that was designed for a certain number of people to use now has a much larger job to do which means the line has to be redeveloped which can prove costly. Rail lines while incredibly useful also cause traffic and neighborhood barriers; neither of which is good for a city’s urban landscape. Adding autos into a city with an extensive railway system can be tricking in any city let alone when these systems are integrated right next to the Central Business District of a large metropolis such as what happened in Chicago. Most of the freeways meet each other just outside of the CBD of Chicago which creates immense traffic since many people are exiting the freeways for their jobs in the city as well as changing freeways to get through the city (Bruegmann, 192). After World War II autos began to become affordable for the middle class and thus there was naturally more traffic as cars can to the city more frequently and caused congestion in the inner city (Cutler, 341). As cars became more readily available, it was possible for people to live further away from the city as they could just drive to work; and thus the auto encouraged sprawl. In the modern era, Chicago has become a trucking center for the Midwest region which has caused more congestion in its freeways system (Cutler, 316). When you have a city that is centered around transportation, it usually works well for transiting good through the city, however, getting people through the city becomes an issue as the layers of transportation have to try to work together without getting into each other’s ways. The planning of the city also creates an interesting platform to manipulate the transportation on. As Bruegmann stated in his book Sprawl, cities do not work successfully in concentric circles; instead, they must work around elements such as waterways and trains (97). In the city’s early planning it worked around the waterways which were its big industry, however as time passed the planning became more centralized which created issues with congestion in the inner city. Chicago has always been an amazing place for transportation and continues to be full of amazing transit systems working together, however, this does not mean that it does not cause its own set of issues that contribute to the sprawl of the metropolis.

Chicago began annexation of many of the suburbs surrounding it as it grew denser. However, as these suburbs were annexed, a new ring of suburbs began to appear and the sprawl continued. As the suburbs grew they became faster growing and held more industries than the CBD of Chicago. In 1900 eighty percent of the population lived downtown however by 2006 only thirty-six percent of the population lived there (Cutler, 339).

The rise of the suburbs after World War II was fueled by multiple factors and lead to many industries leaving the city center. As veterans returned home from the war, cities began to get overcrowded and many people moved outside the city in the pursuit of the American dream. When this migration occurred industry began to follow and move to where the people were relocating. By 1950, ¾ of retail stores were outside of the city center leaving an empty CBD and a struggling central city (Bruegmann, 61). Gary, Indiana became a model town that produced steel just outside the suburbs of Chicago which was an industry that used to be in Chicago (Wade, 244). Chicago also lost its status as the meat packing center which had long been one of its top industries. The industries that left the city were in need of land and while it was cheaper in the suburbs and rural areas out of the city it also caused problems for Chicago. The sprawl of industry made moving a vast number of people through the metropolitan area a greater challenge creating a need for more highways and transit systems that had to work alongside the existing systems. Chicago has created benefits from this initial issue by becoming successful at moving freight through the city which has become a successful industry in itself.

As sprawl increases the inner city becomes empty which poses a new set of problems for the city. Both industries and people left the inner city in the late 1940’s and 1950’s. Little had to be built in the Loop since the 1920’s which illustrated how the downfall of the city center was beginning (Spinney, 212). Little money got put into the CBD through the middle of the twentieth century which allowed sprawl to thrive by accumulating industries that left the city (Bruegmann, 61). Chicago is a city that in highly centralized in its planning, from the el Loop to the highway interchanges being just outside of the CBD; it is planned in a way that values centralization. To have the central most part of the city go underused and underfunded for decades is astonishing and instead to be pumping money into the sprawl that extends out from it. This decentralization gave power to suburbs through funding and policy making. The idea of centralization is something that Chicago has long had as it gives a fair amount of power to the wards in the city which causes conflict with the city government. To have the same problem with the suburbs Add in suburban In the 1990’s the trend of decentralization reversed and the loop began to become reinvigorated (Bruegmann, 53).

Sprawl does have benefits and has been successful in many ways however the issues that arise from it creates a conflict. The American dream was the initial idea that emerged and encouraged people out of city centers looking for “open space, and good life” where they would be happier and have better. (Cutler, 341). The idea of having space after living in an overcrowded city such as Chicago was when this trend began is logical. The idealized life that advertisements for the suburbs illustrated made them desirable and incredibly successful. They lifestyle of having a car and living in the suburbs became the ideal however and with it, the problems arose. Requiring an auto to transit creates a sense of isolation from people which does not encourage a community. The reliance on the auto also requires an extension of transit systems which many be disjointed as they meet each other as well as being expensive (Cutler, 345 & Morris, 68). A sense of community is an idea that is important to Chicago neighborhoods which are each viewed as their own individual community (Morris, 108). It becomes interesting that the sense of community the Chicago prides itself on is lost as sprawl occurs. Chicago is already a fairly segregated city and the suburbs are no exception to this. While having a sense of community does not fix this issue it does help counteract segregation instead of encouraging it through isolation in the suburbs. Part of the American dream was to have a large yard and the kind of space you cannot get in the city. Because of this, low density is encouraged through larger than needed lot sizes in the suburbs which leads to excessive sprawl. Chicago already has lower than average density for a city of its size at 12,700 people per square mile; and the low density continues throughout the sprawl of the metropolitan area (Cutler, 343).

The urban sprawl of Chicago has occured at a large scale and has been encouraged through transportation, the American dream, and many other forces. From the beginning, it was a transportation hub that allowed it to sprawl over the vast plains. The problems within the metropolis have often been due to the sprawl in one way or another such as empty inner city and moving many people over large areas across the city. While it is not fair to blame sprawl for all of Chicago’s problems, many of them were made worse because of the sprawl.

Bibliography

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