Yelling from the window as the world passes by
It's time. After 12 years of writing about cities with a Rust Belt perspective on this platform, I'm closing it down. And no, this is not an April Fool's joke. I'm moving on to a new platform with a new name: petesaunders.substack.com . It's got my name for now but that may change. It also has the more than 800 articles I've written since 2012 archived and available for viewing. As you might guess…
Source: istockphoto.com (Note: Last week I was fortunate enough to have an opinion piece written by Ed Zotti and myself published in Crain's Chicago Business. It's on the continuing loss of Chicago's Black middle class, at least as defined by its ability to attract Black college graduates. The article is behind a paywall, but as a co-author I took the liberty of posting it here. It's a theme I've…
Typical 2-4 unit housing stock in Chicago, built prior to World War II. Source: housingstudies.org Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Most zoning reform proponents – YIMBYs – argue that housing costs have ballooned because local governments haven’t allowed enough housing to be built. This might surprise some readers, but I actually agree with this point. The putative reason given by YIMBYs is that the kind of…
Homes in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Source: The City of Neighborhoods Project Part 1 Part 2 Back in 2018, I attended and participated in an event called “Tools Toward Market Restoration”, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The event was held in Detroit. At the event I got a chance to meet Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten…
Source: inc.com (Note: February's been a crazy month for me. Life and work each conspiring to take time away from the blog. I'm back today and looking forward to a better March. -Pete) Earlier this month I corresponded with a colleague by email. The colleague, who is Jewish, wanted to get my opinion on rising anti-Semitism in the U.S. following the October 7 massacre and hostage capture by Hamas…
Source: belonging.berkeley.edu Part 1 Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate with the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, is someone I had the occasion of meeting a couple times in my career. A little more than ten years ago he worked for Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council , an independent nonprofit organization created in 1934. MPC’s mission then, and since, has been to challenge…
Source: curbed.com (Janna Morton) Let’s talk about the nation’s housing affordability crisis. I recently downloaded some 2023 third quarter data from the National Association of Realtors . Nationally, NAR reported that the median sales price for existing family homes from July-September 2023 was $406,900, up 2.2% over the previous year. But when you look at the data sorted by metropolitan area,…
Rendering of a Chicago White Sox ballpark at the proposed South Loop location at Roosevelt Road and the Chicago River. Source: reddit.com Does the Chicago White Sox brass read the Corner Side Yard? Don’t know if they do, but they sure seem to be familiar with my work. It was reported in Wednesday's Chicago Sun-Times that the White Sox are in “serious” negotiations to construct a new stadium in the…
A scene from the game Cities: VR. Source: vrscout.com (Note: First, Happy New Year. Here's my first post of 2024. It's long, it's introspective, but I think it touches on a lot of things that professional planners are thinking about. Please take a look. -Pete) Frequent readers here may have seen me write about my experience growing up in 1970s Detroit. I’ve often said that seeking ways to improve…
Another year is in the books. It's hard to believe I'm entering my 12th year doing this, but as I've said before, I'll keep going as long as the ideas come to me. This year, no ruminating on any running themes among the most popular posts on the blog you see below. I'll just post the links and include some key quotes without any extra commentary. A wonderful and happy New Year to you and all those…
Source: zaralawgroup.com Too often, people interpret population numbers at face value and make a determination of a place’s success or failure based on absolute numbers. Population went up? Place is doing great. Population went down? Place is not doing well. Truth is, there is a lot going on with population change that offer few clues as to why growth or decline occurs. Digging a little deeper…
Visitors check out the latest addition to the Detroit Riverwalk, the Uniroyal Promenade, at its grand opening on October 21, 2023. Source: detroit.urbanize.city One of the positive things that many cities worldwide have done over the last half century is to transition the relics of their industrial era – the port facilities, the warehouses, railyards and more that defined manufacturing – to uses…
Source: svvoice.com Remember "donut cities" ? The theory used to describe the American metro pattern of hollowed-out, disinvested central cities surrounded by flourishing and affluent suburbs? A 2021 report produced by economists Arjun Ramani and Nicholas Bloom of the National Bureau of Economic Research, brought back the term to describe weak downtown cores struggling to bounce back from Covid…
This image depicts one kind of neighborhood being considered for the proposed California Forever planned city development in eastern Solano County in California. It looks great -- yet it also looks like dozens of neighborhoods that line Chicago's boulevards today. Source: californiaforever.com As a kid I used to draw imaginary cities all the time. I was inspired by a trip to Disney World when I…
Former president Donald Trump's infamous photo op in front of St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, June 1, 2020. The photo op was meant to demonstrate successful "law-and-order" efforts to quell violence in the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests. The photo op was later viewed as a failure after being condemned by military and religious leaders, as well as elected officials from…
This is an aerial photo of the Detroit/Grosse Pointe Park municipal boundary in the Detroit metro area (the red dotted line). The development of both communities at this location took place at the same time -- about 1890-1920. On the left side is Detroit, with hundreds of vacant lots that gives the area the appearance of a park. On the right side is Grosse Pointe Park, an affluent, still-built-out…
Chicago is becoming a recognized leader in the adaptive reuse of office buildings for residential use. This image is of the 30 N. LaSalle Street building in Chicago, where a proposal to add 432 apartment units to replace vacant offices is being considered. This is one of several projects on LaSalle Street, the heart of Chicago's financial district, that could add more than 1,600 dwelling units to…
Bikers and pedestrians on Chicago's Lakefront Trail pass Oak Street Beach on Lake Michigan. One cannot overestimate the impact of Chicago's investment in its lakefront as a quality of life strategy. Source: choosechicago.com Here’s a followup to some of the points made in my last post, and a response to readers and Twitter (X) commenters. First, a quick refresh on my earlier post . This line of…
Detroit's made great strides in turning its industrial waterfront on the Detroit River into a place of recreation and enjoyment. But today's workers want more, and Detroit needs more of it. Source: detroitriverfront.org Were Rust Belt cities ever really attractive? Cool? Livable? No. Rust Belt cities weren’t built for beauty, they were built for enterprise. Sure, there was wonderful beauty…
The Congress of the New Urbanism has always been a good starting point for me when attempting illustrate development intensity. Does it need more visibility in today's housing debates? Source: transect.org One of the often-used arguments from advocates for increasing housing supply in our nation's most expensive cities is that zoning policy, or the regulation of land use by local government, has…
Source: youtube.com This started as a Twitter – excuse me, X – thread I wrote earlier this week. I’ve elaborated to make it an actual blog post. I don’t think urbanism usually employs very many “what if” scenarios. It might happen on the neighborhood or community scale (“what if this development had been built? Or not?”) but I don’t know if anyone’s really explored alternate histories for cities.…
That's yours truly delivering a presentation at the Council of State Governments' Midwest Legislative Conference in Detroit on July 11, 2023. Source: Gwen Saunders I was honored to be invited to speak at the Council of State Government’s Midwest Legislative Conference last week in Detroit. It was great to be in the midst of hundreds of state legislators and offer my opinions on state’s roles in…
Sterling Heights, MI is one of many suburbs outside Detroit. Suburbs come in all shapes and sizes, with new ones emerging all the time. Is it right to compare older, denser cities with the kaleidoscope of suburbs? I often check in on NewGeography.com , a website led by southern California-based urban studies professor and famed suburbanist Joel Kotkin . If you’ve checked out the site, you may have…
The mantra of a quick take society? There was a time in the early-to-mid point of my career, I had an excellent mentor who led a consulting firm. I first met Les Pollock, FAICP , when I took his site planning class at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s graduate College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA). Les founded Camiros, Ltd. , a Chicago-based urban planning, zoning and urban…
An early view of the Chicago Bears' stadium and mixed-use development project would look on the site of the former Arlington Park Racetrack in suburban Arlington Heights, IL. Source: blockclubchicago.org Suburban urbanism is making another cameo appearance. As most followers of cities know, the lack of housing affordability in large cities, combined with the impact of the rising work-from-home…