Should Miami Try To Emulate Chicago?
It's an interesting question raised by this article in the Miami Herald. We definitely recommend reading the article.
CHICAGO --As we've mentioned before, we spent four years in the City of Big Shoulders while studying at the University of Chicago, so we're familiar with the city and its downtown. Our first thought was that there is no way that Manny Diaz will ever wield as much power and influence as Richard Daley. It goes without saying that the Daley name rules in Chicago politics, and it's likely a big part of how he was able to push through a lot of these publicly-financed projects.
Not long ago, this great Midwestern city's downtown -- the place where the American skyscraper was perfected and first proliferated, no less -- found itself staggering on its once sturdy legs, like some punch-drunk boxer.The splendid architecture was worn, the Loop a dark ghost town after 6, when thousands of daytime workers decamped for the suburbs. Desolation spread: tumbledown warehouses, industrial carcasses, panhandlers, sagging neighborhoods. Some big projects -- office towers, a massive new public library -- did little to arrest the swoon.
Then something remarkable happened. Chicago squared its Broad Shoulders and got back its swagger.
And therein, Miami Mayor Manny Diaz believes, lies a lesson worth emulating for the city he leads, suspended halfway between decline and revival:
In the past decade and a half, the nation's third-largest city has undergone a resurgence under Mayor Richard M. Daley, who has invested hundreds of millions in bold plans, beautification, parks, culture and hard-core infrastructure as a way to attract business, development and -- most important -- the vital throngs of people, people, people who today make Chicago's streets and neighborhoods among the liveliest in the country.
It's the template that Diaz, who often invokes Chicago and the Daley administration as a model, hopes to put in place in Miami. Here, much like Chicago years ago, downtown largely shuts down after dark even amid an unprecedented, but troubled, high-rise condo boom.
The city of Chicago itself, not counting the suburbs, is also huge; the city limits extend far from the urban core, and it encompasses all of Cook County. While Daley has devoted most of the money to downtown revitalization, he's begun projects all over the city. If Diaz wanted to do something similar, he'd have to deal with the Miami-Dade County mayor and the mayor/city council of whatever municipality he's working with. There's more red tape involved.
And, of course, there's the transportation issue. People need a viable way to get to downtown, and the Metrorail doesn't cut it. Chicago already had the El system in place, and while we cursed the CTA many a time during our four-year stay, especially when it was 15 degrees and the bus was late, the system does a fair job of moving people from one far-flung part of the city to another. The same cannot be said of Metro-Dade's transit. So do you revitalize the urban core before improving transit? Or do you build a proper rail system before fixing up downtown? We doubt there's going to be money for both.
We can't say much more on the issue, as we don't profess to be urban planning specialists. (We'll leave that to the folks at Transit Miami. It's an interesting idea, as the two cities do have a fair amount in common (the rivers, the lake/bay, the grid system with numbered streets, the elevated trains), but it'll likely take four times as long for Miami to accomplish a similar downtown revitalization.
In Chicago's revival, a model for Miami? [Miami Herald]
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