Smart Growth = Magic Growth

Urban Advantage works "with architects, planning staff, and citizen groups, [to] create visions of pedestrian-friendly, socially-interactive communities by transforming photographs with photo-editing software." Browsing through their transformation images, I was impressed with the persuasiveness of the images, new buildings, mature trees, and other amenities magically sprouting from the ground. While these images need to be taken with a grain of salt, they definitely create an idealized vision of less-than-ideal places that could potentially be realized over time. Reminiscent of New Urbanist planning principles, each commercial center, transit improvement, or residential development takes a homogeneous, car-oriented locale and turns it into an equally homogeneous, pedestrian-oriented place. Of course, Urban Advantage is carrying out the designs of other people, but they definitely focus on a certain way of improving our surroundings.

What made me really start to question what I was seeing is the following, a "downtown residential development", one block from my office in Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood.


Before


After

Not knowing the details of this study, all I can say is that the townhouses on the right side of the street (New Street) are definitely possible, as the large site is currently a parking lot. Most likely a tower would lurk behind this wall of low-rise buildings, in order for the developer to even come close to making their money back.

The building fronts that occupy the left side of the street are another story, though. The townhouses in the foreground would require demolition of part (if not all) of a parking garage that serves condominiums visible in the before image above the blank brick wall. The new building facade in the background (light stone with balconies) faces the same problem, though it could simply be a recladding. Slapping windows and stone on two elevations to give the impression of a residential building, while actually still being a parking garage, now cloaked in condo garb.

My point is that the difference between these images and reality is humongous. The effort required to make it happen, and the inconveniences created by the plan are not readily apparent to most people. If it does happen, it will definitely improve the area, but it will negatively impact many people living there already and it will take long time before the idealized image is reached, if at all.(via Beyond Brilliance)

Of particular note might be the fact that the parking lot on the right was the original choice for the Music and Dance Theater Chicago's permanent home, now taking residence behind Frank Gehry's bandshell in Millennium Park.