Is there a parking problem?

No need for more parking

Last week I listened to yet another Milwaukee Avenue business owner lament the lack of parking along Milwaukee Avenue.  But this stretch of Milwaukee Avenue between Logan Boulevard and Diversey Avenue does not need more parking.

Merchants often take the view that shopper inconvenience due to parking is a significant factor in keeping shoppers away. But more parking would be counterproductive to merchant interests.

More parking means less space devoted to attractions that bring people to the street for a purpose.  More parking means more open vacuous spaces that present a perceived barrier to pedestrian activity.  If all, or most of what the eye can see is empty space, why would you want to walk there?  It’s not green and inviting;  they paved this paradise a long time ago.

Chicago Tribune profiles Logan Square

Today’s Chicago Tribune profiles the neighborhood in “Logan Square: small town in the big city.” Bikes — and other transportation advantages, the boulevards, churches, the arts, demographics, property values, and increasing restaurant options round out this brief look at Logan Square.

Community Book Exchange: Logan Square Branch

Walking by the southeast corner of Logan and Kedzie Boulevards, I was again reminded of one of the things I love about this neighborhood: the Community Book Exchange: Logan Square Branch (though I don’t know of any additional branches yet [Correction:  there is also a Wicker Park Branch]).

If you haven’t seen it, it’s a Chicago Reader newspaper box (mis?)- appropriated and converted by Logan Square resident Ryan Duggan to a free book exchange serving readers in the community since 2006. Don’t worry, the Reader thought enough of it to feature a story on “The Littlest Library” shortly after the box surfaced in its current incarnation.

Have books you no longer want? Place them in the box. Looking for a good read? Go peruse the library shelves (all two of them). My recent perusal uncovered the classic Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Ray Bradbury’s science

Urban laugh track

Logan Square inversion

Logan Square once again features prominently in the national news media in the August 13, 2008 issue of The New Republic, (not sure if it’s) on newsstands now (but it’s definitely on-line). In the featured article, “Trading Places,” author Alan Ehrenhalt writes:

…The massive outward migration of the affluent that characterized the second half of the twentieth century is coming to an end.

Chicago — including specifically Logan Square — is much used as an example of demographic changes causing an inversion of the traditional American inner-city poor/outer suburb affluent, pattern of settlement.