Mixed use, yes. But not everywhere.

Chicago has a much more mixed pattern of development in and near downtown than existed 20 years ago. The central area, about 1.5 miles wide and 4.5 miles long, had a resident population of about 53,400 in 1980. Now it’s home to between 85,000 and 90,000 people, and the population is expected to reach 138,000 to 148,000 by 2020. Landmark Michigan Avenue office buildings are converting to housing. Apartments and dormitories are proliferating in the South Loop, serving the expanding number of students at colleges and universities downtown. Yet Chicago officials remain reluctant to let mixed uses occur wherever the market suggests. “There’s a portion of the central area where we want to preserve a concentration of office and large-format retail,” says Jack Swenson, deputy commissioner of planning and development. Because the rail transit network delivers tens of thousands of commuters to the western portion of downtown, “the natural market for offices is in the West Loop,” says Doug Farr, principal of Farr Associates, a Chicago architecture and urban design firm with a new urbanist bent that has served as urban design consultant for the current zoning reform project. Farr says it makes sense to “make sure prime sites [within walking distance of downtown train stations] don’t get consumed by housing.” If much of the potential office area fills with residential condominiums, it would be hard to convert those properties to offices later, he says. A number of manufacturing districts are also being placed off limits to housing. Swenson says, “Competition between industrial and nonindustrial uses leads to the departure of industries and to the reluctance of other industries to locate there.”