The High Line brought down to Earth: Chicago’s Bloomingdale Trail

It’s been just a few months since Rahm Emanuel assumed the mayoralty in Chicago, and already pedestrians are beginning to feel the Mayor’s presence on city streets. Emanuel has given free reign to new CDOT commissioner Gabe Klein to introduce a series of measures in envisioning a more multimodal, accessible, and interactive city whose streets serve a variety of functions.

Klein has responded in a flurry of pedestrian-oriented activity, already implementing Chicago’s first protected bike lanes, floating the idea for Chicagoans to do the “Barnes Dance” via diagonal street crossings, and proposing to transform the city’s “underutilized” bus shelter screens into gigantic smart-apps that indicate wait time for bus service, current bike- and car-sharing inventory information, and the length of time it would take to walk to one’s final destination. Perhaps the biggest sign that Emanuel and Klein are pushing the city’s functional form forward is the recent news that design work on the long-proposed Bloomingdale Trail is moving ahead.

The dormant, elevated 2.65-mile railway line is often compared to New York’s successful High Line project, and while the two projects share similar characteristics (two fallow, elevated railroad lines being remediated and reapplied), the discussion over the design of the Bloomingdale Trail indicates a significantly different function. The High Line is showcased as a highly manicured park that prohibits dogs and bikes and exists as something of an open-air gallery piece. In contrast, the Bloomingdale Trail was included as part of Mayor Emanuel’s transportation initiatives. As Adolfo Hernandez of the Active Transportation Alliance puts it, “The High Line is a passive space. The Bloomingdale Trail is meant to be an active space that can connect neighborhoods via bike and walking transit.”

Based on function

Emanuel is aware of the economic benefit the High Line has brought to New York ‘s surrounding areas and no doubt hopes to see comparable rates of return in Chicago. Yet, unlike in New York, the success of the Chicago model is based more upon its functionality as a space that seamlessly integrates itself into the neighborhood fabric and activates some of the locked-up potential in the immediate vicinity. In essence, the Bloomingdale Trail may be a more organic answer to many of the criticisms lobbed against the High Line in the past, such as in Witold Rybczynski’s New York Times piece, “Bringing the High Line Back to Earth.” Recognizing that most cities don’t have New York’s density and built-in, already activated assets, Rybczynski questions whether other cities should be looking towards the High Line as a model for reclaiming and remediating vacant spaces.

Ben Helphand, President of the Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail, echoes Rybcyznski’s doubts. “The High Line is a wonderful open space. It’s just not something that can be replicated cookie-cutter across the world, just like Bilbao can’t or shouldn’t be replicated for every new museum,” Helphand states. “What we do have, and will continue to have, are remnants from our industrial past and, increasingly, our auto-indulgent heyday. These remnants of rail lines, canals, river edges, factories, land- fills, quarries, and too-wide streets can be reclaimed as new, active, often odd-shaped spaces.”

Rather than glossing its identity over with audacious design, the Bloomingdale Trail aims to reenergize itself as a space that provides “a mixture of fun, exercise and transportation.” Helphand continues, “I would not be surprised if you saw thousands using the Trail as part of their morning and evening commutes, connecting to existing bike routes to the Loop and the bike boulevard system on the west. It also has convenient connections to two CTA train stations, the Metra station at Clybourn, and several major bus routes. For students at the 12 schools within easy walking distance of the Trail, it’ll help provide safe and healthy routes to school.” The Bloomingdale Trail as envisioned is not a gallery; it’s a functional corridor.