No WaPo, The 606 is not a High Line copycat or a “simulation of vibrancy”

H/T to my old friend Chicago journalist and editor Martha Bayne from Belt Publishing for some of the talking points in this post.

Environmental gentrification, the phenomenon of new trails, parks, transit-oriented developments, and other eco-friendly amenities attracting wealthier people to blue-collar neighborhoods and communities of color, often raising housing costs and displacing longtime residents in the process, is a very real thing. And Chicago’s Bloomingdale Trail, aka The 606, is definitely a textbook example of that issue.

But Tuesday’s Washington Post column “How ‘landscape urbanism’ is making gentrification look like fun: The problems with the High Line and all its imitators,” by Michael Friedrich, is an awfully jaundiced look at the development of high-profile recreational paths and parks. This glass-half-empty article, written with next-level snark, brands these projects as heartless examples of “late-capitalist city planning” that are largely playgrounds for the privileged with few redeeming qualities for their communities.

That may be more true of such initiatives in other U.S. cities. But when it comes to the Bloomingdale, Friedrich paints with way too broad a brush, failing to acknowledge that while the trail has had negative impacts on housing affordability, it has also had many benefits for residents of all income levels and ethnicities as a place for healthy physical activity and an inclusive public space.

Friedrich also failed to do some basic research about the origins of The 606 and how people use it, comparing it to a museum where spontaneity is discouraged, while it’s actually a key hangout spot and transportation corridor. Let’s take a look at some of his more dubious statements.

This is a fundamental (if predictable) misreading of the genesis and use patterns of @The606Chicago and it is unreasonably pissing me off https://t.co/EKoGNS9opm — Martha Bayne (@marthabayne) November 19, 2019

First of all, Friedrich is dead wrong in describing the Bloomingdales an “imitator” of the famous linear park on the west side of Manhattan that “[aims] to duplicate the High Line’s stunning achievement.” If he’d done his homework, he’d have known that The 606 was conceived at least as early, possibly earlier, than its NYC counterpart. The idea for the conversion of the old Bloomindale rail line to a greenway was first documented in a 1997 update of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning’s regional trails plan. Meanwhile, Friends of the High Line didn’t begin lobbying for the conversion of the Chelsea rail corridor until two years later.

It’s true that the High Line, which became a cause célèbre with many wealthy and famous donors, opened in 2009, while raising political support and funds for The 606 was more challenging, and the ribbon wasn’t cut until 2015. But even a decade ago, it was clear that Bloomingdale backers weren’t trying to copy the NYC project.

“The High Line and the Bloomingdale are very different beasts” Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail board president Ben Helphand told me shortly after the opening of the former. He noted that while the High Line ran through some of New York’s wealthiest neighborhoods, The 606 would connect economically diverse communities, and it would be nearly twice as long at 2.7 miles. And although cycling is forbidden on the High Line, the Bloomingdale would allow it, making it a useful corridor for car-free transportation.

While Friedrich’s dismissal of The 606 as a High Line clone was lazy journalism, his description of the Chicago trail as a factor in accelerating gentrification and displacement is on point, although he got some of his facts wrong about that too. For example, he wrote that “On the west side of The 606, housing prices have increased 48 percent since construction began in 2015.” In reality, that figure from a 2016 DePaul University study is “since the trail opened” in 2015 (construction started in 2013), but you get the idea.

And Friedrich rightly noted that a 2017 DePaul report found that the area around the west half of the path in Humboldt Park and Logan Square communities was seeing some of the most intense displacement pressure in the city. Streetsblog Chicago reporter Lynda Lopez, who grew up in nearby Hermosa, has done in-depth coverage of these issues.

Friedrich also correctly pointed out that the developers of high-profile trails that repurpose old industrial infrastructure like to say their “landscape urbanist” projects “create value” in neighborhoods, but there’s a question of whether they’re intended to improve the lives of current residents, or if their main purpose is actually to attract wealthier newcomers. With the Bloomingdale, that’s a particularly complex issue.

Efforts to get the elevated path built gathered momentum as a grassroots movement by neighbors who noted that the area needed more green space and recreational opportunities, and founded of Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail in 2003. But progress was relatively slow until Rahm Emanuel took office as mayor in 2011 and promised to open the trail within his first term.

As gentrification picked up speed in Humboldt and Logan in the 2000s, some residents had concerns about how the trail would affect housing costs. When it was announced under Emanuel that the budget for the trail had expanded to $95 million to create a showpiece rather than a simple paved path, with much of the funding coming from corporate sponsorships and wealthy donors, that fueled speculation that Emanuel’s main motivation was to spur high-end development near the trail and increase property tax revenue for the city. (Illinois gubernatorial candidate and RFK son Christopher Kennedy later blasted such tactics as Emanuel’s “strategic gentrification plan.”)

In June 2013, the city of Chicago announced that the name of the facility was officially changing from the Bloomingdale Trail to the trendier, real estate developer-friendly appellation The 606, having told, not asked, the longtime path advocates at FOTB about the name change only hours earlier. To me, that marked the precise moment when the path changed from a grassroots community project to one driven by the mayor’s office, with ambiguous intentions. That’s why I prefer to use the old name.

In late 2015, as housing prices along the corridor were skyrocketing in the wake of the path opening, early Bloomingdale booster Lucy Gomez-Feliciano told the DePaul researchers, “It breaks my heart… People who can retire and sell, good for them. But what about those of us raising our kids here, who want to stay in the neighborhood?”