I actually started this post on the North Side development thread as a response to major projects in Austin and their effect on Oak Park. I decided the subject would actually be better as a thread of its own.

So how is a booming Chicago affecting the lands beyond its border?

I wonder how involved Oak Park is in Austin's redevelopment. It was sadly pressure from poverty and race that caused Oak Park to build cul-de-sacs on streets that ran onto Austin Boulevard. It also (on a higher note here) caused the village to steer blacks to the west end and whites to the east to maintain racial balance.

It would seem to me a reenvigorated Austin will spell huge dividends to Oak Park.

Another question for those who live in the area where the west side adjoins the west sububs (an area I know well, have family there, but don't have the familiarity that you folks do):

are the close in western suburbs (other than Oak Park, where I know the answer is "Yes") having the same surge in property value that the close in north suburbs (Evanston, Skokie, Lincolnwood) are experiencing due to proximity to Chicago?

The city boom has produced some unexpected effects. It has reinvigorated the inner ring of suburbs (particularly north) that might have gone into decline because being close to the city is an asset.

Interestingly it has had a similiar affect on the far North Side where neighborhoods north of Foster are not at all part of the "buzz" of city life, but offer proximity. So Sauganash builds town houses into the millions, Jeff Park sees major town house, single family, and condo construction, etc.

What effect does the city's growth and development have on close in suburban areas (or far north, west, and even south side neighborhoods)?

Do you see a time when low income families will be squeezed out of the likes of Evanston and Oak Park due to rising property values?

Eventually, Chicagoland and other US cities will turn into Paris.

That's right. Paris

The rich live in the city center, while the less-well off immigrants who service them (doormen, cab drivers, janitors, etc) will live in the suburbs.

Downtown Chicago is the most expensive (per square foot, that is). Rungs and rungs of land in the city eminating from downtown will become cheaper and cheaper, on outwards towards suburbia.

The only thing that throws my theory off? Americans value space a lot, and alot of high-paying jobs are in the suburbs. Until at least the latter changes, those predictions of mine won't come to fruition

Perfect thread for me to introduce this very awesome article about a new TOD taking place in Grayslake:


THE SUBURBS
New development aims to combat sprawl

By Trine Tsouderos
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 19, 2004

Ground was broken last week in Grayslake on a development hailed by an influential planning association as an antidote to suburban sprawl and traffic congestion.

Part of the Prairie Crossing subdivision, the first phase of Station Square will have three buildings containing condominiums, shops, a cafe and a market wrapped around a central courtyard across the street from two Metra stations.

The location near mass transit and the willingness to mix homes, shops and restaurants make Station Square unusual in the suburbs, said John Norquist, president of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a Chicago-based movement pushing for a return to more traditional community planning.

"Sprawl is very dissatisfying," said Norquist, who took a Metra train from Glenview to the groundbreaking ceremony. "This is the remedy."

Station Square will consist of 36 condos ranging from about 1,600 to 2,700 square feet, with prices from about $330,000 to $550,000.

On the first floors of two buildings will be 15,000 square feet of retail space, with a cafe, a market and shops.

Developers said they hope to have the buildings open within a year.

"This is probably the first or one of the first such transit-oriented development communities in the region to be developed new," said George Ranney, chairman of Prairie Holdings Corp., which developed Prairie Crossing.

How to develop the forests, fields and farms at the edges of suburbia remains a hot topic among conservationists, planners and architects, many of whom decry sprawl as a source of congestion, characterless communities and even obesity.

New Urbanists promote reviving the kind of planning and architecture that shaped cities such as Chicago, with its dense mix of homes, shops, sidewalks, parks and offices.

This kind of planning is basically dead in America's suburbs, New Urbanists said, replaced by a shift toward strip malls, office parks and subdivisions, all accessible only by car.

And it's codified in local zoning ordinances everywhere, Norquist said. In many suburbs, projects such as Station Square would be illegal, he said.

Station Square wouldn't have been permitted in Grayslake either, if major changes hadn't been made in local ordinances about two years ago, said Mayor Tim Perry, who said the village's goal at the time was to encourage development around the train stations.

"This is an example of a piece of government work that actually worked as intended," Perry said. "Imagine that."

Suburban residents are beginning to warm to possibilities considered outlandish years ago: condominiums downtown, garages backing up to alleys, and mixing shops, offices and housing in the same building, Norquist said. "It's starting to happen."

And developers are discovering that people will pay a premium to live in neighborhoods like Prairie Crossing as opposed to "traditional strip development," he said.

Prairie Crossing consists of 359 homes on about 700 acres. The subdivision, which has been around for about 10 years, also includes an organic farm, a community barn, trails, stables and a charter school with an emphasis on the environment.

The entire subdivision was developed with conservation in mind, said Ranney, also president of the civic group Chicago Metropolis 2020, which looks for answers to growth issues.

He said Station Square was designed with New Urbanist principles in mind, creating a walkable, pleasing place where residents can gather to shop and eat without having to jump in their cars.

And that, Norquist said, "is exactly what New Urbanism is about.... Hopefully, it will be a model copied by others."

Sorry for all the replies, but for people who are truly interested in how smart growth is occurring in some suburbs, here is an article. It's about Elburn, Illinois, which is going to receive an extension of Metra in 2005. It is a small town and wants to accommodate growth and have access to Metra without consuming too much land as in traditional sprawl. The article lays out the groundwork for future development near the Metra station:

http://www.growingsensibly.org/news/articleDetail.asp?objectID=1768

Eventually, Chicagoland and other US cities will turn into Paris.

That's right. Paris

The rich live in the city center, while the less-well off immigrants who service them (doormen, cab drivers, janitors, etc) will live in the suburbs.

Downtown Chicago is the most expensive (per square foot, that is). Rungs and rungs of land in the city eminating from downtown will become cheaper and cheaper, on outwards towards suburbia.

The only thing that throws my theory off? Americans value space a lot, and alot of high-paying jobs are in the suburbs. Until at least the latter changes, those predictions of mine won't come to fruition

actually i've thought NYC, Chgo, Bay Area have been heading in that direction for quite awhile.

I found this on the internet which supports what you guys are saying about the European type city. I don't know the source because it was on a personal website that I copied/pasted and obviously this article is from a newspaper but there were no credits. This article I believe came out shortly after the 2000 census. I have mixed feelings about the content/what is happenning of the article and I will post my opinion on this later tonite:


We know the future of Chicago, because it's happening now.

The U.S. Census Bureau released the findings of its 2000 census last week, and they portrayed a city on the move. From endless printouts of dry data emerged a dynamic portrait of a city responding to global forces, changing before our eyes, rewarding some of its citizens and punishing others.

The Loop is booming and so are the neighborhoods next to it, especially the Near South Side and Near West Side. Chicago has become a magnet for the wealthy, even as it remains a warehouse for the poor. The poor, by and large, are not as poor as they were, but the rich are a lot richer, and the gap is growing.

The era of Chicago's decline, the years of white flight and failing factories and spreading blight, is over. A new era--call it the Global Era--is upon us. And it's not going to stop.

Anyone who has driven around Chicago recently has seen all of this happening--the new loft culture on the fringes of the Loop, the gentrification of the Northwest Side, the squeezing and erosion of Cabrini-Green and other public housing complexes, the torpor of bypassed ghettos where indifference has replaced hope, or even anger.

The census figures have validated the evidence seen through windshields and provide a roadmap for the journey into the future. They also make it possible for us to say that there's something new under the sun, and Chicago is taking part in it.

This is the concept of the Global City, a theory propounded by University of Chicago sociologist Saskia Sassen in a number of books and widely accepted around the world as a blueprint for the cities of the Global Era.

Sassen says that the Global Era is replacing the Industrial Era, uprooting manufacturing and other economic activities from the great industrial cities like Chicago and spreading them across the globe. Global manufacturing and trade, powered by global communications, is going through a process of dispersal of work that used to be done in one place to hundreds of places around the Earth.

But this economic scattering creates the need for central corporate command and control. These far-flung empires have to be run by a central headquarters. Theoretically, modern communications would allow companies to put these headquarters almost anywhere that had a satellite dish on the roof.

But this isn't what's happening. It turns out that companies are putting their headquarters in the hearts of cities. This, Sassen says, is because they rely on many special services--lawyers, accountants, public relations people, advertising firms, consultants. These services, in turn, cluster in city centers to be near each other and to feed off each other.

Even in this day and age, proximity counts. People not only like to see each other, but they also find this constant personal contact necessary to do business fast, to strike complex deals, to keep up with the gossip and informal information on which so many decisions are based.

New York, London and Tokyo are Sassen's paradigm Global Cities.

But there's a second tier, she says. These include Hong Kong, Zurich, Milan, Sydney--and Chicago. These are the cities with the lawyers, bankers, accountants, traders and other professionals who make the global economy go. Sure, you can sit in Boulder, Colo., and watch the news on your television monitor. But if you want the latest information and the choicest gossip, you have to have lunch with the people who generate it.

In short, if you're out of the Loop, you're out of the loop.

A walk through the Loop is proof that this is exactly what's happening. But there's more to being a Global City than high-paid professionals and the restaurants that feed them.

In Global Cities, these professionals not only work in the central city but, increasingly, want to live there. The result is a flood of global citizens who choose to live within walking distance of the office. They are affluent, and so raise the demand for good shops and expensive restaurants. Most are busy and so demand a lot of services, from dry cleaning to dog walking. Many have children and insist on good education. As they arrive, they attract more people like themselves, and so a preference becomes a trend.

This is the reason behind Dearborn Park and the other developments south of the Loop, for the lofts and new housing west of the Loop, for the affluence of Lincoln Park, and for the rehabbing of whole neighborhoods, especially on the Northwest Side, like Lincoln Square and Ukrainian Village.

As this gentrification takes place, it closes in on the old public housing complexes, many built near the Loop. The Henry Horner Homes and Cabrini-Green still exist, but they're being cut back and knocked down. Someday, probably, they will vanish. But right now a tourist in the Global City can find great wealth and great poverty, virtually across the street from each other.

The census figures document all this.

Median household income on the Near West Side more than doubled between 1989 and 1999. On the Near South Side, it nearly quadrupled. Home values soared around Logan Square and in Lakeview. In West Town, home to trendy Wicker Park and Bucktown, gentrification shoved up median home values by 176 percent, to $271,194.

But the rising tide lifted more yachts than rowboats. In one neighborhood within the Near West Side, the median family income is $97,940, highest in the city apart from some Lincoln Park enclaves. Right next door are neighborhoods where the median income is $6,267 and the poverty rate is 56 percent.

In other inner city neighborhoods, progress has yet to arrive. Perhaps, for the people who live there, that's the best they can expect.

Median family income in North Lawndale and Englewood is between $18,000 and $19,000, slightly up on the figures from the last census. In Washington Park, this income went up 33 percent, but only to $15,000. In Oakland, income more than doubled but from such a low figure that it still is only $10,739, by far the lowest in the city. Poverty rates vary from 1.8 percent in some parts of Lincoln Park to 92 percent in areas of Grand Boulevard.

Think of it: whole neighborhoods where only one family in 10 lives above the poverty line.

Will this change? Sure. It's changing already. But whether it changes for the better depends on who you are and where you live.

The latest census figures are a snapshot of a moving target, not a still life. They capture a city on a journey, not its destination, and the trends they reveal have marched on since the census takers called.

The attacks on 9/11, to the surprise of most analysts, have had almost no impact on the global economy. This economy will keep growing and so will the Global Cities, expanding from their downtown cores, moving out, embracing more territory and more people, defining the lives of cities as surely as industry did in an earlier era.

This means the reshaping of Chicago will continue apace. Affluence, already anchored on the fringes of the Loop, will spread outward, moving westward toward Douglas Park and south along the once-elegant boulevards toward Oakland. Gentrification will embrace most of the Northwest Side, spreading outward along the roads and rail lines to O'Hare.

As these areas fill, the pressure will grow on other neighborhoods. Many, long stagnant, are blessed by location, like proximity to Lake Michigan or beautiful parks. Pockets of recovery are already appearing around Garfield Park and in Uptown. Hyde Park, long an island of academic affluence surrounded by miles of blight, has turned the corner and is spreading out into Woodlawn and North Kenwood. Oakland, the city's poorest neighborhood, lies in the path of the march south from the Loop and the march north from Hyde Park: Located next to the lake, its statistics may look dramatically different when the 2010 census takes place.

The reshaping of Chicago has missed some neighborhoods--North Lawndale, Englewood, New City--and may ignore them in the future. They remain as poor and their inhabitants as hopeless as they were 10 years ago. It's doubtful that the spread of the Global City will make the jump across Douglas Park to rescue North Lawndale any time soon, or spread southwest into the forgotten streets of Englewood.

This spread of the Global City will have a major impact on one of Chicago's biggest problems--its schools. The global citizens in their near-Loop lofts can buy private schooling, but the middle-class families who are regentrifying the rest of the city can't afford the Latin School. They will demand better public schools and they will get them: This--the need to save Chicago by bringing back the middle class, black and white--is the reason why Mayor Richard M. Daley has put schools at the top of his agenda.

All this is indisputably better than the city's decline under Daley's father. But what's good for Chicago's poorer neighborhoods is not necessarily good for the people who live in them now.

Those pockets of poverty on the Near West Side will certainly disappear by the next census, as the remaining public housing complexes there are squeezed out. As neighborhoods like Oakland and Woodlawn are reclaimed, those who live there will be priced out and will leave: Developers promise this won't happen, that the neighborhoods will become "mixed-income," but history says this is a forlorn hope.

Where will they go, these poverty-level Chicagoans, mostly black, once invisible in the ghettos but now inconvenient to the Global City? Probably farther out, into the fringe suburbs, beyond the reach of the global economy. This is the European pattern--affluent cities girded by halos of poverty--and it is happening here now.

This, then, is the future, as viewed through the columns of census statistics--good for Chicago, good for many of its residents, bad for others. Chicago will be richer and so will many of its citizens. The central city will bloom. But inequality will grow and so will the poverty of many Chicagoans, exiled to the shantytowns on the edge of the Global City.

^Interesting article, Pip!

For the most part, whoever wrote this, is pretty dead on. What he/she is saying is pretty accurate and likely is describing what is unfolding/going to unfold in Chicago and other major cities. Whether it is a good change or not is a completely different matter.

Chicago's current process of converting public housing into mixed-income housing is a sign that neighborhoods are revitalizing. But, in my mind, the poor are still being pushed out. Think about it--a community that is 100% poor being turned into one that is 30% poor. It's still a demographic change, and the poor will still inevitably have to get pushed out. Besides, if you look at the stringent requirements for public housing tenants in these new complexes, it is likely that very few former tenants will qualify

Ahh, a topic that im very well versed on, since i live in the near west suburbs!

OAK PARK
Oak Park has never been involved much in Austin. Considering the town's wealth, it has always tried to distance itself from Austin. That is changing, however. One of the areas that just would suprise anyone who didnt know better is the stretch of Austin Blvd, from I-290 to the north to Roosevelt Rd to the south. This stretch of Austin is very stable. Both sides of the street are racially diverse. The commercial intersection of Roosevelt Rd and Austin Blvd is full of pedestrians, both black and white. The whites predominantly are from the west side of Austin Blvd ofcourse, but that is not nessasarily the case. The Blvd is graced by beaitiful 4 to 5 floor apartments, and increasingly it seems more whites are moving in, who want to live by Oak Park, but cant afford Oak Park rents. The east half of Oak Park is pushing further east, as Oak Park is increasingly becoming a destination for young upper end families. This eastward push is increasingly affecting Austin for the better. The Area around Columbus Park is definatly getting much better. My parish (Assumption Greek Orthodox Church) is located on 601 S Central Ave, and having gone to it for most of my life, i have seen the neighborhood transform from an utter hellhole in the late 80's/early 90's to a much more stable neighborhood today. Austin still has a hell of a way to go however, but its future seems a lot brighter than it did 10 or even 5 years ago.

WEST OF OAK PARK
Oak Park really is an isolated entity, cut off by I-290 to the south, Austin to the east, and the heavily congested North Ave to the north and Harlem to the west. River Forest to the west of OP is the only real suburban community that feeds off of, and supports OP. However, Forest Park to the south of River Forest has been feeding off of the real estate price spikes both OP and River Forest have experienced, and is becoming gentrified (richer whites displacing poorer whites, essentially...). Elmwood Park and River Grove to the northwest and Chicago city limits directly north are middle/upper class neighborhoods and also support OP as a commercial and entertainment center. West of all that is the Desplaines River, which acts as a barrier... and in this case, a benificial barrier for these communities. It seperates them from the "O'hare Slums' as the suburbanites lovingly call the area. Melrose Park, Bellwood, Maywood, and northern Broadview are low income African American/Hispanic areas. One only needs to cross the Des Plaines River heading west to witness an immediate transformation. Those areas wont be getting better anytime soon either... displaced residents from torn down projects in the city seem to find this area a favorable destination to relocate... that as well as the very cheap land out in the exurbs... look at Bolingbrook as a prime example.

BERWYN
People from the north side or even Garfield Park in Chicago tell me that Berwyn is a shithole, or generally a gang infested area. They must be on drugs. Berwyn is the best damn city in the state, behind Chicago :D

Berwyn is a gorgeous middle class prewar burb of Chicago that is currently in a real estate explosion. Property values and taxes have been rising exponentially over the last 5 years, feeding off the real estate boom directly north in Oak Park. Modest homes just east of Harlem Ave that would go for only $200,000 or $300,000 are now selling for over $500,000. Many grand Victorian homes in the city are going for just under a million. A lot of condo construction is going on in the dense areas of town (Berwyn lacks a traditional downtown.... it has commercial strips leading out of Chicago as well as the Metra tracks). Several condominium buildings have been built in Berwyn's historic Depot District, along the BurlingtonNorthern/Santa Fe Metra tracks, along Oak Park Ave. Several of them are in the 5 to 6 stories range... which should tell you immediatly the magnitude of the boom in Berwyn. Infill is being constructed along 22nd St, 26th Street, and 31st street. A massive pedestrain oriented shopping and entertainment area is being planned for the intersection of 22nd St and Oak Park Avenue. They are also saving a historic structure in this project, a historic Neo Classical 2 story commercial structure from the 1930s, the Berwyn National Bank Building. Another such historic BNB building exists in the Depot District... it is 6 stories tall.

Berwyn's "ghetto" is northern Berwyn, which is economically worse off than the rest of the city. The area has good schools however, and is gentrifying. Not by whites, but upper class Hispanics, which are replacing the poorer Hispanics and African Americans from the area. Oak Park's southward gentrification and Central Berwyn's northward push is causing a pincer effect in north Berwyn, that is proving to transform the area into a diverse middle class area.

CICERO
Why isnt this gem annexed into Chicago already? Unlike Berwyn, Cicero does have many woes. Cicero does indeed have a gang problem (which is almost non existant in Berwyn, as the local police force is ever vigelant and high taxes keep out lower class residents that abound east of Lombard Ave). However, this is all changing. 22nd street is argueably the heart of Cicero. Over the past 5 years, the entire stretch has just utterly transformed. Vacant storefronts are now packed with Mexican restaurants, specialty stores, grocers, deli's, convenient stores, chain stores, etc. The street's urban fabric has survived the wrecking ball and boasts many prewar strctures, ranging from art deco to beaux arts. There is an almost continuous 3 to 4 story streetwall that runs well into Berwyn as well. The old Olympic Theater, an old 1930s moviehouse has been saved and converted into a modern theater, the Concordia, which showcases Hispanic plays. Plans to run the Ogden Ave Streetcar Line along the parking spots located between the road and the sidewalk promises to transform the strip to an even more viable commercial center.

The dense housing stock is well preserved and very well maintained. New residential construction is rare, but it is not needed. You can go for blocks without seeing a structure built after 1945. Two to three story Chicago-style rowhouses dominate the residential streets.

Cicero is still very diverse. Whites and Hispanics live intermixed throughout most of west and south Cicero, while there is a significant African American enclave in the northwestern part of town... however, its Hispanic dominance is definatly noticeable. The city is run very well, despite the recent imprisonmemt of former mayor Betty Loren-Maltese. While the eastern part of town may not be in top shape, and the school system is in disarray, the city for the most part is very stable, with many families. The recent economic revitalization is only helping in stabalizing the town. If you need proof of this, visit Pierre's bakery, on 22nd St by Ridgeland. The bakery on any day is packed with a diverse crowd who pay up to 40 to 60 dollars for cakes and pastries that range from ethnic delicacies to ordinary birthday cakes.



CHICAGO! ANNEX YOUR FORGOTTEN NEIGHBORHOODS EAST OF HARLEM AVE! :)

thanks, Rivernorth, great response.

Do you see Oak Park's relationship with Austin Blvd very much like Evanston's with Howard St?

Oak Park's relationship with River Forest, as you mention, is long standing and close. To a degree, it's kind of like an Evanston-Wilmette relationship but even stronger since Oak Park and River Forest are, as you said, issolated from similiar areas and because they both go to OPRF High. That said, since downtown Oak Park is located and includes parts of OP/RF/FP, what effect has growth in downtown OP affected Forest Pk?

How tough is the situation at the Proviso's, particularly Proviso East?

You talk about all the good things in Berwyn. Do you find that Oak Park south of the Eisenhower is really a lot like Berwyn? I've always been under the impression that dear old Oak Parkers (is that term still used?) view the areas south of the expresway vastly different from north...true or not?

with all the growth in downtown Oak Park, great new library, etc., do you see the area developing into something more massive like downtown Evanston or does NU, the lakefront, and the adjacent North Shore have more of an effect of spiking Evanston's growth than anything comparable in Oak Park?

Well, since im a west-sider, i have not witnessed the relationship between Evanston and the northern end of Rogers Park. However, i know enough about it to agree that it is very similair. Id say that Austin Blvd was once much more of a boundary than it is today. It is definatly warming up, and thus having become more like Howard St in that people will cross the street with less fear on what is on the other side. Ofcourse, both have long ways to go, but progress is occuring. Howard St will probably recover quicker than Austin Blvd, since Evanton is heavily investing along the Howard streach with new projects, and as Rogers Park begins to gentrify, even in the Jungle. Austin will not see gentrification for many many years, if ever really. Hopefully what will become of Austin is a stable middle class African American neighborhood, which is what is slowly begining to happen. Then all we need to do is forget about racial boundaries, but you know how good we Americans are at that...

Downtown Oak Park's growth has definatly been very benificial to River Forest. Downtown Oak Park infact is basically right by River Forest. The two downtowns revolve around the intersection of Harlem and Lake there. The green line is closeby, and you have shops and entertainment venues on both sides of Harlem. Harlem does a lot of harm, however. It is far too congested, and full of truck traffic as well, which creates a very noisy and very dirty distraction, as well as an impediment to pedestrian activity between the two downtowns. people fly on that damn road, and its a bitch to cross it. truck traffic definatly needs to be detoured around the downtown area, but that isnt gonna happen, im sure.

Forest Park has a slice of the downtown area between River Forest and Oak Park, but its more auto-oriented than the rest of the downtown, with upscale stores that have parking lots and strip malls along Harlem. Forest Park's portion of the downtown area is growing, but not in the fashion that River Forest and Oak Park have planned it out. Its still very pedestrian friendly, and definatly adds to the area.

The Proviso's are pretty bad indeed, but then again they are in bad areas. Proviso East is in Maywood and Proviso West is in Hillside. I think you might have been refering to Morton East and Morton West, which are the schools in Berwyn and Cicero, but to be safe ill discuss all four.
Proviso East is probably the worst school out of the four. Bad attendance record, bad academics, bad in general. there are metal detectors and security guards patrol the school. Proviso West is much better than East, but still pretty bad. Both schools have financial issues, and definatly a lot of student problems. They are both pretty hellish schools to go to. The Mortons fair better than the Proviso's. Morton East is in Cicero, and it too is a pretty bad school. Its comparable to Proviso East in that it has a lot of gang related problems, low attendance, bad academics, etc. The school has made strides recently, and they are trying to force gangs out, but im not sure how well it is going overall. Morton West is the most stable of the four schools. It is actually a damn decent school to go to actually. It does have some problems, but almost no gang problems at all. You still need to wear an ID on you around your neck at all times, as in the four other schools, but it does not suffer any of the severe problems the other 3 schools are in.

South Oak Park, that is, the area south of 290, is indeed different from the rest of Oak Park. It suffers the same problem as North Berwyn, in that is is more economically depressed than northern Oak Park. I wouldnt compare it to Central or Southern Berwyn, which is more comparable to River Forest or Oak Park, actually. The area south of 290 isnt all that bad in reality (same with northern Berwyn), but people from Oak Park pretty much consider everything around them 'ghetto' anyhow. The area is changing as it is however, with Berwyn and Oak Park pushing in from both sides. I sense that there will be more cooperation and a better relationship between OP and Berwyn as this happens.

The downtown area definatly is expanding, and it is a destination for much of the Near West suburbs. I dont see it developing into anything like Evanston however. NU does have an effect, but dont forget there are many small colleges in the area that definatly add to downtown OP/RF/FP, such as Concordia University, Dominican University, and the Loyola University Medical Center. The Lakefront and the wealth of the North Shore, as well as the lake, however, really do give Evanston a big boost. Oak Park still has wealthy patrons, historic architecture, especially tourism from works of Frank Lloyd Wright, and many colleges nearby, but Evanston has all those to a larger scale (well, id say Oak Park wins in architecture, however). Lake Street is still an amazing streach of architecture and entertainment, and the entire area will only grow as it continues to serve as the mini downtown for the near west suburbs. It might get competition soon however from a revitalized 22nd Street in Berwyn/Cicero :)

thanks for a great response, Rivernorth. I actually did mean Proviso East. I remember when I was in high school (way back in the 60's) at Evanston, we used to play Proviso E (and Oak Park and Morton E as well in the old Suburban League....a spread out conference that also included Niles E, New Trier, Highld Pk, and Waukegan....Waukegan to Cicero for football games: can you believe it?).

My uncle used to have a furniture store in downtown Oak Pak, long before the mall (Marion, south of Lake)....living in Evanston and spending time in Oak Park, I was always amazed at the similiarites...classic old victorians, real downtowns (with identifical Field's), similiar character.

and I do think that OP's relationship with RF is much like Evanston's with the rest of the North Shore (although OP's is much more limited). Oak Park still has a helluva a lot of charcter even today.

Did you ever think, given the choice, Oak Park and River Forest would yank themselves up and plop down next to Hinsdale, Oak Brook, or some other DuPage community?