Wicker Park Blather: Make no little plans 4, If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again

Land use

Their plans for land use were as subject to change as all the others.

In general, they believed that residential uses should be separated from any other. Industrial uses should be consolidated and separated from dwellings by a buffer zone.

Business use would be better served by the new shopping centers. Mixed uses (commercial with apts) were wasteful. They created low rent apartments and only fed what they felt was an over supply of commercial space.

The 1947 zoning map shows what was allowed at the start.

The ’42 Master plan shows what they wanted for residential uses.

Over all, they reduced the size of the residential buildings, but planned to make up for it by increasing the amount of land available, by reducing commercial and industrial uses and through more efficient distribution of the land.

But they wanted to lessen crowding and intended to build an area for a population density of about 30-35,000 people per sq mile (a reduction from our 1940 density of 43,000).

The ’48 comprehensive plan is more specific. It has defined the shopping areas, new parks, and buffer zones, but is has increased the land for industry at the cost of high density residential along Milwaukee.

In 1957 they completed drafting a new zoning ordinance and completely re-drew the map.

You can see some of their intentions. They preemptively downzoned the area for the park between Oakley and Leavitt. They removed most of the commercial property on Damen south of North, and pretty much matched the Comprehensive Plan’s industrial lay out with a little extra added in down by the Felt & Tarrant Adding Machine plant.

The notion of wide scale land clearance and redistribution had become less realistic after the Urban Community Conservation Act of 1953 and their plans gradually got smaller.

I apologize for my efforts on the current zoning map. Decades of spot zoning have left it looking like a painter’s drop cloth. There are so many, that I gave up East of Ashland.

Paul K. Dickman