Community Overview. Home Resident. Abundant with ravines and wild flowers, the City has enhanced the community's backdrop with a carefully planned approach for reforestation, public flower gardens and preservation of open space. Highland Park's neighborhoods are filled with the perfect mix of housing, ranging from historic colonials that date back to the mids, to award-winning contemporary homes and comfortable downtown condominiums.
The City is accessible to one of Chicago's major expressways, Interstate 94, with the Illinois Tollway just minutes away and O'Hare International Airport only 18 miles away. Chicago is also a major center for small manufacturing and business. There is probably no more diverse an economy in the country. Read More about Highland Park. Oak Park, where architect Frank Lloyd Wright started his original studio, is a museum of residential architecture.
It is an attractive, typically-Midwestern commuter enclave of square city blocks, stately homes with shaded streets, and a shopping area next to the rail station, which still functions as an important commuter terminal.
This story is repeated frequently; Riverside to the south is similar but with flowing curved streets and a park like setting designed by Frederick Law Olmstead of Central Park fame.
The city has an extraordinary sense of history and historic preservation. Many architectural styles, both commercial and residential, were invented and first used in Chicago, and the city goes out of its way to preserve them. The former Navy Pier on Lake Michigan has been restored into a popular entertainment complex.
The waterfront Soldier Field was recently remodeled at great expense rather than replaced by a larger stadium with modern amenities. In short: The city is a living museum and monument to American urban history.
Chicago is also a city of neighborhoods. North side, west side, south side—each provides a set of neighborhoods to suit any taste and mostly any budget. Along the lake and to the north are wealthier areas and the community of Evanston, home of Northwestern University.
Areas become more typically middle class but still with variety to the northwest, west, and southwest. Like many large cities, Chicago has its sprawl and growth issues, and suburbs have overtaken many older farm communities and towns like Elgin and Aurora, and there is little in the way of geography to restrain the push. Joliet is an older industrial and transportation hub on the southwest side. The rest of the area map is a patchwork quilt of suburbs, one after the other, defined by rectangular grid arteries sliced through by radii mainly along rail commuter routes emanating from the city.
The more popular suburbs typically lie towards the northwest. Some have pushed far out into old farmland, like Cary, Algonquin, Geneva and the more upscale Lake Zurich, while other quality neighborhoods lie closer in, like Elk Grove Village and Schaumberg.
Good neighborhoods also lie to the south and southwest side, although contrasts are stronger between the livable and more run down areas; Hinsdale and Orland Park are more upscale picks on the southwest side. In Chicago, location relative to major transportation routes is most important. Many endure hour-long commutes into the city and around its crowded beltways.
The city has an excellent urban and suburban transportation network with an assortment of rail and bus services; nonetheless, traffic along arteries and beltways can be intense.
Chicago offers numerous amenities. Museums, notably The Art Institute of Chicago, and the performing arts are top quality.
Sports are legendary—whether the teams win or lose—and Wrigley Field is another of those American urban icons. Few cities have more or better restaurants. Plus, the area has some of the best higher education in the country, and quality education is available at all levels in most neighborhoods. The lakeside location, facing into the teeth of the storm track, and continental climate from the northwest produce cold, snow, wind, storms, humid heat, and weather changes invigorating for some but intolerable for others.
Cost of living varies by neighborhood and lifestyle, but is accelerating after years as a relative bargain for a big city. The violent crime is still a problem in some neighborhoods. There are still some grubby, rundown areas that would make some people think twice.
Institutions such as the Gads Hill Summer Settlement House encampment, the Railroad Men's Home, and Wildwood, a resort for German-Jewish families excluded from suburban country clubs, attest to this diversity. The city experienced two growth spurts—in the s, when the population grew by 98 percent to 12,—and in the s, when it leapt 52 percent to 25, Careful planning has protected the area's appeal by promoting its village character and building on its strengths of private and public amenities.
The Ravinia Music Festival is one such legacy that began as a recreational park and cultural center established in by A. Each summer, tens of thousands of visitors enjoy classical and popular concerts in a wooded outdoor setting, including performances by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Ebner, Michael. Creating Chicago's North Shore.
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