This is one of my favorite fun facts about our city. The other one, which I didn't realize until recently, is that our rivers are also separated from Lake Michigan by locks, we have a lower water level within the city. Between these two things, there's a significant height for boats to pass under bridges all throughout Chicago.
Chicago accomplished quite a number of engineering feats in its time. The big one was the reversing the flow of the Chicago river [1] through a system of canals and locks.
This is what I would expect to happen in Manhattan, for instance, as a response to sea level rise, rather than the dystopian abandonment you see in movies like A.I.
Not that you would necessarily raise skyscrapers, but that you would raise the street level, and change the street level entrance of the building. Smaller buildings could be raised though.
It's not an outrageous idea. More outrageous I think is the idea of abandonment. Maybe people think of sea level rise as happening overnight.
I was shocked when I found out Seattle's streets were raised, but not the buildings, which led to the Seattle Underground [1]. If you tour it, you can see the original first floor of buildings while you're under the roads.
Galveston is another well known instance of this. After much of the city was destroyed by a hurricane storm surge in 1900, it was raised quite significantly. There's a good read about it here:
Although in Chattanooga, I don't think any buildings there were raised. I think they just covered up their first floors. If you work in a building with an underground connector to another build, you'll still see old bricked up door frames to where the streets use to be and halves of windows on the floor.
Chicago has really done an impressive job making the Riverwalk accessible. You can also take one of the many river cruises that go back and forth if you're interested.
The riverwalk is great; they're expanding it more and more every year. I believe the intent is to extend it along the south branch of the river (currently it covers just the east branch to the lake) all the way to Ping Tom park (Chinatown).
On a related note for anyone who has walked around both Manhattan and downtown Chicago...
Ever notice how downtown Chicago has much less noise of honking cars than downtown New York City? A friend pointed out it's because of Chicago's lower-level streets[0] that a lot of service vehicles use for loading/unloading. That's in contrast to Manhattan where everybody has to share the same street level. E.g. a brown UPS truck that stops for a mere 20 seconds is enough for the yellow cab driver that's stuck behind him to smash on the horn with impatience.
Fun story: once, while using Apple Maps to navigate to a hotel in Chicago, it got confused and directed me on to Lower Wacker. It kept giving me directions as if I was on Upper Wacker. “Turn right here”, it said, as if there wasn’t a brick wall there.
GPS is great in two dimensions, less great in three dimensions.
> Go to Europe and enjoy your stroll through the public streets of cities that were designed for walking.
Go to Venice and get hopelessly lost. In a hailstorm.
I kid, but, one, that did happen to me, and, two, the Classic European City is pleasant to walk but unpleasant to navigate unless you're head-down over a GPS-enabled phone with turn-by-turn navigation, in contrast to, say, Chicago or Manhattan, where the streets are a grid and you can plot a course almost instantly upon hearing an address.
I used to wander around Chicago before I knew why the houses in some areas were below street level and just wondered, why would so many many build in a flood zone!
This happened later than the dates in Wikipedia for some of the outer neighborhoods of the time. A visible legacy today in those neighborhoods is vaulted sidewalks and entries, making houses appear shorter than they actually are.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 70.2 ms ] thread[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River#Reversing_the_fl...
Not that you would necessarily raise skyscrapers, but that you would raise the street level, and change the street level entrance of the building. Smaller buildings could be raised though.
It's not an outrageous idea. More outrageous I think is the idea of abandonment. Maybe people think of sea level rise as happening overnight.
I was shocked when I found out Seattle's streets were raised, but not the buildings, which led to the Seattle Underground [1]. If you tour it, you can see the original first floor of buildings while you're under the roads.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
https://texashillcountry.com/raising-galveston-storm-1900/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Chattanooga
Although in Chattanooga, I don't think any buildings there were raised. I think they just covered up their first floors. If you work in a building with an underground connector to another build, you'll still see old bricked up door frames to where the streets use to be and halves of windows on the floor.
http://www.bridgehousemuseum.org/
Chicago has really done an impressive job making the Riverwalk accessible. You can also take one of the many river cruises that go back and forth if you're interested.
Ever notice how downtown Chicago has much less noise of honking cars than downtown New York City? A friend pointed out it's because of Chicago's lower-level streets[0] that a lot of service vehicles use for loading/unloading. That's in contrast to Manhattan where everybody has to share the same street level. E.g. a brown UPS truck that stops for a mere 20 seconds is enough for the yellow cab driver that's stuck behind him to smash on the horn with impatience.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilevel_streets_in_Chicago
GPS is great in two dimensions, less great in three dimensions.
https://chicago.curbed.com/2018/9/7/17786634/waze-beacons-wa...
Go to Venice and get hopelessly lost. In a hailstorm.
I kid, but, one, that did happen to me, and, two, the Classic European City is pleasant to walk but unpleasant to navigate unless you're head-down over a GPS-enabled phone with turn-by-turn navigation, in contrast to, say, Chicago or Manhattan, where the streets are a grid and you can plot a course almost instantly upon hearing an address.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHN7OJuVgXA
I used to wander around Chicago before I knew why the houses in some areas were below street level and just wondered, why would so many many build in a flood zone!
It’s only six episodes, and quite fascinating.
plug for an article I wrote a few years ago about some houses with vaulted entryways: http://chicagopatterns.com/colorful-front-gabled-italianate-...