The Critical Mass of Urbanism

More than 4,000 families can be housed in a mixture of high, medium and low-rise buildings located in a park. Beneath the park will be commercial service shopping, parking and light industry to provide jobs within an elevator ride from the apartments. Lagoons, a zoo, greenhouses will be installed in the open arms along the riverbank.

At the outset of our planning, we organized ad hoc citizens' committees to become a major component of the planning process. These committees for education, health, physical planning, transportation, community relations, security and finance became important activity groups. Northwestern University, through its education and medical care departments, was a major contributor to our planning. The committees told us what and for whom to plan.

The City Hall of Chicago dictated that the first phase of River City be designed as low-rise, from 8-15 floors containing duplex townhouses, apartments, and penthouses. This combination in the low-rise form will provide 1500 dwelling units along the River. There are two apartment structures, one facing the pier and one facing east toward the lake overlooking a private tenants' park built on the roof of the base building. These two apartment structures are connected by a continuous landscaped atrium which connects all the apartments like an internal street.

When completed from Harrison Street to Roosevelt Road, this mixed-use center will have at least one high-rise tower, a festival market, about 1 million square feet of shopping, theatres, parks, marinas, and jobs. It will also have a continuous riverfront walk for public access to a river, almost double its present width.

Our design for the high-rise living combines three buildings which we call a triad. They are connected with three bridges, each providing for a neighborhood center. The triad will contain about 3,000 families. This bridge to neighborhood contains school, library, health care, and the upper gymnasium level. The structure of the high-rise apartments is comprised of ten petal-like modules of living areas, containing kitchen, dining, living, and large outdoor porch.

Each floor then contains two bedrooms and two bathrooms--dressing rooms between each living module. This is primarily designed for the standard American family of two adults and two children; each floor like a city block contains 10 two-bedroom/two-bathroom houses.

But these high-rise buildings for the first time in the history of apartment buildings will be able to respond without alternation to the shifting household types that live in our cities. The two-bedroom apartments can be reorganized without remodeling, as any type from studio to four-bedroom.

Mixed-Use--The City Within the City:

Mixed-use is the essence of the future city within a city--it is vastly different from development of commercial real estate.

Mixed-use is not the confusion of people doing a lot of different things at random. It is living and working in an environment that clearly supports the actions of living and working separately and together. The environment is planned to promote living and working separately, and yet to bring them together clearly and to their advantage.

1. The residential tenants can provide a concerned, educated labor pool 2. The business tenants can provide new jobs for this labor pool 3. River City will include the first model of this relationship: the creation of a Business and Technology Center to create new jobs.

The architecture must support these concepts:

A. River City is a "smart building" for business: a building smart enough to anticipate a new role for business not yet completely understood. B. River City provides a "smart building" for residential tenancy.

Mixed-use is possible only in dense centers of living and working. The center of Chicago can provide a river for recreation, a business center for work, and a neighborhood for living that will bring people back to rejuvenate city life.

Our architecture can shape a denser city suited to our social changes and concerns. Our denser cities can support our jobs. A new urbanism can attract a balanced society which in turn can provide those human services we promise ourselves through cities.

Churchill said it best: "We shape our buildings and our buildings shape us."