Chicago: A Field Guide to the Human’s Juxtaposition
A map is a proposition. A proposition of where to go in the city of Chicago. But what would I include as Chicago? What is, and isn’t Chicago? It’s so varied in nature. It would be great if I could guide everyone to the same experience.
Yet I can only share my experience of Chicago. When you walk, drive through, or however you explore Chicago, your takeaways and your experiences will be different. You could walk the same blocks at me at the same time and in the same order, and yet you couldn’t recreate my experience accurately.
Walking the city is an ordeal in of itself. Besides, by linearizing the path of travel, I’m restricting the city that is open to you. Yet I can’t guarantee safety if I lead the reader with no path to take. By showing my experiences, I am suggesting places to go in the city. But how you get there, and what you experience of the city, is within your reason and your walking distance.
What do I propose to you, the reader? Chicago’s scope in culture, activity, and geography such that it’s more than just a few adjectives of descriptions. The experience of Chicago is multi-faceted, both in its shining moments and notorieties.
The reality I create with this map is that Chicago, in its entirety, is juxtaposed by its own elements. There are places of splendor, yet there exists many forms of inequality and segregation. The streets in that regard are a catalyst of change. Change not in only how we move, but how we interact with our communities and build social connections.
“The street means life in the heady currents of the urban river in which everyone and everything can mingle. It is exactly this social mobility, this Jack of compartments and distinctions, that gives the street its danger and its magic, the danger and magic of water in which everything runs together” (Solnit 187).
By involving oneself in the streets of Chicago, you’re able to see the everyday life of the city unfold before your very eyes. There’s a neutrality in status on the street in the form of walking, everyone is available for interaction. This is reflected in the liveliness of some places.
One place where people come to explore and communicate frequently within the city is Millennium Park. People come from different parts of Chicago to enjoy the public space available to them. Lounging in the fields, walking around in the breeze of the trees, or feeling the cool touch of water in the air near the Crowne Fountain, and people gathering around the Bean.
There is also a lively community at night in the inner city. People can come to Chicago’s public spaces at night to enjoy the ambience and serenity of the night in safety. One of these places is Clarence F. Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park. The high fountain, commanding space and surrounding lights bring many to its soothing breeze, exchanging conversation and circulating around the fountain. I found Buckingham Fountain for the first time during one of my walks.
This is two parts of Chicago, both public spaces within the city. What I’m showing is the splendor of Chicago’s parks within the city. The open, foot-covered space of public parks within the city.
But what about the abandoned lots in West Garfield Park, filled with junked cars? Where streets are less filled with people, perhaps fearing their own safety? Where transportation is less pedestrian friendly, a society that is not built for streets, but rather anonymous and hidden transportation.
The reality is that each image was taken in Chicago. Yet each area is not equal in walkability. Transportation is more limited in Garfield Park, and less friendly to the pedestrian.
“We came to scorn walking, to fear it. Real Americans fold themselves into cars, where they feel safe and in control. For exercise, the better-off mimic walkers, bicyclists, hikers, an d farmers on stationary machines in health clubs” (Malchik, The End of Walking).
Instead of the open form of walking and open visibility, we’ve become ingrained to offer civil inattention throughout transport. Where we recognize other’s existences and move on, not exchanging greetings. Our form of transportation has become solitary and cut-off. We further this with our usage of rumors. Rumors are shortcuts in gaining information about places. So often people are told “don’t go there because it’s unsafe” among various other reasons.
I challenged this bias when walking out towards Chinatown. I realized that I had a hidden bias within me when thinking about anything in the “south” of Chicago. When in reality, there are communities present there that do care about one another, just like in the north side of Chicago. However, it’s often a side of Chicago that has been pushed further and further away for gentrification.
What I learned that although the South Loop isn’t far south of Chicago, it still gives some insight into what makes it “dangerous” as per rumors. The streets are more empty than in the north, leaving fewer eyewitnesses on the streets. Communities there are also gated off and isolated.
The reality is that these are the elements of Chicago beyond my control as a pedestrian. I can involve myself and try making connections, but the systemic issues: racism, segregation, poverty, and institutions, these I can’t solve on my own.
When you’re walking about Chicago keep these elements in mind, but also their inverses. What makes a community strong, or weak? What creates a healthy scene, and what creates a barren one?
The expanse in detail in each of these places serves to show that Chicago is a human-made juxtaposition. When you go out and discover Chicago, that is what you’ll see. The city laid out has all the elements that you want to see, and all the elements that you don’t want to. Chicago has it all. It can never be just one way.
And sometimes… you’ll see and experience things you never predicted. Whether that be meeting someone new, finding a new place, eating new and delicious food, or finding a mystery of the city.
For example, on one of my walks I encountered a lone whiskey bottle in an alley. It was unfinished, yet left there. I’ll always wonder who left it there, and why…
There is purpose in walking and exploring Chicago. In exploring and finding its juxtapositions, one will get to know the city better than taking an overview of the city. By being on the streets, you can immerse in the experience, ambience, and culture of the streets first-hand. You can see the city breathe with your own eyes.
By walking the streets of Chicago and writing these journals and articles, I’ve come to realize that and see the flow of the city. This flow has become more difficult to find over the years. “Over the past 80 years, walking simply as a way to get somewhere, let alone for pleasure, has become such an alien concept to Americans that small movements towards making neighbourhoods and communities more walkable are met with fierce, indignant resistance” (Malchik, The End of Walking). As we close off from walking, we are letting go of our sense of the city. We’re losing immersion and flow that takes place around us.
And we further ourselves from the reminders of the injustice and inequality around us. That is why Chicago is unique to explore. It is a living history lesson in its own juxtaposition.
Seam into the flow of the city, and notice what may or may not have always been there… Just like the cars and people that float by on Fullerton street near the CTA Train Station.
Even on Fullerton, this juxtaposition of the city is still present. The train station roars above, but what of what was lost as a cost to build the train station? How do the families displaced by the CTA’s construction there fare today?
Take in the views of Chicago with this in mind. How can we reconcile with this juxtaposition? Because the Loop and West Garfield Park are both parts of Chicago, they fall under the same categories. They have communities but are not viewed the same.
And because of this, rumors spread to totalize communities, and thus the people of Chicago remain segregated by their own beliefs… a juxtaposition of what the city’s splendor presents.
