The Wicker Park and Bucktown neighborhoods in Chicago will update their master plan to keep pace with the north side Chicago growing wealth and popularity.
Wicker Park has been a gentrifying neighborhood for so long, Josh Hartnett made a movie named after it in 2004. In the decade plus that followed, the neighborhood's profile has only risen, "…with rents rising, development pressure increasing and a growing demand for multimodal links among the neighborhood’s many transportation assets," Jen Kinney writes in Next City.
To accommodate the development in the area, Wicker Park and Bucktown updated their 2009 master plan, making the neighborhood safer for its many active commutes and pedestrians. The plan includes new infrastructure like bump outs, additional cross walks, and protected bike lanes. According to Brent Norsman who chairs the WPB commission, "an increase in national chains like Toms Shoes has some residents worried about the future of local, independently owned shops, which are experiencing rising rents," Kinney reports. To fight the issue, the WPB plan includes a financing program for small retailers. Some fear that losing the small stores and music venues (like the Double Door, which recently closed) would kill the character that made the neighborhood so attractive in the first place.
FULL STORY: Neighborhood Updates Master Plan With Changing Chicago in Mind
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