Surprise. I lived outside of Salt Lake City for a year and a half.
I felt like I was committing a lie by omission, but after my wife supported my career by following me from journalism job to journalism job for over a decade, an opportunity of her own arose in 2023 and we couldn’t turn it down.
So BSL increased our freelancer budget and hired a full-time reporter to maintain eyes on the street, and I embarked on a 20-month journey of living in the nation’s third-largest metropolitan area until returning in June.
I viewed the temporary relocation as a chance to live a more urban lifestyle after advocating for urbanist policies, and I returned with some thoughts and observations that some may find helpful or somewhat interesting.
At a time when Salt Lake City is hemorrhaging families with school-aged children, I was particularly interested in what other cities that don’t have the same problem have to offer.
On balance, I think Chicago is a great and largely family-friendly city that has some overwhelming challenges. There are some things that Salt Lake City could emulate and others it should leave in the Midwest.
Density
This was one of the changes I was most excited about when embarking on this journey.
We moved into a three-flat house in Logan Square that had two legal units and one illegal garden (basement) unit. The house sat on a 3,125-square-foot (0.07 acres) lot, a standard size throughout Chicago.
This is still considered the typical type of home in many neighborhoods throughout the city. (Though previous rezoning means much of the zoning in Chicago only allows single-family homes by-right.)
Near my previous house in Salt Lake City’s Liberty Wells neighborhood, which is zoned R-1-5000 residential, the average density is around 16 homes per acre after accounting for the missing middle housing that’s hiding in plain sight (the “illegal” houses).
In Logan Square, the density of the three-flats alone was around 43 homes per acre. And that’s before accounting for the larger missing middle homes that fit right into the lower-scale housing stock in the neighborhood. All told, it’s safe to say the neighborhood, which is not one of the more dense in the Windy City, was around four to five times more dense than Liberty Wells.
What that meant is that there was more than one commercial district in the neighborhood. Bar owners, restaurateurs and entrepreneurs have ample opportunity to test the market for their business knowing there’s a built-in clientele around the corner.
Sidewalks were busier with people walking alone, walking dogs and pushing strollers. The latter two quickly gave me the impression that Chicago is a more dog-friendly city and has more kids than I realized.
Not all families flee Chicago
Having been raised in the Chicago suburbs by ancestors who were part of the White Flight from the city’s core, I was instilled with the impression that families just simply leave the city when kids arrive.
I was disabused of this notion very quickly.
Chicago is home to more children under 18 per capita than Salt Lake City. Its school enrollment is fairly stable, whereas Salt Lake City is seeing its enrollment plummet.
Most restaurants in Chicago are family-friendly. You don’t need to educate staff on what kids need when you arrive with them in tow like you do in Salt Lake. They are prepared knowing that toddlers need a high-chair, some snacks and some entertainment. They’re equipped to take quick orders and be patient if they sense that’s what’s needed.
Restaurants themselves aren’t hamstrung in the way they are in Salt Lake City by Utah’s asinine alcohol laws. Virtually every family-friendly restaurant in Chicago would be considered a 21+ bar in Salt Lake City, yet they are often teeming with young children.
There are parks everywhere and they are full of families. I found restaurants to be more accommodating toward people with kids than those in Salt Lake City. And overall, it was a pleasant place to raise a toddler and welcome a newborn aside from the very real problem of the perceived threat of crime.
The condition of Chicago Public Schools — as well as the space within programs like the Chicago Park District — makes it challenging to stay within the city.
But it doesn’t take long to see that families haven’t fled Chicago. Many neighborhoods are full of parents walking strollers to parks, restaurants and schools. Cafes are accommodating of people with young kids. The city overall has a much more kid-friendly nature than SLC.
Parks
One tradeoff for paying Chicago’s ultra-high property taxes — especially when compared with Salt Lake City’s ultra-low property taxes — is that Chicago’s system of parks is elite.
Most neighborhoods are served with multiple tot lots and a regional park is typically not far away.
Chicago’s high taxes also apparently pay for updated equipment suitable for multiple ages of kids. That’s in contrast to Salt Lake City’s outdated gear at parks that often seem set up for children in one specific age range.
Unlike in many of Salt Lake City parks, there’s no need to do a “needle sweep” before letting young kids run around.
That being said, the Chicago Park District seems overwhelmed with the demand for its programmed services, and parents often set calendar alerts to register for programs that fill up within milliseconds.
Crime
It’s actually a thing. At least in some areas.
This could be the most divisive thing in Chicago right now. I can say at the very least there is at least a perception of crime problem, while I experienced an actual violent crime problem.
My particular block may not be representative of the entire city, but in the time I lived in Chicago I averaged one significant violent crime per month on my block.
This wasn’t reading about crime in the news. It wasn’t in the broader neighborhood or general area. This was five of my neighbors getting pistol whipped or threatened with a gun on separate occasions. It was gunshots into a neighbor’s house twice. It was a house being lit on fire and a homicide down the street.
I have my suspicions as to what caused some of this. But paired with reading about at least a dozen armed robberies, car-jackings and sexual assaults within one block of my daughter’s daycare in what is considered one or the more bougie neighborhoods in the city, there are actual problems in Chicago, perceived or real.
Die-hard defenders of the city will point to per capita statistics that show the city was much more violent back in the day, and claim that anyone who brings up the issue is a suburban wimp. From my point of view, this issue is a very real problem.
It’s probably why four families on my block left while I was there, and why the remaining ones were looking at their options outside the neighborhood and city.
There are only one or two neighborhoods in Salt Lake City with the same problem, and they aren’t where the hipsters are flocking.
‘Urban villages’ and neighborhoods
Chicago is filled with them. The mixed-use nodes along bustling streets that act as the beating heart of each neighborhood’s culture.
These aren’t busy streets in the sense that Salt Lake City has busy streets. (Chicago wasn’t cursed the same way Salt Lake City was with trying to undo the harmful effects of mega-wide streets that carve through and divide neighborhoods throughout the city.)
Rather, they’re most often streets you can jet across relatively easily on foot, hopping from store to store, bar to bar, restaurant to restaurant.
Chicago’s neighborhood boundaries are rigid. Unlike in Salt Lake City, where everywhere seems to be Sugar House, there are firm delineators that distinguish one neighborhood from another.
Step across the street and you’re in a new neighborhood, and this is the accepted order.
This reality seems to establish a sense of place that gives residents something to take pride in. The business districts that help shepherd and grow their neighborhood’s urban villages add a touch of branding that helps to reinforce it all.
Cities are quilts stitched together from individual neighborhoods. To help reinforce this concept, I’m going to do a bit of research and build an Extremely Accurate Neighborhood Map of Salt Lake City that will be available online soon.
Each of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods seems to have its own urban village to anchor the sense of place.
This is in stark contrast to Salt Lake City, where everyone seems to want to be Sugar House or 9th & 9th. Only 9th & 9th seems to fill the need of urban village in the capital city. The rest wish they had what 9th & 9th has, or they have an inadequately zoned area pretending to fill the need.
If Salt Lake City created more urban villages through zoning changes, it would go a long way to creating a sense of pride and identity in more neighborhoods.
Traffic and transportation
Chicago has no SB195, and there are no real estate investors seeking to strip away the city’s ability to make its streets safer for children like there are in Salt Lake City.
That being said, it is by far much easier to commute around Salt Lake City via any method of transportation than Chicago.
Salt Lake City is not anywhere close to being on the scale of vehicle congestion as Chicago. They don’t compare. It’s not uncommon for a two-mile trip to take 30 minutes. That doesn’t exist in the Salt Lake Valley.
Chicago’s transit system is also on the precipice of a fiscal cliff, and the effects are already showing. It’s not uncommon to wait 20 minutes for a Blue Line train and have three trains in five minutes pull up to a station.
Also, speaking of families, good luck taking one or two kids and a stroller onto Chicago’s L system.
Final takeaways
I was shocked by how kid-friendly Chicago is, especially when compared to Salt Lake City.
There’s just so much more to do. So many more people expect and anticipate that adults will be with children, and they’re ready to accommodate everyone.
The quality of parks don’t compare (although maybe that’s why Chicagoans spend about $900/month on property taxes and Salt Lakers spend about $300/month).
On balance, Chicago actually seems more kid-friendly despite its challenges. It’s worth city leaders taking a trip to import some lessons and stop the outflow of children from SLC.
I loved reading about your stay in Chicago. I grew up there and miss everything you described about the city. The parks, the lake front, the neighborhood taverns, the clubs, the architecture, the museums – all amazing. While spend weekends hiking the Shoreline and canyons here in Utah, we spent weekends exploring neighborhoods in Chicago. Chicago is super “kid” friendly until your kid starts kindergarten. Unless you shell out for some of the elite private schools, most families don’t last long in public schools and migrate to the suburbs or out of state. Families with K-12 kids in Chicago likely cannot afford to leave the city unless they move 90 minutes away and then, of course, you are not living in Chicago. You are driving in to the city from a suburb now and then for the sports, the zoo, shopping, shows, etc. Having lived in the city in the late 80s, the crime you described does seem to have changed the urban dwelling experience a great deal. That is truly a shame.