Dear apartment and condo dwellers: Get off your balconies and step outside for a real sense of community
My dog Doris never liked joining me on the balcony of our former apartment in Chicago’s River North neighborhood.
The east view that extended beyond my apartment, onto high-rises and office buildings and culminating at Lake Michigan, never wooed my dog. She’d tip-toe a cautious step out, sniff around a bit, then quickly retreat to the safety of our living room.
So, when we shifted to a studio apartment, sans balcony, my 6-year-old rescue dog and I required an option for fresh air. Eventually, neither pet nor elderly companion mourned the loss because we found a more captivating alternative.
The plaza at the foot of our high-rise boasts fountains with waters that leap and relax, greenery with colorful plantings and improvised seating on the concrete surrounding the pastoral scene. As a bonus, at eye level, we can watch a lively street scene that shifts actors, props and scenery depending on the hour.
I think my preference for an outdoor plaza with a blend of people, rather than a singular balcony, is spurred by my 1940s Chicago childhood. Most nights, when weather cooperated, a mix of Jews, Poles and Italians dragged card chairs out of their small apartments to line the sidewalk outside our three-story brick building.
Watching over their wild children was the excuse, but that humble coliseum spurred sports talk among the men in their rolled-up sleeves and conversations between the women, some still wearing a kitchen apron.
That neighborhood camaraderie, which has remained in my memory all these years, has made me yearn for opportunities that bring people of disparate ages, ethnicities and histories together. In my mind, balconies separate rather than introduce people.
Plazas over balconies
Our new activity reminds me of what brought me back to college in 1977. I returned to earn a master's degree in urban planning at the University of Illinois Chicago. Back then, I was the oldest student in the class, even older than some of my professors. And surely the only student who had dropped off her preteen children to roam the cafeteria during class hours.
It was in those groups that I read “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” a classic by Jane Jacobs. Jacobs, who died in 2006 at 89, was an urban writer and activist who championed new, community-based approaches to planning.
According to the Project for Public Spaces in their Jan. 2, 2010 publication, "Jacobs advocated for 'mixed-use' urban development — the integration of different building types and uses … as well as people of different ages using areas at different times of day, to create community vitality."
I bonded with that book because at the time, I lived in a community I thought idyllic and wanted to learn how it could be replicated across the country. And I think it was those scenes in South Commons — a planned integrated community on Chicago’s Near South Side, where kids played and parents sat on stoops or congregated in a center courtyard, reminiscent of my Division Street days — that sparked my current passion for plaza over balcony.
Another favorite neighborhood of my 85 years was Dakin Street on Chicago’s Northwest Side. It had the same ingredients, albeit different resting places than South Commons or Division Street. It had porches.
A dream of mine was finally realized in my second marriage. An earlier dog and I would perch above the five wooden steps. I'd send greetings to neighbors passing by. The dog would bark at their leashed pets. Occasionally, a few dear friends would stop, sit and share updates on their families and lives.
Now, as I chat with Doris on our current high-rise’s outdoor resting place, friends on their way somewhere pause their trips and sit with us. The conversations are dissimilar from those of the weary parents of the 1940s, and lack the intimacy of close-knit neighborhoods of South Commons and Dakin Street, but they still provide real-life opportunities for engagement.
Elaine Soloway is a longtime Chicagoan and author of "The Division Street Princess."
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