When I was sick with a bad cough in December, I watched A Christmas Story for the first time, and I laughed so hard that I could barely catch a breath for two hours. The story is based in the Rust Belt city of Hammond, Indiana, a satellite city of Chicago that has fallen on very hard times since the movie was set circa late 1940s.
Yet downtown Hammond could be poised for a rebirth. We recently published an article by urban designer Jeff Speck. The design of the street transformation is a inspired by the super-successful redo of Lancaster Boulevard in Lancaster, California. In an email, Speck describes the project below:
The biggest news since my last outreach is probably the completion of our plan for Hammond, Indiana, which I did with my good friends at Stantec Urban Places. What used to be the second largest downtown in Indiana (and the inspiration for A Christmas Story) is now basically a highway with no viable retail. Great leadership has secured a new railway stop that will make it a convenient commute to the Chicago Loop, giving realistic hope for a...
Read the rest of this article at: Public Square: A CNU Journal