Demographics and transit

-Living in Chicago Chinatown-
The experience of living in Chicago Chinatown is quite different from living in SF Chinatown.
Chicago Chinatown has more tall buildings while the ones in SF is under the restriction of
zoning laws. Moreover, Chicago Chinatown is more like a place that people go there for
restaurants instead of living, which there are less grocery stores and parks. The Chicago
Chinatown has a variety of food and most of the restaurants open until midnight. Therefore, we
could hang out and get snacks together at late night. I also noticed the population in Chicago
Chinatown are mainly young adults from northern China, whilst SF Chinatown has many seniors
from southern China. Such difference explains why the Chicago Chinatown is the only growing
Chinatown in the U.S. Our group met Chinese American Service League(CASL), which is a non
profit that provide various services to the Chinese community, such as childcare, job training,
retirement center and etc. Their services benefit a broad age group from infants to elderly,
which was very impressive to see how an organization expand their audience to the whole
community. It was amazing to see how organized CASL is, and their services are assisting
Chinese in different circumstances to gain a better living.

-Transit-
Traveling in Chicago, we used the train system for most of the time because it was the most
efficient way for us to reach to the places we visited. Also, we learned that public transportation
system is the most sufficient and dense in Chicago Downtown area. We had a meeting with
Chicago Department of Transportation and it was inspiring to see how they engaged with
different communities and educated people about pedestrian safety through hosting events in
their neighborhoods. During the meeting, we also participated in an activity for designing our
ideal streets. It was an interactive exercise to visualize the elements of a safe street such as
expanded sidewalks, traffic lights for bikes and bus-only lanes. I think it is a really engaging
activity that we can gather feedbacks and ideas from people about their vision of a complete
street.

- Kelly Ma