Revamping and Reanimating Taylor Street (UIC Village) post-COVID

• Yuxin Chen
• Temi Fadairo
• Mingyu Huang
• Rodrigo Pena Davila

This project’s purpose is to reanimate Taylor Street by reanimating a section of Taylor Street (between Loomis Street and Ashland Avenue) into a shared street, with an aim to add new components (to overcome COVID) to already established guidelines by the city of Chicago for shared streets. The main obstacle addressed in the project was the COVID-19 virus, the designs and plans made were focused on changing the negative impact it had on the Taylor Street businesses due to the implemented restrictions to reduce the spread of the virus among the population.  The first major component of the design is installing a heated pavement and canopies along a shared street design to help Taylor Street businesses to overcome the negative impact of COVID-19. The project studied the existing drainage system was analyzed to accommodate the increased runoff due to the heated pavement system implementation on Taylor Street. For improved transportation and parking will be installed traffic signals that use the pedestrians’ first guidelines established by the city of Chicago, these signals consider vehicle speed limitations and implementation of bike lanes. In addition, canopies are being installed along the site to help businesses increase their revenue during winter and keep visitors safe at the same time. The project’s main goal is to increase pedestrian volume by creating a pedestrian-friendly and appealing environment, with this in mind, this project is installed a parking alternative along Taylor Street to accommodate the excess vehicles that are predicted due to an increment in the number of visitors to the new Taylor Street shared street design. Due to the challenges from the past year, our design’s purpose is to combine designs and technologies to help businesses overcome the obstacles presented by the pandemic.

See supporting documentation in the team’s Box drive.