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I wouldn't say Daley senior is the only reason why Chicago is what it is today, but it certainly is a big reason. I would say in the early days Chicago was still competing with St. Louis until the begining of the 10th century for the trade and commerce of middle America. Detroit I think was growing faster than Chicago from about the 20-50s. Detroit even had a stock exchange until the 70s believe it or not. Chicago became what it is today, because of a few CRUCIAL events and historic points, right people in the right places at the right time. Not because of anything intrinsic.
Yeah but Chicago has almost always been the "big city" of the Great Lakes/Midwest region. It's called the "Second City" for a reason. For a LONG time, it was second only to New York in population. In recent times it has been surpassed by Los Angeles but it still retains its importance in the region.
The key to Chicago's success and endurance through the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s is its diverse economy. As I said before, we have historically had two major industries - finance and manufacturing. When the manufacturing jobs went away about 20-30 years ago, that was OK because we still had the Stock Exchange, and all of the big banks, etc. Detroit didn't have that. They had the auto industry, and when the Big 3 started doing bad, it hurt the entire city. Detroit's entire existence almost completely relied on how three companies - General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler - performed from year to year. Chicago never relied on such few companies or resources to support its economy, there's just too much going on here for one industry to have such a huge impact.
And as for St. Louis, well they've almost always have been smaller than Chicago, at least for the past century or so. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what their industries historically were, I guess manufacturing/shipping (since they're on a river), but I'm not really sure.
Detroit is the only city in the region that ever truly rivaled Chicago and they began a steady decline when the American auto industry went through a decline in the 1970s. They're making a comeback but it will be a LONG time before they become like what Chicago is now, let alone what Chicago will be decades from now.
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Originally Posted by southwest1230
now, the modern day robber barron sups his cappocino in Lincoln Park, feeling a profound sense of satisfaction, while the next poor neighborhood gets displaced/ replaced, and the cycle of the "two cities of Chicago" continues. That is what the city is dealing with right now. Simply put, a city of gentrified upscale neighborhoods can't support a city of 3 million people with basic city services anymore. Without industry and the working class, you have a load that is too much to carry. Lets hope things work themselves out, beginning with the huge CTA layoffs starting next week, and proceeding to the 15% beer surcharge tax under discussion,
and the 11% retail tax.
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Originally Posted by PAKennedy
I disagree, but only in terms of what are known as economically "inferior services" (which, sadly for us less-than-rich folks, includes the CTA). In a city run on the money of the wealthy, funding for services for the bourgeoisie class are difficult to allocate. You're right that it can't support a balance of classes, but this is all evidence that Chicago is facing a shift in the faces of its citizens. Sadly, it is one that, right now, looks like it will run the average people out of town, which is a shame. CTA will survive, but will only shake its financial troubles when it can market its services to a wealthier crowd. Safer, cleaner, brighter, more modernized L stops need to be a focus if they'd like the average income of the ridership to increase, but that will probably also make ticket prices increase, coming in a full circle to exclude the commoner.
If it makes either of you feel any better, I really, truly feel like Chicago is simply too big to completely gentrify.
A major reason why cities like Washington, D.C. and San Francisco have experienced the kind of gentrification and dramatic increases in real estate prices that they have is because in both cities, land is limited. In both cities, you have a relatively large elite or upper-income population wanting to relocate back to the city, but in both cities "the city" encompasses such a limited area, that real estate prices are bound to skyrocket. It's basic supply and demand. The demand is high but the supply is low. San Francisco covers 49 square miles, D.C. covers 61 sq. mi. San Francisco has 744,000 people, D.C. has 581,000 people. The city of Chicago covers 227 sq. miles with 2.9 million people. With 227 square miles, we would need another mass migration of people (and maybe we will get one in the form of Latin American migrants, who knows) to crowd the city enough to the point to where real estate in the city limits becomes anywhere near as valuable here as it is in places like D.C. and San Fran.
Plus both cities have unique, special factors and circumstances that drive the price of real estate up - in D.C. you have a strict height limit on all downtown buildings (I think it's 280 feet, I'm not sure, but I do know that it's pretty low, no building in downtown D.C. is more than 10-12 stories). This severly limits how much office space can be created downtown, thereby pushing developers to create office space in other parts of the city where there are no height restrictions. In any case, this artificial deficit in office space affects the supply side of the market tremendously for real estate developers and owners, and drives the prices up sky high on the demand side of the market.
In San Francisco (as in much of California) the environmentalists have gone wild and run amuk, and in San Fran especially they try to preserve every little piece of land that they can. The more land that's zoned for park use or at least declared unlawful to develop for commerical use, the less land that in fact can be used for the private sector, in the form of residential developments, commercial developments, industrial developments, whatever. In a city that already has extremely limited space for residents, the environmental nuts have limited the supply of developable land even further, once again artifically creating a deficit and also creating a very real increase in real estate prices.
But in any case, for the foreseeable future, there will be certain parts of the city (the Loop, the North Side, and parts of the Near South and West Sides) which will experience increasing property values, while large swaths of the city (mostly on the South and West Sides) will experience either stagnation or decline in terms of property values. We simply have too much space for full-scale, city-wide gentrification to occur.
In layman's terms: we have PLENTY of space for poor people to live. So they're not going anywhere, doesn't matter if Daley tears down every housing project in the city (and from the looks of it, he will). Not all poor people live in the projects. As a matter of fact, most don't. They live in dirt cheap apartments, barely making enough money to disqualify them for public housing or even Section 8, but still not making anywhere near enough for them to live a truly middle class lifestyle.
Even in New York there is not full-scale, city-wide gentrification like what you all were talking about. Almost all of the gentrification in New York is taking place in Manhattan, with pockets of it occuring in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. But much of New York is still working class and even downright poor in some spots, so New York will not be experiencing this complete exodus of the working class anytime soon. If New York is not experiencing it, you can bet that Chicago won't be either. It's a lot more likely to happen in New York than it is in Chicago.
One last thing..how do you think the greater north side would react if there was an rush of sec. 8 voucher seekers with vouchers to get into Lincoln Park, Lakeview, and environs?
Why would they move there? Or how could they? Lakeview, they probably could if they wanted. But they don't want to.
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Sweeping the sec.8'ers under the rug in the south suburbs and manginal city neighborhoods does no one any good, and just plain isn't fair to the good working folks of ALL persuations who pay the ultimate penalty of having to deal with the situation more than anyone. Thats truly the saddest part of all....I live this and see this everyday...
Section 8 tenants don't have to move to the south suburbs. They choose to move there. Section 8 tenants can basically live wherever they want (besides expensive neighborhoods like Lincoln Park). There were even studies that showed, that in Chicago itself, many people who have section 8 voluntarily stay in really bad neighborhoods, even though they know they can move to nicer ones. Why? Because what is "bad" to most people here on city-data and "sweeping under the rug", is "home" to some people.
The thing is, the problems have to go somewhere. Every extra problem in a suburb is one less problem, if not many less problems in the city (because of exponential problems with more densely concentrated poverty).
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Originally Posted by AQUEMINI331
They live in dirt cheap apartments, barely making enough money to disqualify them for public housing or even Section 8, but still not making anywhere near enough for them to live a truly middle class lifestyle.
They qualify for Section 8 and public housing. It's just that the wait lists go back like... 10 years. And are closed.
AQUEMINI331 you make it sound like environmentalists in San Francisco tear down buildings and build parks against peoples will! How insane of them to actually want to preserve green space, when they could have more money instead living in more dreary, polluted, crowded conditions. Even if they got rid off all of their parks, it would just mean more people and jobs would be in the city, but land would be just as if not more expensive (Manhattanization). Or maybe it would be less expensive because nobody would want to live in a ****hole like that. What is up with the inferiority complex in the Chicago forum? Everyone seems to love to bash San Francisco. Anyway, SF has plenty of areas full of poor people as well.
Why would they move there? Or how could they? Lakeview, they probably could if they wanted. But they don't want to.
Section 8 tenants don't have to move to the south suburbs. They choose to move there. Section 8 tenants can basically live wherever they want (besides expensive neighborhoods like Lincoln Park). There were even studies that showed, that in Chicago itself, many people who have section 8 voluntarily stay in really bad neighborhoods, even though they know they can move to nicer ones. Why? Because what is "bad" to most people here on city-data and "sweeping under the rug", is "home" to some people.
The thing is, the problems have to go somewhere. Every extra problem in a suburb is one less problem, if not many less problems in the city (because of exponential problems with more densely concentrated poverty).
They qualify for Section 8 and public housing. It's just that the wait lists go back like... 10 years. And are closed.
AQUEMINI331 you make it sound like environmentalists in San Francisco tear down buildings and build parks against peoples will! How insane of them to actually want to preserve green space, when they could have more money instead living in more dreary, polluted, crowded conditions. Even if they got rid off all of their parks, it would just mean more people and jobs would be in the city, but land would be just as if not more expensive (Manhattanization). Or maybe it would be less expensive because nobody would want to live in a ****hole like that. What is up with the inferiority complex in the Chicago forum? Everyone seems to love to bash San Francisco. Anyway, SF has plenty of areas full of poor people as well.
There's already plenty of green space just outside of San Francisco, to the south of the city. And all around northern California. It's just that a housing crisis in a city is an economic problem, and from an economic standpoint, the economic solution would be to control either the supply side of the market or the demand side, and since you can't really control the demand side, well.............control the supply side. How do you do that? Increase housing in the city. How do you do that? Don't make half the damn city park space. How many parks do you need?
BTW, I'm fully aware of the fact that San Fran has poor people. It's just that they don't even have a roof over their head. Almost all of them are homeless because of the housing crisis that has gripped the entire state of California. At least the folks in Cabrini Green had a roof over their head.
There's already plenty of green space just outside of San Francisco, to the south of the city. And all around northern California. It's just that a housing crisis in a city is an economic problem, and from an economic standpoint, the economic solution would be to control either the supply side of the market or the demand side, and since you can't really control the demand side, well.............control the supply side. How do you do that? Increase housing in the city. How do you do that? Don't make half the damn city park space. How many parks do you need?
Even LA has a 'housing crisis'. There are more homeless people in LA than SF (even though homeless deliberately move to SF because they get better welfare benefits). LA has way more land yet housing is still extremely expensive there. It's not unique to SF and like I said, even if they had no parks, housing would still be extremely expensive. Like Central Park in Manhattan - is that why housing is so expensive in Manhattan? Would middle class families suddenly be able to buy a house in Manhattan if they got rid of Central Park? You can't be seriously reasoning that people should have to travel 10 miles just to spend some time in a park.
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BTW, I'm fully aware of the fact that San Fran has poor people. It's just that they don't even have a roof over their head.
Most of them do. And unlike in Chicago, there is actually a lot of subsidized housing that isn't federally funded - not just dilapidated public housing projects. But just counting the residents of the SROs, public housing, and Section 8 alone in San Francisco, is about 10% of the San Francisco population. By stats on the Mayors Office of Housing site (Mayor's Office of Housing : San Francisco Affordable Housing Fact Sheet (http://www.sfgov.org/site/moh_index.asp?id=5812 - broken link)), almost 10% of housing units in San Francisco are under some sort of rental assitance program (not including things like rent control). A lot of people in the poorer neighborhoods actually own their own homes.
Even LA has a 'housing crisis'. There are more homeless people in LA than SF (even though homeless deliberately move to SF because they get better welfare benefits). LA has way more land yet housing is still extremely expensive there. It's not unique to SF and like I said, even if they had no parks, housing would still be extremely expensive. Like Central Park in Manhattan - is that why housing is so expensive in Manhattan? Would middle class families suddenly be able to buy a house in Manhattan if they got rid of Central Park? You can't be seriously reasoning that people should have to travel 10 miles just to spend some time in a park.
Most of them do. And unlike in Chicago, there is actually a lot of subsidized housing that isn't federally funded - not just dilapidated public housing projects. But just counting the residents of the SROs, public housing, and Section 8 alone in San Francisco, is about 10% of the San Francisco population. By stats on the Mayors Office of Housing site (Mayor's Office of Housing : San Francisco Affordable Housing Fact Sheet (http://www.sfgov.org/site/moh_index.asp?id=5812 - broken link)), almost 10% of housing units in San Francisco are under some sort of rental assitance program (not including things like rent control). A lot of people in the poorer neighborhoods actually own their own homes.
The only point that I was trying to make is that land is a very valuable resource, and this is even if you're in Tallamahootchie, Mississippi. If you're in a large metropolitan area like San Francisco, Chicago, or New York then land is extremely valuable and yes, if Central Park were closed and zoned for development, then that would cause the price of housing in Manhattan to plummet. Duh. I'm not saying that that would be a good idea, but yes if that were to happen, you can expect the price of real estate to probably be cut in half, or at least by double-digit percentages IMO.
I disagree, but only in terms of what are known as economically "inferior services" (which, sadly for us less-than-rich folks, includes the CTA). In a city run on the money of the wealthy, funding for services for the bourgeoisie class are difficult to allocate. You're right that it can't support a balance of classes, but this is all evidence that Chicago is facing a shift in the faces of its citizens. Sadly, it is one that, right now, looks like it will run the average people out of town, which is a shame. CTA will survive, but will only shake its financial troubles when it can market its services to a wealthier crowd. Safer, cleaner, brighter, more modernized L stops need to be a focus if they'd like the average income of the ridership to increase, but that will probably also make ticket prices increase, coming in a full circle to exclude the commoner.
Lord help us, I hope they can pull it together. I need the CTA.
I've heard that there are several L stations in the loop that are essentially unchanged from 100 years ago. If that doesn't cry out for a wholesale teardown, and remodernization of the public transit system, I don't know what does!
Let me tell you. I am only staying here for family reasons, but I would definitely not spend the rest of my life here. I plan on moving to the pacific northwest like eastern washington, idaho, montana, etc. Chicago is becoming too crowded, fewer people speaking English, jobs coming and going, what is the point? Taxes going up while the quality of life goes down. It's a no brainer. If anyone reads this and has a family, just pass Chicago along with all the other major urban areas. Move somewhere that has lots of green space, clean air, and friendly people. These are three things you won't find in Chicago.
Not too deviate from the thread, but I would disagree about the Mob "starting" in Chicago. Maybe mob activities, possibly, because Chicago was a wide-open booming town during Al Capones days. But the fact remains Al Capone, Johnny Torrio, and the rest of those guys all grew up in Brooklyn/New York, NOT Chicago. Its pretty clear that people from there came to Chicago to cause trouble because of the lack of laws, (and close to Canada for bootlegging). In my mind the mob really "started" there.
I wouldn't say Daley senior is the only reason why Chicago is what it is today, but it certainly is a big reason. I would say in the early days Chicago was still competing with St. Louis until the begining of the 10th century for the trade and commerce of middle America. Detroit I think was growing faster than Chicago from about the 20-50s. Detroit even had a stock exchange until the 70s believe it or not. Chicago became what it is today, because of a few CRUCIAL events and historic points, right people in the right places at the right time. Not because of anything intrinsic.
The Chicago outfit was run like a corporation, and was inclusive of ALL persuations....jews, blacks, greeks, poles, all had a part to play in the chicago mob structure, maybe the politicians and city officials most of all. The NY mob was too family orientated, with the bitter infighting one sees in the sopranos and all. They were more like the powers that be in Medici Italy in the 1400's, just killing each other off, never consolidating like the chicago outfit. And yes, many famous chicago gangsters got their young hoodlum start in NY, but made their name in Chicago, with room to grow and make ones mark. I guess you could say they were bi-coastal or something..
I've heard that there are several L stations in the loop that are essentially unchanged from 100 years ago. If that doesn't cry out for a wholesale teardown, and remodernization of the public transit system, I don't know what does!
They haven't changed much from 100 years ago because they are still perfectly functional. Some of them could use some aesthetic revitalization (others have already received it), but that certainly doesn't require "wholesale teardown."
Yeah but Chicago has almost always been the "big city" of the Great Lakes/Midwest region. It's called the "Second City" for a reason. For a LONG time, it was second only to New York in population. In recent times it has been surpassed by Los Angeles but it still retains its importance in the region.
The key to Chicago's success and endurance through the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s is its diverse economy. As I said before, we have historically had two major industries - finance and manufacturing. When the manufacturing jobs went away about 20-30 years ago, that was OK because we still had the Stock Exchange, and all of the big banks, etc. Detroit didn't have that. They had the auto industry, and when the Big 3 started doing bad, it hurt the entire city. Detroit's entire existence almost completely relied on how three companies - General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler - performed from year to year. Chicago never relied on such few companies or resources to support its economy, there's just too much going on here for one industry to have such a huge impact.
And as for St. Louis, well they've almost always have been smaller than Chicago, at least for the past century or so. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what their industries historically were, I guess manufacturing/shipping (since they're on a river), but I'm not really sure.
Detroit is the only city in the region that ever truly rivaled Chicago and they began a steady decline when the American auto industry went through a decline in the 1970s. They're making a comeback but it will be a LONG time before they become like what Chicago is now, let alone what Chicago will be decades from now.
If it makes either of you feel any better, I really, truly feel like Chicago is simply too big to completely gentrify.
A major reason why cities like Washington, D.C. and San Francisco have experienced the kind of gentrification and dramatic increases in real estate prices that they have is because in both cities, land is limited. In both cities, you have a relatively large elite or upper-income population wanting to relocate back to the city, but in both cities "the city" encompasses such a limited area, that real estate prices are bound to skyrocket. It's basic supply and demand. The demand is high but the supply is low. San Francisco covers 49 square miles, D.C. covers 61 sq. mi. San Francisco has 744,000 people, D.C. has 581,000 people. The city of Chicago covers 227 sq. miles with 2.9 million people. With 227 square miles, we would need another mass migration of people (and maybe we will get one in the form of Latin American migrants, who knows) to crowd the city enough to the point to where real estate in the city limits becomes anywhere near as valuable here as it is in places like D.C. and San Fran.
Plus both cities have unique, special factors and circumstances that drive the price of real estate up - in D.C. you have a strict height limit on all downtown buildings (I think it's 280 feet, I'm not sure, but I do know that it's pretty low, no building in downtown D.C. is more than 10-12 stories). This severly limits how much office space can be created downtown, thereby pushing developers to create office space in other parts of the city where there are no height restrictions. In any case, this artificial deficit in office space affects the supply side of the market tremendously for real estate developers and owners, and drives the prices up sky high on the demand side of the market.
In San Francisco (as in much of California) the environmentalists have gone wild and run amuk, and in San Fran especially they try to preserve every little piece of land that they can. The more land that's zoned for park use or at least declared unlawful to develop for commerical use, the less land that in fact can be used for the private sector, in the form of residential developments, commercial developments, industrial developments, whatever. In a city that already has extremely limited space for residents, the environmental nuts have limited the supply of developable land even further, once again artifically creating a deficit and also creating a very real increase in real estate prices.
But in any case, for the foreseeable future, there will be certain parts of the city (the Loop, the North Side, and parts of the Near South and West Sides) which will experience increasing property values, while large swaths of the city (mostly on the South and West Sides) will experience either stagnation or decline in terms of property values. We simply have too much space for full-scale, city-wide gentrification to occur.
In layman's terms: we have PLENTY of space for poor people to live. So they're not going anywhere, doesn't matter if Daley tears down every housing project in the city (and from the looks of it, he will). Not all poor people live in the projects. As a matter of fact, most don't. They live in dirt cheap apartments, barely making enough money to disqualify them for public housing or even Section 8, but still not making anywhere near enough for them to live a truly middle class lifestyle.
Even in New York there is not full-scale, city-wide gentrification like what you all were talking about. Almost all of the gentrification in New York is taking place in Manhattan, with pockets of it occuring in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. But much of New York is still working class and even downright poor in some spots, so New York will not be experiencing this complete exodus of the working class anytime soon. If New York is not experiencing it, you can bet that Chicago won't be either. It's a lot more likely to happen in New York than it is in Chicago.
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Thanks for clarifying that most of NYC's gentrification is taking place in Manhattan. I would have thought as much. I still find it hard to fathom the Bronx gentrifying much more than our west side chicago ghettos........The day Bedford-Stuy gentrifies, I think the world would end as we know it...LOL!
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I have lived here my whole life
