Am i crazy for wanting to move to Chicago when all i hear is record amounts of shootings ??? (transfer, purchase)

[Hiruko]

Originally Posted by jmgg

You made a valid point, then just left it hanging there. What are some of these places you speak of and why would I find them worth visiting as a person from out of town?

South of 35th? The University of Chicago, Hyde Park, E 53rd St shopping and dining, Kenwood, Obama's private residence, KAM Isaiah Israel, The Promontory, Promontory Point, Oriental Institute, Oak Woods Cemetery, the Confederate Mound, and the DuSable Museum. I'm sure I've missed some. The reason a tourist or local would want to visit them is pretty self-explanatory.

[Kmanshouse]

My hope is that more of the southern half of Chicago becomes more "mainstream" for people.

Bridgeport has definitely improved in the last couple of decades. I have two colleagues (white) that moved to Bridgeport and Bronzeville, respectively. A friend of mine just spent a Saturday on the 31st street beach and said it was great.

I feel that most people I know, however, don't ever go down that way unless it's to a Sox game. Chicago would just be that much more universally attractive if there was more migration to those parts of the city.

[fusillirob1983]

Originally Posted by Hiruko

South of 35th? The University of Chicago, Hyde Park, E 53rd St shopping and dining, Kenwood, Obama's private residence, KAM Isaiah Israel, The Promontory, Promontory Point, Oriental Institute, Oak Woods Cemetery, the Confederate Mound, and the DuSable Museum. I'm sure I've missed some. The reason a tourist or local would want to visit them is pretty self-explanatory.

Pullman Historic District

[beaniemac]

Originally Posted by Kmanshouse

My hope is that more of the southern half of Chicago becomes more "mainstream" for people.

Bridgeport has definitely improved in the last couple of decades. I have two colleagues (white) that moved to Bridgeport and Bronzeville, respectively. A friend of mine just spent a Saturday on the 31st street beach and said it was great.

I feel that most people I know, however, don't ever go down that way unless it's to a Sox game. Chicago would just be that much more universally attractive if there was more migration to those parts of the city.

I agree with all of this as well. Even in my immediate neighborhood, I know of two houses occupied by white people when a few years ago there were none. I know I have never felt unsafe in my neighborhood.

most people don't know that there are lots of nice parts of the south side contrary to what the media shows.

[Hiruko]

Originally Posted by beaniemac

most people don't know that there are lots of nice parts of the south side contrary to what the media shows.

According to the City of Chicago, the south side comprises 60% of the city's land area. Based on that stat, one would think that more people would recognize its capacity for diversity.

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by Kmanshouse

My hope is that more of the southern half of Chicago becomes more "mainstream" for people.

Bridgeport has definitely improved in the last couple of decades. I have two colleagues (white) that moved to Bridgeport and Bronzeville, respectively. A friend of mine just spent a Saturday on the 31st street beach and said it was great.

I feel that most people I know, however, don't ever go down that way unless it's to a Sox game. Chicago would just be that much more universally attractive if there was more migration to those parts of the city.

The city was far more infamous for segregation rather than its murder rates though much of the 20th century. Chicago was one of (if not the) most segregated of cities. During the civil rights era, Chicago was infamous for segregation and how it treated black people. Unlike the whole "murder capital" b.s., the segregation title had more than its share of validity.

Look: segregation was, segregation is (dear lord, I hope I am not parroting George Wallace) a factor in all US cities, northern every bit as much as southern (the old saw rang through about African Americans; in the South, they didn't care how close you got as long as you didn't get big. In the North, they didn't care how big you got as long as you didn't get close.).

So I though perhaps to the extremes, Chicago was an outlier.

What was not an outlier though was Chicago's brand of segregation

No city came closer to having itself not chopped up into smaller sections, but having bigger ones: huge swats of land that were virtually all white, others virtually all black. The red line in the 50s, 60s, etc. was the Howard el, running south to either Jackson Park or Englewood. A typical trip on the Howard el: get on at Howard street at city limits to be on an all white train. Throughout the North Side, the train remained all white. When you hit the downtown stations (and there were only three in the State Street subway) at each station, whites would get off and black gets on board. By Roosevelt Road, you'd be riding an all black train down to Jackson Park or Englewood.

A bit hyperbolic? Sure. But the essence was pretty correct.

Chicago's black population during the Great Migration came north on the Ill. Cent. and disemarkated at the southern edge of downtown at Roosevelt Road station....and from there, people moved to the Black Belt, once a thin strip, then one that spread wider and wider with numbers getting so great, a smaller (though still very major) black belt grew on the West Side.

So today when ironically Chicago is seen as a fairly liberal city, certainly global in nature and akin to coastal cities (in a city that once was famed for its mix of white collar like New York and blue collar like Detroit, it has become mostly white collar.....and much different from its past), yet it seems like some sort of "permanent scare" was left by the huge areas of segregation where black people were kept apart.

I don't consider this to be small. I consider it to be huge. In most (maybe all?) other US cities, where black neighborhoods may have been scattered here and there, gentrification could take hold because the boundaries of the neighborhood made it possible to rehabilitate (I should add: gentrification is probably an awful choice of words....what I'm trying to suggest is something that could have been redeveloped/renewed/refurbished, a place that (hopefully) would have been open to all, if there had been the spread I mentioned of racially oriented neighborhoods. The best way I could state this is that Chicago had true "dead zones", far too large to rehab them and bring them up to speed. Segregation destroyed so much of Chicago.

My assessment is that we, Chicago, are as enlightened as the best of cities are, but we are still paying for the housing patterns that were created pretty much before any of us were born.

The parallel is far, far from perfect, but if you compare Cabini Green with the Taylor Homes, the first was poor and public housing and largely black and was able to convert to (I'd like to be able to say middle class but unfortunately that was not so) high end development. Cabini Green was, so to speak, an island of squalor surrounded by places that were not. In Taylor Homes, you had the black belt and tearing down the homes did little to reinvigorate the area.

(note: yes, I am aware that Cabrini was an awful place to use as example: within a mile of the Gold Coast, right in the heart of the city, affluent, well off, and middle class neighborhoods to the north, east and south made it anything like a typical neighborhood)

[BRU67]

Originally Posted by Hiruko

According to the City of Chicago, the south side comprises 60% of the city's land area. Based on that stat, one would think that more people would recognize its capacity for diversity.

There's definitely strong interest in Bridgeport right now. Multi-units there sell fast with multiple offers. It'll be fully gentrified very soon. McKinley Park is getting like that too. Pilsen has been like that for awhile. Hyde Park has always been a draw, as has Beverly if we go far south.

Chicago's violence, or the perception thereof, is a problem for most of the other south side neighbourhoods. If the most violent ones like Englewood and Roseland depopulate enough, who knows, but for right now, even the Lake isn't enough to create high property values in places like Douglas, Oakland, and South Shore.

[glass_of_merlot]

I have lived here since 2012 and never seen a crime either...or heard gun shots. I work in North Lawndale and drive through the bad hoods almost everyday. Tomorrow I work at Little Village. I have yet to see and hear anything. It’s funny how that works.

[ncls12]

Originally Posted by Kmanshouse

My hope is that more of the southern half of Chicago becomes more "mainstream" for people.

Bridgeport has definitely improved in the last couple of decades. I have two colleagues (white) that moved to Bridgeport and Bronzeville, respectively. A friend of mine just spent a Saturday on the 31st street beach and said it was great.

I feel that most people I know, however, don't ever go down that way unless it's to a Sox game. Chicago would just be that much more universally attractive if there was more migration to those parts of the city.

I don't think that white people living in Bridgeport are noteworthy - unless your definition of white people is more narrowly defined than simply "white" - i.e. college educated, professional types transplanting themselves from the suburbs or elsewhere into the big, bad city and specifically a neighborhood that actually historically has been hostile toward African Americans, not white people.

[TBideon]

Bridgeport never fell that hard, certainly not compared to the vast majority of southside neighborhoods. And the influx of Asians really helped stem the decline in the last 20 years. Maybe there are a few seedy characters by Donovan Park, but by and large it's a safe place.

As for the neighborhood being "gentrified", I'm not seeing all that much new residential or commercial construction, and Halsted and Morgan are substantially emptied out. Sure the arts scene is great (especially on 35th) and the Palma--whatever Park on Halsted is gorgeous... but is this neighborhood really gentrifying? It still seems pretty inexpensive and rundown (albeit in a non sketchy way) for the most part, even if it's a third hipster and a third Asian these days.