Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
they are chicago.
just as the forlorn former industrial neighborhoods of the southside are as well.
chicago, like most major cities, is a giant and complex beast with many different facets.
the main difference is that one of those realms represents chicago's future and the other its past. winners and losers. chicago's got plenty of both.
but i still place chicago in the rust belt category because of the scale and scope of industrial job-loss here. it's doesn't make much sense to me to dissect these things and say things like "well the calumet river corridor and NW indiana might be rust belt, but downtown chicago isn't." that's like saying that detroit is rust belt, but oakland county isn't. i don't see the rust belt as hopping and skipping around like that. i see it as a broader region that was especially hard hit by industrial job loss over the past half-century, even if not every specific place within said belt looks like a decrepit old rusting factory. chicago fits within that broad category.
neighborhoods don't go from 90% white to 90% black in a generation simply because the local factory shuts down.
white flight was a GIGANTIC factor in many south and west side neighborhoods transitioning from white to black in the 60s/70s/80s.
anyone who says otherwise is woefully ignorant of chicago's history.
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My point about the Loop and north side is that many people think that is the true and only Chicago cuz that's all they know.
As far as white flight, it gets blamed for everything and my point was that the manufacturing collapse certainly is a factor in why the people left. But to imply that a neighborhood went from 90% white to 90% black as only a bad thing is misplaced and could be construed as either racist or patronizing white folk think.
There were middle class black neighborhoods in the city. We've had black flight for some time now yet it appears to many to be a good thing and no one complains about black city abandonment. The mortgage fraud that went on in Chicago certainly didn't help and remains a drag on the city akin to the city's Rust Belt past.