Quote:
Originally Posted by marothisu
For the most part I agree - though the point is that if you push it out too much then it has too much impact on the city as a whole. Look, I don't live in Pilsen for example, but I enjoy going on a train ride there, going around to the galleries, Mexican whatever, and seeing mural art around there. Do you think it would be a great thing if Pilsen turned into something exactly like Lakeview? That's why I can understand why the people there are actually worried about it. I would love new development there, but also selfishly, I can completely understand them. This is why i'd rather have areas like Garfield Park where there's nothing much there.. gentrify long before an area like Pilsen. Of course, as you point out, because there's a lot of vacant lots, it's less likely to happen. Bronzeville is an example of an area with a good deal of vacant land that's actually seen a fair amount of new construction in the last handful of years.
People can continue to push out and create new areas, which is great, but eventually you'd hope there'd be an end where they wouldn't all have to move to the fucking suburbs to meet their needs. We need the city to be dynamic, not full of a bunch of neighborhoods that all look the same.
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But you see that's the fundamentally incorrect assumption at play here, that the people being displaced are helpless and can't fend for themselves or make rational decisions. There are many MANY homeowners in places like Pilsen and Little Village and many, but not all, of them are choosing to "sell out" (i.e. take the money that is rightfully theirs) and move to a community that doesn't have gang problems which has a good school district that will grant their children or grand children easy entrance to the American middle class. These people are not idiots and the "gentrification is evil" bunch is basically claiming they are or at least advocating stripping them of their rights as property owners. No one who owns a property in these areas is being "forced to move out of the city" they are simply making the same choice that millions of white people made decades ago when offered a choice between living next to a slum and having an acre lot with a 3,000 SF ranch home on it.
And not all suburbs are awful, in fact huge numbers of Hispanics have moved to parts of the suburbs that could turn around very quickly with the help of an influx of new blood. What's wrong with families that have been living on top of each other in a six flat in Pilsen for 30 years selling out for $500k and each getting their own bungalow in Cicero? I see that as a fair reward for coming to this country, taking a risk by purchasing property, and raising offspring who contribute to our society.
And finally, let's get over the notion that Chicago has ANY lack of decent outlying neighborhoods badly in need of a population boost. For every bombed out slum or gentrifying immigrant neighborhood there are two or three more or less forgotten areas like Belmont Gardens, Archer Heights, Hermosa, Gage Park, Montclare, Back of the Yards, etc, etc, etc which could take on a huge amount of population if the demand was there. The other hard fact we have to face is that areas like Garfield Park, Bronzeville, Austin, Lawndale, etc let alone the deep South Side like Englewood or Chatam or Grand Crossing will never recover unless there simply is nowhere else in the city for growth to occur. They are last on the list not because of demographics or location, but because there is simply such an immense land glut in these areas that it would take a tidal wave of demand to increase prices to the point where new construction is viable. Without new construction, these devastated commercial districts and corner lots will never fill in, and if they never fill in, the land values will never be high enough to justify new construction. Thus development never happens and the neighborhood just gradually rots away as the fungus of blight sets in.
The only way to reverse that is to have such immense amounts of demand spilling over that you get entirely new districts being constructed like we are seeing on the edge of Ukrainian Village and the blighted districts to the South. That's probably the only part of the city other than McKinley Park where significant organic regeneration of blighted formerly industrial areas is occurring outside of downtown. Eventually that slow creep of renewal will reach Garfield Park, but you can build an awful lot of units between Grand/Western and Madison/Ashland for example. The development marches slowly South at maybe a block or so a year, but that's only along a small frontier in a few pockets of the city.
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. Generalize much? I bet you think theyre all good at math and violin too?
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