What is causing gentrification in Chicago? (2024)

What causes gentrification in Chicago?

According to Boyd (2008) gentrification has occurred due to city officials, incoming wealthier white residents, and black elites who have not made it their primary concern to maintain the availability of affordable housing and instead focused on upgrading the neighborhood.

Causes of Gentrification

Some literature suggests that it is caused by social and cultural factors such as family structure, rapid job growth, lack of housing, traffic congestion, and public-sector policies (Kennedy, 2001). Gentrification can occur on a small or large scale.

According to community leaders and housing activists, there are ways to mitigate the harmful effects of gentrification and fight to keep longtime minority residents from being displaced, including passing new residential zoning laws, taxing vacant properties, and organizing residents to pool their capital to buy ...

New census data confirms the continuation of Chicago neighborhoods' gentrification.

The beginning of gentrification in Chicago dates back to urban renewal in the 1950s and 1970s during which time an exodus of white middle-class families (known as “white flight”) left the urban core for the suburbs.

Chicago's South Side is gentrifying in a way that may not displace longtime residents. There's a gold rush in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood. More new houses sold in the South Side community, a historically significant area for the city's Black community, than any other neighborhood last year, Crain's reported.

San Francisco-Oakland tops list of most gentrified cities in the United States, study shows. A new study claims San Francisco and Oakland are the most "intensely gentrified" cities in the United States.

Gentrification is a highly contested issue, in part because of its stark visibility. Gentrification has the power to displace low-income families or, more often, prevent low-income families from moving into previously affordable neighborhoods.

the process by which a place, especially part of a city, changes from being a poor area to a richer one, where people from a higher social class live: Ordinary working people have been priced out of East London by gentrification. Class & class-consciousness in general.

Gentrification is a process that dramatically alters local neighborhoods. One of the primary changes linked to gentrification is the displacement of people as more affluent residents and businesses arrive, oftentimes forcing lower income residents and small businesses to leave.

Who started gentrification?

The term “gentrification” was first coined in the 1960s by British sociologist Ruth Glass (1964) to describe the displacement of the working-class residents of London neighborhoods by middle-class newcomers.

On the positive side, gentrification often leads to commercial development, improved economic opportunity, lower crime rates, and an increase in property values, which benefits existing homeowners.

It has lost much business and industry, it has lost much of its middle-class population, and it has experienced an increased crime rate. Several systemic problems have contributed to increased poverty in Chicago, making it nearly impossible for the urban poor to escape the cycle of poverty.

Similar to other communities across Chicago, gentrification is an issue at the top of many residents' minds in Uptown. Most recently, developers have planned a 314-unit luxury apartment building to be built on the site of a parking lot, currently next door to Weiss hospital at 4600 N.

Parkway Garden Homes, also known as O'Block, is a low-income apartment complex located in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois.

Edwards said the key to revitalization without gentrification is “bringing residents and the community to the table often and at the beginning.” This kind of public planning process requires a great investment of time and resources by city governments, but without this investment, the only result may be inequitable, ...

But in the 1950s and 1960s, middle-class people started renovating homes, and eventually made it one of the city's richer areas. However, Lincoln Park's gentrification actually reduced the neighborhood's population, from 102,000 in 1950 to 67,000 today.

By increasing the amount of neighborhood interaction between households of varying socioeconomic status, gentrification might lead to long-term improvements in the living standards of poor households, for the same reason that central city abandonment might lead to long-term reductions.

DURHAM, NC – For affordable housing advocate Melissa Norton, gentrification is not simply a rise in rent and property values. It's a human rights violation.

As areas have gentrified, families in poverty cannot afford rent, which pushes them into homelessness. High rental costs also prevent them from bettering their situation once they lose housing.

Is gentrification a political issue?

It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and planning. Gentrification often increases the economic value of a neighborhood, but the resulting demographic displacement may itself become a major social issue.

Changes in land use, for example from industrial land to restaurants and storefronts. Changes in the character of the neighborhood as community run businesses are replaced by businesses catering to new residents' needs.

A new study by a Stanford sociologist has determined that the negative effects of gentrification are felt disproportionately by minority communities, whose residents have fewer options of neighborhoods they can move to compared to their white counterparts.

urban blight

The degeneration of a landscape or urban area as a result of neglect: 'the city's high-rise social housing had become synonymous with urban blight' 'Urban blight is cumulative and self-reinforcing; blighted buildings cast a pall on land around them, discourage upkeep, and stifle renewal. '

Rent control, vacancy control, and creating affordable housing are the various options that can ease the harmful effects on residents of the long-detested issue of gentrification.

The history of gentrification in America starts in the 1960s, when the term was coined. Over the next five and a half decades, communities have wielded varying tools and strategies in response to gentrification's challenges.

With gentrification comes increased investment and economic activity more generally, and in this paper we test whether or not local residents, in low-income neighborhoods undergoing economic upgrading, benefit from newly-created nearby employment opportunities.

Fuller Park had the city's highest unemployment rate (40 percent), the second-highest percentage of households below the poverty line (55.5 percent), and the second-lowest per-capita income ($9,016). It was one of only two Chicago community areas with a per-capita income below $10,000.

Lincoln Park | Chicago Neighborhood for Rich Professionals

Located just north of the Near Northside, it has one of the highest median incomes of all the neighborhoods in the city at $115,389.

Is Chicago the most segregated city?

The divide that system created endures today, with Chicago routinely ranking among the most segregated big cities in America when measured by the dissimilarity index, a tool used by sociologists to gauge how evenly distributed demographic groups are throughout a distinct geographic area, such as a city or metro area.

In the 1970s, after neighborhood opposition blocked two freeways from being built through the east side, its neighborhoods such as Inman Park and Virginia-Highland became the starting point for the city's gentrification wave, first becoming affordable neighborhoods attracting young people, and by 2000 having become ...

Similar to other communities across Chicago, gentrification is an issue at the top of many residents' minds in Uptown. Most recently, developers have planned a 314-unit luxury apartment building to be built on the site of a parking lot, currently next door to Weiss hospital at 4600 N.

But in the 1950s and 1960s, middle-class people started renovating homes, and eventually made it one of the city's richer areas. However, Lincoln Park's gentrification actually reduced the neighborhood's population, from 102,000 in 1950 to 67,000 today.

Gentrification is a highly contested issue, in part because of its stark visibility. Gentrification has the power to displace low-income families or, more often, prevent low-income families from moving into previously affordable neighborhoods.

The gentrification in Wicker Park really began in the mid-1970s. The white artists moving into the community helped raise the rents.

But the center of refugee life in Chicago has shifted from Uptown — where development and gentrification have driven up housing prices — to neighborhoods like West Ridge, Rogers Park and Albany Park.

Known for its lush, spacious park and its tight knit Puerto Rican community, Humboldt Park is a beloved green space and a culturally rich neighborhood. But its attractions haven't kept challenges at bay – and in recent years, they've led to a wave of gentrification that's displacing longtime residents.

The first officially recognized gay village in the United States, Boystown Chicago is the commonly accepted nickname for the eclectic East Lakeview neighborhood that is home to Chicago's visible and active gay and lesbian community. Boystown is situated just southeast of Wrigleyville in Lakeview.

Within recent years, there has been an influx of wealthier individuals and larger businesses moving into the Rogers Park neighborhood. The expansion of Loyola has caused some developmental changes in the community.

How do you gentrify an area?

Gentrification in Bronzeville

With this increase in market-rate (non publicly subsidized) housing, there has been an influx of higher income residents in Bronzeville. Unlike gentrification in many other Chicago neighborhoods, many of the wealthier Bronzeville residents are African American, instead of white.