By Kiljoong Kim
A century ago, Daniel Burnham’s plan to develop and redevelop Chicago after the Great Fire, commonly known as the Plan of Chicago of 1909, was launched with many great ambitions. And it’s been celebrated and studied as a classic model for urban design and development ever since. The Plan created a boulevard system, a lakefront largely accessible to the public, and many other amenities that we enjoy today. What is not well-known is that upon implementation, the rising cost of housing displaced many working class residents near downtown. Those residents were largely first-generation Czechs, East European Jews, Italians and Poles, as well as blacks from the South seeking factory jobs in the new industrial age.
Nearly a hundred years later, under the names of urban renewal, revitalization, gentrification, and globalization, the rising cost of housing begins to displace yet another set of working-class immigrants and racial minorities – primarily Mexicans and African Americans – out of several neighborhoods throughout the city. Such displacement is nearly complete in Lincoln Park, Bucktown, Wicker Park and the South Loop, and the progress is ongoing in Rogers Park, Uptown, Albany Park, Pilsen, Bronzeville and Kenwood/Oakland.
This brings up an interesting question of who gets to live in Chicago.
Posted on September 7, 2009