Despite endless debate, Chicago seems no closer to addressing the consequences of gentrification today than ever. Even though the City Council recently advanced a Rahm-backed measure to force developers to build more low-income housing, other efforts, like another measure targeted at obligating developers to pay demolition taxes along the 606, never received a hearing in council chambers. While a handful of Chicago neighborhoods such as Pilsen and Humboldt Park are the sites of skyrocketing rents, other areas of the city remain disinvested and overpoliced, getting none of the benefits of redevelopment as austerity measures continue to gut resources for education and other public goods.
Although countless blog posts use a first-person perspective to discuss similar issues, this approach typically exonerates the behavior of gentrifiers.
“It is in the long-term benefit of the city that it doesn’t have five gentrification hot spots and 60 percent of its landscape deteriorating into the soil,” Schlichtman says. “This is a long-term economic issue, bringing more and more neighborhoods into the city fabric in a way that’s not exploitative.”
Even if it remains difficult to create effective political coalitions between new and old residents, Gentrifier is a noble attempt to enrich the vocabulary used in debates over gentrification. It aims to move beyond the paralysis of the conversation, where in there’s no hope of improving neighborhoods without the current cultural and economic displacement that gentrification so often entails.
By John Joe Schlichtman, Jason Patch, and Marc Lamont Hill (University of Toronto).
The authors appear for a discussion Wed 10/18, 6 PM, Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn, 773-752-4381, semcoop.com. Free.
