Chicago

Chicago is One Kind of Town

Tim W. Ferguson — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 11:41:24 -0400

The geographical resorting of America continues apace–the separation of peoples based broadly on ideology. You see this population movement on both coasts, accentuated by the pandemic and remote work.

It’s about other things, of course–costs, space, weather–but it’s a lot about politics. And after Tuesday’s mayoral election result in Chicago (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/us/elections/chicago-mayor-election-brandon-johnson.html), we can expect more resorting in the middle of the country. A majority of the closely-divided city electorate chose a higher-tax, less-policing candidate backed by most of the powerful public-employee unions. On top of the immediate worries that conservative Chicagoans might have, there’s the ongoing pensions deficit that the city, Cook County and the state of Illinois (also dominated by Democrats of the left) are running, which is a lien on taxpayers who hang around.

Unless attempts succeed to garnish the higher income of fleeing residents (moves under consideration in a few states), or a bailout from Washington is forthcoming, Illinoisans-in-place are squarely under this cloud. So the movement into “two Americas” can expect another rush. I don’t know whether this pace and degree of separation is unprecedented (obviously blacks had reason to escape the Antebellum and Jim Crow South) or necessarily harmful on balance in such an already-sundered society, but it is happening nonetheless.

This piece first appeared on Tim W. Ferguson blog.

Tim W. Ferguson, the former editor of Forbes’s Asia edition, writes about business, economics and society.

Feudal Future Podcast — Chicago & Positioning: Becoming the Next Middle Class Hub

New Geography — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 12:21:37 -0500

On today's episode of Feudal Future hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Pete Saunders. Pete Saunders is a writer and researcher whose work focuses on urbanism and public policy. He has been the editor and publisher of the Corner Side Yard, an urbanist blog, since 2012. A practicing urban planner, he serves as the community and economic development director for the Chicago suburb of Richton Park, Ill., and is the principal for PDS Consulting, an urban-planning consulting and research firm.

Marshall begins the show asking Pete what he thinks Chicago can expect being under a new Biden administration. Pete began to explain that not everything seems cut and clear and to be wary buying into a new administration so quickly. Pete went into details and programs that Biden could implement in order to unite Chicago and establish them once again as a metropolitan powerhouse.

Joel chimed in and was curious to see if the new administration would be able to help the crime rates in Chicago. Pete stated that the crime is not something an administration can change, but that it is more of a societal change that needs to happen.

Marshall added that not only crime was something to be concerned about, but also the amount of talent Chicago raises in its own states, and exports out to other parts of the US and how that was taking away from Chicago. Joel added that if Chicago wants to make changes, they need to be more welcoming to new business and create an environment that is welcoming to the business owners. Pete agreed without hesitation.

As the episode ends, Joel and Pete look hopeful in seeing Chicago make steps to revive the Midwest and give power again to the middle class.

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The Monuments of Gentry Liberals in Chicago: White Students Dominate the Test-Admittance Public Schools

Wed, 30 Apr 2014 12:50:56 -0400

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Chicago’s population peaked a long time ago. In 1950, Chicago had 3. 6 million people. Recent estimates put Chicago’s population at 2.7 million. With the growth of American suburbs, many Chicago families have fled to public schools in the suburbs. Chicago’s horrible public schools have been an embarrassment for Chicago’s elite. A recent Chicago Tribune editorial estimated that only “only 8 of 100 freshmen who enter Chicago public high schools manage to get a college diploma.”

In an attempt to keep white families from fleeing Chicago, the second Mayor Daley came up with a plan: test-admittance-only public high schools. This was a reasonable solution for gentry liberals who pay high property taxes but didn’t want to leave the city or couldn’t afford to send their children to private schools. These select public high schools produce college bound students while “limiting” gentry liberal’s children from being exposed to children from “troubled backgrounds”. This is a sensitive subject because Chicago’s Public School System is only 9.2% white, while being 39.7% African-American.

Being admitted to these select magnet schools can often determine whether a family stays in Chicago or moves elsewhere. Recently, Daniel Hertz made news by graphically showing how Chicago’s middle class has being largely eliminated since 1970. The new Chicago is still a one-party town, but is now a coalition of rich and poor with a residual government worker middle class. White children have left Chicago’s Public School system leaving minorities as the majority. But, who gets into the selective public high schools? The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

More white students are walking the halls at Chicago’s top four public high schools.

At Walter Payton College Prep on the Near North Side, more than 41 percent of freshmen admitted the past four years have been white, compared to 29 percent in 2009, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of Chicago Public Schools data has found.

At Jones College Prep in the South Loop, 38 percent of this year’s freshman class is white, compared to 29 percent four years ago.

In 2010 — the first year race was no longer used to determine the makeup of Chicago schools — the percentage of white freshmen at Northside College Prep in North Park rose from 37 percent to 48 percent.

And at Whitney Young College Prep on the Near West Side, the percentage of black freshmen has steadily declined in the past three years, while the percentage of whites has risen.

As these schools attract white students, Mayor Rahm Emanuel had to shut down 50 public schools which according to Democracy Now affected” 30,000 students, around 90 percent of them African American.” While Chicago is closing public schools, it is getting ready to build a new school. Not just any public school, but an expensive test only admittance high school named after Chicago’s glorious leader who went far. The new high school will be named Barack Obama College Preparatory High School.

Gentry liberals leaders have told us with enormous conviction that public education is an “investment”. Yet, President Barack Obama and Mayor Rahm Emanuel send their children to elite private schools. What’s interesting in Rahm Emanuel’s case is he couldn’t find one public school in all of Chicago good enough to send his children. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is so committed to public education that he sends his children to a private school 15 miles away from where his children live.

Watch Chicago’s Middle Class Vanish Before Your Very Eyes

Daniel Hertz — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 12:31:50 -0400

Note: I owe both the concept for this measurement of income segregation and much of the actual data – all of it, except for 2012 – to Sean Reardon andKendra Bischoff, who wrote a series of wonderful papers on the subject and then were kind enough to send me a spreadsheet of their data from Chicago a while ago. The maps, however, are mine, as is all the data from 2012, and any mistakes in them or in the interpretation of the data is entirely my responsibility.

I think one reason I’ve felt less than compelled by Chicagoland, CNN’s reasonably well-made documentary series, is that its tale-of-two-cities narrative is so worn, so often repeated, that it’s become a little dull. Not the actual fact of inequality – which only seems to cut deeper over time – but its retelling.

In fact, I think the point has long passed at which simply repeating the story of Chicago’s stratification is equivalent to fighting it. For a lot of people, in my experience, it’s the opposite: an opportunity for distancing, for washing of hands. It’s a ritual in which we tell each other that this is the way it’s always been - The Gold Coast and the Slum was written about already well-entrenched institutions, after all, over three-quarters of a century ago – that these facts somehow seep out of the ground here, as much a part of the city as the lake, and that as a result there’s really nothing we can do about it.

But this obscures much more than it clarifies. Inequality has always been a part of Chicago – as it has always been a part of the United States, and a part of humanity – but the forms it has taken, and the severity of those many forms, have changed in truly dramatic ways. Take, for example, today’s monolithic segregation of African Americans: at the turn of the last century, black Chicagoans were less segregated than Italians, and not because Italians were then hyper-segregated.

Moreover, decisions made by people in the city have played, and continue to play, a huge role in determining what those changes look like. Had Elizabeth Wood received any serious support from white residents or their elected representatives – instead of meeting Klan-like violent resistance – the history of racial integration, economic integration, and public housing in this city would be very, very different. This isn’t to say that national and global factors aren’t important, since they obviously are. But neither do we lack responsibility.

Anyway, this is all by way of introducing the following maps: their goal is not merely to depress you (you’re welcome!), but to suggest just how dramatically the reality of Chicago’s “two cities” has changed over the last few generations, how non-eternal its present state is, and that a happier alternate reality isn’t just possible, but actually existed relatively recently.

I feel relatively comfortable telling the story of how Chicago came to be so segregated by race; I’m much humbler about my ability to explain this, except inasmuch as the ever-widening ghetto of the affluent could not exist without, yes, radically exclusionary housing laws, and I will take that up separately in another post. In the meanwhile, I’ll take a page from Ta-Nehisi Coates and ask you all, if you have some background in this, to talk to me like I’m stupid: what does the literature say about growing economic segregation? Who and what should I be reading?

One last piece: the obvious and immediate reaction to these maps is to see them as a direct consequence of rising income inequality. There is some truth to that, but the researchers from which much of this data came have already discovered that income segregation has actually risen faster than inequality. So that’s not the end of the story.

Anyway, here you go: the disappearance of Chicago’s middle-class and mixed-income neighborhoods since 1970, measured by each Census tract’s median family income as a percentage of the median family income for the Chicago metropolitan region as a whole.

This piece first appeared at Daniel's blog City Notes.

Well-Heeled in the Windy City

Aaron M. Renn — Sat, 19 Oct 2013 12:59:43 -0400

A couple weeks ago, noting the apparently immunity of global city Chicago to problems elsewhere in the city, I asked the question: What happens when global city Chicago realizes there’s a good chance it can simply let the rest of the city fail and get on with its business?

I’d argue we’re seeing the results right before our eyes.

At the same time murders in significant parts of the city are even higher than during the peak of the crack epidemic, when the city says its too poor to hire more cops, when 54 schools are closed and a 1000 teachers laid off, half the mental health clinics closed, libraries cut back, etc., Chicago has found a nearly limitless stream of money for elite amenities, most recently – and appallingly – $50+ million in TIF subsidies for a new DePaul arena. There’s also been hundreds of millions of dollars more in corporate welfare under Daley and Rahm.

Investing in success is a great idea – if you plan to harvest a return on that investment to fund city services and your safety net. It’s clear there’s no intention of doing this in Chicago. I discuss this in my most recent City Journal piece, “Well-Heeled in the Windy City.” Here’s an excerpt:

Clearly, cities like Chicago must retain a substantial portion of upscale residents and businesses. Detroit and other cities show the results of failure on this front. Yet the moral case for elite amenities has always rested on the assumption of a broader public good: what benefited the wealthy would also make life better for the rest of the city….Under Emanuel’s leadership, though, Chicago has made peace with a two-tier society and broken the social contract. Rather than trying to expand opportunity, Chicago has bet its future on its already successful residents—leading some on the left to call Emanuel Mayor 1 Percent. The Windy City isn’t alone in following this strategy. Detroit has gone bankrupt, but that hasn’t stopped city government from lavishing $450 million in subsidies on a new Red Wings arena.

Since I critique bike infrastructure as part of Chicago’s splurge for the elite, I want to clarify that point here where there are lots of bike advocates. I strongly support bike infrastructure. In fact, I once gave a presentation where I said protected bike lanes and bike share should be Rahm’s top two transport priorities on taking office because they are cost-effective and can leverage outside funds. However, even the most passionate advocates must admit that the optics are bad on making a full court press on bike lanes when cutting core services elsewhere. More importantly, Rahm’s explicit rationale on bike infrastructure has been luring talent for the tech economy, thus it is an elite focused venture. For example, the Sun-Times reported:

Emanuel called protected bike lanes central to the city’s sustainability plan and his efforts to make Chicago the high-tech hub of the Midwest. Chicago “moved up dramatically” in the list of major cities whose employees bike to work, he said.

“It’s part of my effort to recruit entrepreneurs and start-up businesses because a lot of those employees like to bike to work,” he said.

“It is not an accident that, where we put our first protected bike lane is also where we have the most concentration of digital companies and digital employees. Every time you speak to entrepreneurs and people in the start-up economy and high-tech industry, one of the key things they talk about in recruiting workers is, can they have more bike lanes.”

I’m simply taking the mayor at his word. (See also here and here).

This piece originally appeared at The Urbanophile.

Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago More Violent than Al Capone’s Chicago and the Old West

Wed, 09 Oct 2013 12:49:22 -0400

Since Rahm Emanuel entered the political scene years ago, he’s been a master at manipulating the press to his benefit. A pliant media has largely gone along with whatever talking point Emanuel desired. Lately, some of the media has begun to put the spotlight on violent Chicago with its rather high murder rate. Banning or restricting handguns has not been very successful in combatting violence in Chicago. The website Big Government reports the bloody details:

After Chicago recorded a terrible homicide total of 53 in August, September wasn't much better for Rahm's "world class" city. The city suffered 41 homicides, 30 of which resulted from 184 total shootings.

September brings more bad news for Chicago residents. While Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, and the Chicago media have continued to hammer the point that the "crime rate is down," and "murder is down," as of September 22, the homicide total for 2013 now exceeds the rate up to the same date in 2011 by two percent at 350, according to the Chicago Police Crime Data Portal.

How does today’s Chicago hold up at the violent memory of Al Capone’s Chicago of the 1920s? Not very well. WLS-TV investigated the data and the evidence is rather stunning report in February:

Let's compare two months: January 1929, leading up to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and last month, January 2013. Forty-two people were killed in Chicago last month, the most in January since 2002, and far worse than the city's most notorious crime era at the end of the Roaring Twenties.

Even though the image of Chicago, perpetuated by Hollywood over the years, was that mobsters routinely mowed down people on the streets, the crime stats tell us that we were safer under Capone than Emmanuel. In January 1929 there were 26 killings. Forty-two people were killed in Chicago last month, the most in January since 2002.

Even though the image of Chicago, perpetuated by Hollywood over the years, was that mobsters routinely mowed down people on the streets, the crime stats tell a different story. The figures from January 2013 are significantly higher than the January of Al Capone's most famous year.

It’s not just the Capone era violence that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Constantly we hear from the media and advocates of gun control that we don’t want things to become “the Wild West”. In the last several years, historians have begun to look at this long time legend that was promoted by Hollywood movies. As Ryan McMaken explains:

Historian Richard Shenkman largely attributes this to the legacy of those reliably-violent Western films. "Many more people have died in Hollywood Westerns than ever died on the real Frontier…[i]n the real Dodge City, for example, there were just five killings in 1878, the most homicidal year in the little town's Frontier history: scarcely enough to sustain a typical two-hour movie."

The old West with its minimal government and armed populace has never been too popular with progressives. But, the reality is it was never really violent according to Terry Anderson and Peter Hill. So, the murder rate of the Capone era and Dodge city of 1878 would be a major improvement for Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Note: This post was originally incorrectly attributed to Wendell Cox.

Chicago Tribune Joins the Ranks of High-speed Rail Critics

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 00:26:52 -0400

Last year, in congressional testimony before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing on high speed rail, we cited the Chicago-to-St.Louis "high-speed rail" project as an example of the Administration's wasteful use of its economic stimulus money. We pointed out that the $1.4 billion program of track upgrades will allow top speed of 110 mph but will raise average speeds of Amtrak trains between Chicago and St. Louis by only 10 miles per hour, from 53 to 63 mph. The four-and-a-half hour trip time will be cut by a mere 48 minutes, to three hours and fourty minutes. In France, TGV trains between Paris and Lyon cover approximately the same ditance (290 miles) in a little under two hours, at an average speed of 150 mph. Yet, federal officials did not hesitate proclaiming the Chicago-St. Louis project as "historic" and hailing it as "one giant step closer to achieving high-speed rail passenger service."

Now, a Chicago Tribune story, linked here and excerpted below, confirms just how "ridiculously expensive" and "uneconomical" this project is turning out to be. As the editorial points out, the project stands to "drain funding from mundane projects that could make a much bigger difference." Something that the California High Speed Rail Authority has belatedly recognized in diverting almost half of the initial $10 billion stage of its bullet train project to upgrading "mundane" commuter rail services in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

In recent years, under the banner of economic stimulus, the federal government has spent a ton of money getting the tracks ready for those speedy locomotives. In the Chicago-St. Louis corridor, for instance, Uncle Sam has poured at least $1.4 billion into crossing improvements and other upgrades. Between Chicago and Detroit, more than $400 million has been spent.

How would you feel, taxpayer, if we told you that some of the work might need to be torn up and redone?

Angry? You bet.

A debate over just how fast high-speed trains should operate could turn very costly very soon.

The issue comes down to 15 miles per hour.

5000 Public School Teachers Could Lose Their Jobs in Chicago

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 18:00:14 -0400

The Democratic Party in Chicago is at war. The one party town is seeing an important element of the coalition on strike. Rahm Emanuel is at war with a real adversary: teacher’s union boss Karen Lewis. Last year Lewis began laying the groundwork for a strike as witnessed in this Chicago Magazine interview with reporter Carol Felsenthal:

CF: So you have an issue with [Secretary of Education, former CPS CEO] Arne Duncan?

KL:Yeah, because he has a bachelor’s in sociology from Harvard and played basketball [he’s an education expert]? I think he’s completely and totally unqualified to do this job. And to me, it’s sort of indicative of how education is such a political tool now, as opposed to [his] having a real bent toward education. I think this is a way for Obama to try to make an olive branch with Republicans. There’s this mentality that outsiders and people with no education background are the… experts…. They want to privatize public education…. Arne’s policies here were a disaster.

Karen Lewis, like Rahm Emanuel, isn’t shy about expressing her opinions. Conflict is in the air. For 25,000 teachers to be on strike weeks before a Presidential election is a major problem for Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel. Karen Lewis has even organized children to chant slogans against Rahm Emanuel. As veteran Chicago reporter Greg Hinz has said:

Mr. Emanuel has loudly declared what he wants, issued his demands in what I hear was an f-bomb-filled meeting with Ms. Lewis, and moved to impose some items by fiat — i.e., enacting a longer school day and directing the board to rescind a negotiated 4 percent pay hike.

Chicago is running out of money. There’s much blame to go around. The financial math is a threat to the status quo. The public school system has been a lucrative racket for some. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass explains:

Unfortunately, the system works just fine. It works for the teachers union that wins the big raises (the current offer: a 16 percent bump over the next four years) and for the bureaucrats who are creatures of patronage, and for the vendors who feed from the almost $6 billion budget.

It works for Democratic politicians. They increase property taxes to pay for union raises and, in exchange, receive union support and political donations in election years. It's been going on that way for years.

But does it work for the kids? Not when nearly half don't graduate.

As New Geography readers remember, we warned that Chicago was on the downswing. The 2010 Census confirmed this decline. The difficult part of decline is the hardship that comes with layoffs. University of Chicago Professor Tim Knowles says 5000 Chicago Public School teachers could lose their jobs because of 100 schools may shut. When you lose 6.9% of your population in 10 years, closures are inevitable.

In conclusion, Karen Lewis has picked a perfect time to strike: right before a Presidential election. The Democratic party needs all the help it can get from unions to get out the vote in nearby battleground states. What if they don’t get out the vote in Ohio and other unions strongholds in November?

New Chicago Machine Scam In the Works: Eminent Domain Seizure of ‘Underwater’ Mortgages

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 13:46:01 -0400

With property values down 40% since 2006 in Chicago, the Chicago Democrat Machine has a new scam brewing. The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Should Chicago use its sweeping condemnation powers to help stem the foreclosure epidemic — paving the way for underwater mortgages to be written down and repackaged under terms more affordable to struggling homeowners?

The City Council’s most powerful aldermen believes it’s a concept worth considering, which is why the Finance Committee chaired by Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) will hold a joint committee hearing on the controversial idea on Tuesday.

If this passes, the potential for corruption will be unlimited in Chicago. Alderman Burke controls Chicago’s tax code. But, the conflicts are even more pronounced. Alderman Burke slates all the judges in Cook County which means a Burke-slated judge will hear the property seizure case. Even that’s not all; Alderman Burke's day job is running a property tax appeals tax firm. Being a client of Alderman Burke’s probably will be a good way to avoid a ‘takings’. Expecting a fair appeal, in court, on the seizure? Alderman Burke’s wife, Anne, is a justice on the Illinois Supreme Court. Expecting help from the Illinois state legislature to clamp down on Alderman Burke’s conflicted lifestyle? Alderman Burke’s brother, Daniel, is Assistant Majority Leader of the Illinois General Assembly.

In conclusion, you can be assured that seizing ‘underwater’ mortgages in Chicago will become a money maker for Alderman Burke. Nothing has left Alderman Burke’s attention in terms of making money off the taxpayers of Chicago. The Chicago Sun-Times has reported that Chicago Public Schools have a history of paying milk money to Alderman Burke. In Chicago, even if you have a checkered past you can still work with Alderman Burke as long as you pay tribute.

Historic Day in Corruption History: Two Governors From Same State in Jail at Same Time

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:06:54 -0400

Today, history will be made. Rod Blagojevich is going to jail in Littleton, Colorado. Blagojevich will join his predecessor Governor George Ryan who’s in prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. America’s fifth largest state will now have two back-to-back Governors in federal prison at the same time. What other state in America can say that? Both Illinois Governors were convicted of major felonies. Have Illinois voters turned the corner on supporting corrupt politicians? It appears not. Recently, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has been busy. Long time Chicago Machine boss William Beavers was indicted on tax fraud. Tuesday, Illinois State Rep. Derrick Smith was arrested on a federal bribery charge.

Here's a report from WLS-TV: