Going, going, gone! The maps that reveal how Chicago's middle class are being blown out of the Windy City as gap between rich and poor grows
- Chicago's once sizeable middle class has been pushed almost entirely out of the city since the 1970s
- Wealthy Chicagoans have concentrated on the North Side and in The Loop
- Crime and poverty have overrun the South and West Sides
A stunning visualization from a University of Chicago master's student shows how the middle class have been pushed almost completely out of the Windy City in only a few decades.
Daniel Kay Hertz has created a series of maps dating back to 1970 show the rapidly expanding upper class on the traditionally well-off North Side and the explosion of poverty on historically poorer South Side.
The public policy major said the maps posted to his personal website are meant to show that the entrenchment of wealth in the Loop and on the North Side, and of poverty elsewhere, may only be part of a cycle that has seen neighborhoods change radically in only a few years.
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What once was: Chicago's wealth was mainly confined to the North Side and far northern outskirts in the 1970s, and a large middle class lived throughout the city - but poverty begins to take hold as the 1980s wear on
Rising gap: The growth in the 1990s of wealth was matched by a rise in poverty, but larger amounts of wealth started concentrating in Lakeview (dark green) while the rest of the city began to struggle
As it is today: Staggering amounts of wealth exist on the North Side and shocking poverty persists to the south and west of the neighborhoods in green
The maps are ‘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,’ said Hertz.
They are based on census tracts and use historical data compiled from a variety of sources, Hertz disclosed on the blog spot.
Green, representing wealth, was always present in the Lakeview neighborhood stretching from the Lake Shore to a few blocks west of Wrigley Field.
As the decades wear on, less prosperous residents are seen pushed out of the North Side, slowly at first, but then further and further west until they are barely part of the city.
Chicago’s reputation as a violent city comes without qualification, but that violence is nowhere to be seen from Wrigleyville, the neighborhood surrounding the iconic Cubs ballpark, all the way to the downtown area referred to as The Loop.
Recent developments including Millenium Park and countless condo buildings in the area have turned The Loop from the ghost town it was after office hours to the vibrant upper-class neighborhood it is now.
Tale of two cities: Wealthy Chicagoans have taken over The Loop and North Side while the rest of the city has sunk deeper into poverty
Green, which at its darkest shade represents incomes at 200% or higher than the metro median, stretches further and further west from Lake Michigan into even the West Loop, which has recently undergone explosive growth as warehouses have been converted to loft apartments.
Hertz refers to this as ‘the ever-widening ghetto of the affluent’ and says that ‘radically exclusionary housing laws’ have made it possible.
The rest of the map shows a virtual explosion of poverty, especially on the South Side.
The area’s incomes were either just below, above or at the median for the city as recently as 1970, but poverty begins to take hold in the 1980s and only tightens its grip as the decades wear on.
Pale shades of orange representing struggling families give way to blocks of red paint a picture of shocking despair.
Affluent ghetto: New development was spurred in The Loop by Millenium Park
Thriving: Chicago's North Side, especially the area around Wrigley Field, has always been a relatively prosperous neighborhood, but recent decades have seen that prosperity explode
What was once a working-class neighborhood has turned into drug-addled, crime ridden slums that rank among the most dangerous in the nation and have been dramatized in the Showtime series ‘Shameless.’
There are exceptions to each, pockets of relative prosperity, but the overall trend is downward as most middle class families are pushed further and further out into the suburbs and impoverished ones are hopelessly marooned in less prosperous areas.
Going west from the lake is no better.
A short 20 minute drive from the bankers and academics on the North Side and in The Loop, especially along West Madison and West Grand Avenues, transitions from industrial areas to poor, lower class households.
Shameless: The hit Showtime series is set on Chicago's South Side and chronicles the life of an impoverished family struggling in the poor neighborhood
The area west of Garfield Park has not fared well, nor have the other neighborhoods immediately along the Eisenhower Expressway, a main East-West artery just to the south.
‘The obvious and immediate reaction to these maps is to see them as a direct consequence of rising income inequality,’ wrote Hertz, but he thinks something else is at play.
‘Income segregation has actually risen faster than inequality,’ he believes, or, in other words, purchasing power from working class incomes has continued to fall as the upper class increasingly continues to prosper.
The solution, as Hertz sees it, is through housing laws aimed at bringing down the barriers to migration that have gone up over the years.
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Comments (45)
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"Having been bred in Europe..." What, are you some form of livestock or domesticated animal? Maybe life for you would be better back on the farm with the rest of the Sheeple?
The smart money got out of the cities throughout the U.S. when the riots hit in 1968. But the WISE money got the summer before, in '67. I know. I watched our neighborhood change dramatically. If you were connected/into real estate, you sold high and bought low, 1 yr. earlier. I'd say more but DM won't print it! Bwahahahaha!
It is obvious to most sensible thinking people why the middle class is leaving. It's the taxes and the taxes are high in Chicago because of the unfunded pension plans this city and especially the Democrats has enabled with the unions and it's only going to get a lot worse. I am a bit surprised that Chicago has tolerated this abusive relationship between the unions and Democrats for so long but they have and now they both are going to have to pay for it. Sooner or later they are going to need a Scott Walker to step it and set things right or else they will be following in the footsteps of Detroit. There really isn't any other alternatives!
This is happening everywhere, some cities are just showing the results faster, because of more poverty and crime.
This is what the Democratic Party does, to everything and everyone. Building and growing poverty, peddling influence to the rich, exploiting the public sector to make themselves wealthy. Pushing oppressive taxation and regulations to crush growth, innovation, freedom, etc. They raise the cost of living for all. And so many buy into the lies. Chicago is similar to Detroit. Democratic Partisan train wreck making another vast mess.
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