CHICAGO | General Discussions

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

You clearly just don't get what I mean when I state 'zero sum game'.

Yes, it feels good to say this, but at the end of the day I'm so far only seeing evidence that luxury condos downtown are making it hard for luxury property to sell elsewhere. It's a zero sum game in the sense that the property tax pool still stays the same, just shifting. Kinda a key issue here when we've got a bankrupt State.

If anyone wants to discuss this further, feel free to respond in the "politics" thread.

But it doesn't stay the same, not if the concentration of wealthy in the core makes the core more attractive. Chicagoland as a whole is gaining more wealthy residents because of what is happening in the core. Yes most are coming in from the burbs, but large numbers of people from outside the metro are also being attracted. Just look at the corporate C suite relocations to downtown we have seen. You don't think a Conagra HQ sold a few multi million dollar condos in the area? Those relocations to downtown are being driven by the dynamism of the Loop and environs.

Even if no additional wealthy are added, the efficiencies I described above will still result in more output with the same number of residents. Even if there were always 10,000 $1 million + homes in Chicagoland and now there's 5,000 in the city and 5,000 in the burbs instead of 2,000 in the city and 8,000 in the burbs, that's still 3,000 more multi millionaire households living in close contact with each other who will do more business, spend more money, start more ventures with each other, etc.

It's ironic that you deny this because it's the process that is paying the bills at your investments around downtown. Even if we aren't gaining new households (which we are) the dense ecosystem of services is employing thousands of people who make decent wages (i.e. you have Au Cheval or Big Star paying $15-20 an hour instead of Perkins and McDonalds paying minimum wage in the burbs) results in increased demand for housing which grows the tax base.

The effects of this process are manifold and explain the existence of cities in general. I will argue all day that the reason Chicago is confronted with the problems it has today in the first place was that we flushed the basics of economies of agglomeration down the drain in the post war era. If Chicago had never carved out it's core with projects and freeways and suburbanized as intensely as it did, it would already be recovered in the way NYC or SF or European cities that chose to rebuild in the old style already have. We are behind the curve because we took the sprawl to the extreme. The sooner we re-condense the sooner we will regain our footing and start attracting migrants en masse. Unfortunately that process is going to require allowing some of our most superfluous suburbs to shrivel up and die. Sorry Barrington, you are gonna have to revert to a cow town on the edge of the city again...