CHICAGO | General Discussions

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Baronvonellis

Yea, your free to wear a blue sundress on a saturday afternoon if that's your things too. Why not just wear a loin cloth when it's hot out

Didn't the Greeks just wear togas and stuff?

I mean, comfort clothes in public is not entirely an American thing. If you go to India or Pakistan you'll see men wearing Kurta Pajamas. Granted they cover your body and can often look quite nice, but in the end they are still pajamas.

[glowrock]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

you sure can. and if you want to dress like that, absolutely no one is stopping you.

if it's 70+ degress and sunny and i'm running errands around the neighborhood on a saturday afternoon, i sure as fuck will NOT be joining you on the dress slacks and collared shirt train.

my own personal comfort desires FAR exceed my ability to give a shit about other people's judgments of my wardrobe choices.

america, fuck yeah!

This is exactly how I feel about the subject. Of course perhaps I might feel differently if I were in better shape and about 50 pounds thinner, so perhaps I wouldn't be so freaking hot and sweaty all the time the moment it tops 80 degrees.

Aaron (Glowrock)

[Handro]

Originally Posted by Baronvonellis

Yea, you don't have to wear a 3 piece suit and top hat in public, but you can easily look stylish with some slacks, nice shoes, and a collared shit. It doesn't have to be expensive if you know what to look for, and get something that fits your body shape.

If you walk around any city in Europe you would never see an adult in flip flops and cargo shorts today. In Europe, people still like to dress well in public just for their own pride, it's not 3 piece suits today, but usually people dress well. When you see people on a weekend evening going out they will dress to the nines, and I felt like a hill-billy American visiting cities in Europe haha.

I spend a considerable amount of time in Italy because my sister and her family live there and I can fly there cheaply (flight benefits!)

Even what would be considered "low" class there dress nicely. May not be suits, but well fitting jeans and a clean shoes are the pretty base standard. They are also a much slower paced, less stressed out society, which is ironic since we Americans are the ones who dress in sweatpants and hoodies everywhere. The only time I've seen people wearing American-style gym clothes in public there is on teenagers and even then it all LOOKS expensive...

Yea, dressing all day in gym clothes annoys me. First of all unless you are a professional athlete or professional trainer, you don't need special gym clothes, I can work out just fine in any old t-shirt.

Sure you can, but it's much more comfortable to workout in good quality, well fitting gym clothes. I don't have all the latest under armor stuff and wear my fair share of old tees to the gym, but it does make a difference.

[Baronvonellis]

Originally Posted by Handro

I spend a considerable amount of time in Italy because my sister and her family live there and I can fly there cheaply (flight benefits!)

Even what would be considered "low" class there dress nicely. May not be suits, but well fitting jeans and a clean shoes are the pretty base standard. They are also a much slower paced, less stressed out society, which is ironic since we Americans are the ones who dress in sweatpants and hoodies everywhere. The only time I've seen people wearing American-style gym clothes in public there is on teenagers and even then it all LOOKS expensive...

Yea, it is so nice in Italy, their pace of life is really nice! People seem to have time to sit in cafes seemingly all day. But it's not just in Italy, I remember even in Denmark it seemed like people were having endless lunches in cafes there as well.

[Kenmore]

people love to talk about the loop/downtown as the "economic engine" of the city as means of hand waving over neighborhood disinvestment, it's just trickle down garbage

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by Kenmore

people love to talk about the loop/downtown as the "economic engine" of the city as means of hand waving over neighborhood disinvestment, it's just trickle down garbage

Lol gentrification is the trickle buddy boy, all sorts of previously depressed areas with massive levels of segregation are being uplifted and the segregation is being busted.

But we already know you don't want that, you need segregation and concentrated poverty to keep your preferred candidates in power...

[Buckman821]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Lol gentrification is the trickle buddy boy, all sorts of previously depressed areas with massive levels of segregation are being uplifted and the segregation is being busted.

But we already know you don't want that, you need segregation and concentrated poverty to keep your preferred candidates in power...

Seriously, you can't have your misery both ways!

Complains about neighborhood disinvestment then complains even harder when neighborhood investment occurs

There really is no pleasing some people.

[Chisouthside]

I mean you can argue that the focus on downtown was an economic necessity to keep Chicago from majorly declining but at the same time you can't deny this has also had disastrous effects on huge swaths of the city.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Chisouthside

I mean you can argue that the focus on downtown was an economic necessity to keep Chicago from majorly declining but at the same time you can't deny this has also had disastrous effects on huge swaths of the city.

Pretty much. As I've been saying for quite awhile on here, the city has been in the middle of an economic shift for at least a decade. The types of jobs that have replaced those lost before are more white collar.

Whether you like it or not, a lot of companies opt for more urban, walkable, etc. Locations these days. In the case of Chicago a lot of this is downtown. The mayor's office doesn't have to twist anyone's arm to get them to put an office downtown.

The areas that have been disinvested in are not ones where a company like Google is going to put an office. And if they did, then there would be huge gentrification calls there most likely.

Most of the companies downtown and ones who have moved downtown are ones that would probably be met with negatively if they located instead to disinvested neighborhoods.

So whether you like it or not, downtown is going to continue to grow with offices because no company wants to be met with protesters for merely putting an office there because of threats of gentrification and most companies are not going to put their employees in danger if you are talking about some of the more dangerous levels.

The city could probably incentivize NOT going downtown, but don't expect the name brand companies and/or ones with a lot of money to follow suit... I'm talking about companies priding themselves on being in dynamic urban environments.

So the investment in these areas need to not be "Amazon is opening an office in a disinvested area".. it needs to be something else that allays these fears

[Via Chicago]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Lol gentrification is the trickle buddy boy, all sorts of previously depressed areas with massive levels of segregation are being uplifted and the segregation is being busted.

But we already know you don't want that, you need segregation and concentrated poverty to keep your preferred candidates in power...

you honestly believe gentrification somehow solves poverty and segregation rather than sweeping it to another area that is in that moment less desirable to the gentry/capital? people can support economic growth that dosent also come at the expense of displacing the very people it is supposed to serve (i.e. current residents). gentrfication is literally the battle of the affluent against the poor. guess who wins that matchup everytime, and who's favor the odds are intentionally rigged? banks and other financial institutions are the primary causes and beneficiaries of gentrification. youre more interested in property rather than people, and at worst are conflating the two as the same thing.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

you honestly believe gentrification somehow solves poverty and segregation rather than sweeping it to another area that is in that moment less desirable to the gentry/capital? people can support economic growth that dosent also come at the expense of displacing the very people it is supposed to serve (i.e. current residents). gentrfication is literally the battle of the affluent against the poor. guess who wins that matchup everytime, and who's favor the odds are intentionally rigged? banks and other financial institutions are the primary causes and beneficiaries of gentrification. youre more interested in property rather than people, and at worst are conflating the two as the same thing.

Are you arguing that the effects of rolling price increases in Pilsen, for example, hasn't made hundreds of previously low or middle income Mexican families millionaires? No one living in Pilsen or Logan Square has benefited from improving schools or reduced crime? How many Latino teens that have grown up in Logan Square are NOT dead that would have been killed in gang activity that was disrupted merely by the introduction of Gentry which has zero fear of "snitches get stitches"?


The problem with your theory about gentrification simply pushing poverty around is that it's empirically wrong. Studies have shown over and over again that people aren't actually displaced very often by gentrification and that, by in large, outflows of one group or another do not happen at a faster rate in gentrifying areas than they do in any other area. Here's a massive decade long study from the Philly Fed of 100 metros backing exactly what I'm saying up:

https://www.city-journal.org/gentrif...social-justice

There's having an opinion and then there's spitting unthe face of science. I view the anti Gentrification crowd as science loving and climate denier or anti vaxers. They deny reality. We can and do measure the effects of development in the inner city. We've done it for 100 years and there are very few studies indicating that redevelopment does anything other than improve schools and reduce crime for EVERY resident of the area.

[Via Chicago]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Are you arguing that the effects of rolling price increases in Pilsen, for example, hasn't made hundreds of previously low or middle income Mexican families millionaires? No one living in Pilsen or Logan Square has benefited from improving schools or reduced crime? How many Latino teens that have grown up in Logan Square are NOT dead that would have been killed in gang activity that was disrupted merely by the introduction of Gentry which has zero fear of "snitches get stitches"?


The problem with your theory about gentrification simply pushing poverty around is that it's empirically wrong. Studies have shown over and over again that people aren't actually displaced very often by gentrification and that, by in large, outflows of one group or another do not happen at a faster rate in gentrifying areas than they do in any other area. Here's a massive decade long study from the Philly Fed of 100 metros backing exactly what I'm saying up:

https://www.city-journal.org/gentrif...social-justice

There's having an opinion and then there's spitting unthe face of science. I view the anti Gentrification crowd as science loving and climate denier or anti vaxers. They deny reality. We can and do measure the effects of development in the inner city. We've done it for 100 years and there are very few studies indicating that redevelopment does anything other than improve schools and reduce crime for EVERY resident of the area.

Lol you're citing City Journal, which is funded by the Manhattan Institute?. Yea big shock a Federal Reserve study had that conclusion. As I said to begin with, gentrification favors big banks and capital first and foremost. Why would the biggest bank of all say anything different?

And here's a study with a totally different conclusion

http://maps.ncrc.org/gentrificationreport/index.html

[Khantilever]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

you honestly believe gentrification somehow solves poverty and segregation rather than sweeping it to another area that is in that moment less desirable to the gentry/capital? people can support economic growth that dosent also come at the expense of displacing the very people it is supposed to serve (i.e. current residents). gentrfication is literally the battle of the affluent against the poor. guess who wins that matchup everytime, and who's favor the odds are intentionally rigged? banks and other financial institutions are the primary causes and beneficiaries of gentrification. youre more interested in property rather than people, and at worst are conflating the two as the same thing.

Everyone can agree that there is a 'natural' tendency for neighborhoods to gravitate toward either one of two extremes--high or low income. But there are many mixed-income neighborhoods in transition, and the transition can last a very long time. And during that time, poor residents can enjoy the many benefits of richer neighborhoods--lower crime, better amenities--without initially paying the full cost.

There is a wealth of academic research coming to this conclusion. A long-established empirical finding is that there is very, very little evidence of 'displacement.' This is a counter-intuitive result, but makes sense when you consider how the vast majority of neighborhood change occurs through 'replacement' as residents come and go from neighborhoods over time. People tend to move over time as their income or family or job situations change. Gentrifying neighborhoods are characterized by lower-income residents being replaced--rather than displaced--by higher-income residents. https://www.nber.org/papers/w14036

In fact, the rate at which poor people leave gentrifying neighborhoods is *lower* than the rate at which they leave non-gentrifying neighborhoods. How do you reconcile this empirical fact with the poor being hurt by gentrification? https://www.researchgate.net/publica...y_in_the_1990s

There's a really nice working paper I saw at a recent conference which followed households over time, and found that the children of poor families living in gentrifying areas were significantly better off than those who didn't experience gentriifcation. https://www.nber.org/papers/w25809

^ Also, as an economist who has worked with Fed researchers and presented my own research there, I have to say they definitely are not biased or have some kind of agenda.

[moorhosj]

Originally Posted by Kenmore

people love to talk about the loop/downtown as the "economic engine" of the city as means of hand waving over neighborhood disinvestment, it's just trickle down garbage

The takes get worse and worse. People love to talk about the Loop being the economic engine because of analysis like Zotti's that absolutely proves it to be the case. Trying to somehow compare the network effects and business clustering of the Loop to trickle-down-economics shows you are running out of ideas. It's the mirror of people calling any government involvement "Marxism". You have become that which you claim to despise.

[Chi-Sky21]

well NOT having those jobs in the city center sure is not going help those neighborhoods

[marothisu]

^ the issue of why it hurts isn't really one that could be applied to any city. I think as the prices go up in the neighborhoods that everyone wants to live in, that they'll look to other areas. That might already be happening as LVDW has on his own properties.

In chicago, a 23 year old who can only afford $750/mo might actually still be able to live in Lake View. On the flip side, you can take NYC as an example. A lot of people have moved to areas in Queens and Brooklyn simply because the prices are too high in the areas they might want to live. This has led to gentrification in areas that 20 years ago nobody would have thought twice about moving as a "young professional"

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by marothisu

In chicago, a 23 year old who can only afford $750/mo might actually still be able to live in Lake View.

^ I don't know.....if you're charging only $750/month for your apartment in Lakeview it means that either:

1. Your apartment is an utter piece of shit the size of a shoebox
2. You're leaving money on the table because you're a horrible businessman
3. Your apartment isn't really in Lakeview
4. You bought your building in 1966, have dementia, and still think it's 1966
5. You were drunk when you signed that lease.

Has to be one of the above

[Buckman821]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ I don't know.....if you're charging only $750/month for your apartment in Lakeview it means that either:

1. Your apartment is an utter piece of shit the size of a shoebox
2. You're leaving money on the table because you're a horrible businessman
3. Your apartment isn't really in Lakeview
4. You bought your building in 1966, have dementia, and still think it's 1966
5. You were drunk when you signed that lease.

Has to be one of the above

Or, you know...roommates.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Buckman821

Or, you know...roommates.

Obviously, but I was talking about whole apartments.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Oh and I can vouch for the fact that my buildings in little village seem to wind up with an almost perfect distribution of Chicagos demographics on a block that used to be 95% Latino. I average about 30% black, 30% white, and 30% Latino with 10% Asian or other in my properties. I have transexual tenants, gay tenants, straight married tenants, large families, people with no kids, veterans, people who were previously homeless addicts at one point, etc. The result of my investments has unequivocally been wayyy more diversity than the previous hardcore segregation...