CHICAGO | General Discussions

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Are you referring to Little Village? I didn't see LV on the list on the previous page...


BTW this is great data for me as an investor. It proves that these downtrodden areas can turn around and become attractive to new residents and it proves my point that Chicago is not shrivelling like a raisin in the sun after all. People want to live here. People even want to live in "those areas", all we need to do is build it and they will come.

At some point the outside world is going to catch on to what is going on in Chicago. At some point people are going to realize this is the only great city on earth with abundant vacant proeprty near it's core. Hopefully Chicago is ready for the influx by then and prepared herself in such a way that those who have been historically systematically excluded from the benefits of landownership are best positioned to reap the rewards of this country pulling it's head from it's ass about our city.

I hate to dwell on media, but part of the reason is because most media is too naive to realize that interesting even positive things can be going on in a place with supposedly stagnant or reducing population.

As we see though - it's not true. Chicago gained population and the lakefront areas for 20 miles gained 100,000 which has become a badge of honor so far for this census for cities.

South Lawndale actually lost the most people of any community area according to the data. I calculated it last night but didn't post more. Basically the areas that lost people were around Englewood, West Englewood, Auburn Gresham, Roseland, South Chicago, etc as well as Austin, Lawndale, Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, and Lower West Side. Also a few NW areas like Portage Park and Belmont Cragin lost people while places like Jefferson Park, Dunning, and Montclare gained.

I'm just guessing by my own data that in 5 years or so areas like Portage Park might reverse this trend. They have been hot since early this year for property purchasing. We'll see though.

And as TUP indicated..imagine if there was better investment in some of these South and west side areas earlier and some things like safety could stabilize? Say what you will about Lightfoot but some of her initiatives are a very good thing for many reasons.

It'll be interesting to see how Chicago develops in the next decade. The growth is modest but thats because of only a small handful of community areas. If those were doing better,, Chicago would have probably gained 100K+ people instead.

In the meantime I'm basking in the fact that the data I've been collecting for years and telling people that there's more to what meets the eye about what's happening in Chicago is true.

The fact that the census says the city gained population is almost like a self fulfilling prophecy. A lot of people don't like to live in areas they think are in decline. Now people can see how the media has misused the prior estimates and see that actually no..Chicago is growing again and there's a reason why developers have poured billions into the city as well as suburbs.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Are you referring to Little Village?

no, not Little Village.

I was speaking of LakeView.

my apologies for the confusion.

[Chisouthside]

Lower West Side(Pilsen) also lost 2000 people, most likely due to gentrification. Instead of 6 families living in a 3 flat with 6 units you got 2 roommates in each unit.

[marothisu]

Woodlawn and South Shore combined gained another 2646 people. Chatham also gained some people. So basically the neighborhoods that make up the 20 or so miles of lakefront from 79th St all the way to the northern edge of the city with some adjacent areas a little inland gained around 100,000 people between 2010 and 2020.

Logan Square and West Town combined gained another 3717 people.

"wHy Do ThEy KeEp BuIlDiNg? ThE cItY iS lOsInG pEoPlE!!!111"

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by glowrock

I have a bit of a hard time with Avondale's population loss, with the only explanation I can come up with being the continued deconversion of 2 and 4-flats into larger units. Anyone else have a possible explanation?

Aaron (Glowrock)

As other have said, this is typical of early stage gentrification. Let me give you an example of a buddy of mine. Salesforce tech bro, wants bigger house after renting cramped one bedroom in Edgewater for five years. Moves over by me to a two bedroom that used to have two old Polish dudes living in it. That's -1 for Avondale.

Then decides to buy a few years later. Purchases a three flat with duplexed up top floor. All three units were occupied by families of 4-7 people before the bank foreclosed. The bank kicks all of them out (I know because we toured it before the bank completed the foreclosure) and sells it to my buddy empty. He renovates and keeps the top duplex for himself, rents the first floor to a hipster couple and rents the garden unit to his GFs brother.

So let's say the two single floor units had 4 people each and the top had 7 before he moved in. The building that was previously housing 15 people now houses 4 people, 5 if you count tech bros GF...

That's a loss of 10 residents in a single three flat. Now extrapolate that across hundreds of properties. This is what Carlos Rosa is encouraging by banning new construction. He doesn't want other outlets for people like my buddy to move in and apparently thinks they just won't move in if they can't buy a new condo. What he doesn't get is that every new unit he refuses to allow means one more tech bro loose on the streets to gobble up existing naturally occurring affordable housing and turn that extra unit they can't be bothered to rent out into an Airbnb. You can't stop this, there is no legal way to prevent real estate transactions on the private market. When you don't allow the private market to create new supply, existing supply is rapidly decimated as people take existing buildings and upgrade them to suit their needs.

[ChiMIchael]

^ In what fashion? Do you think Houston is going to challenge LA?

I don't think SF has ever had a major issue with prominence like Chicago. It probably won't be the end of the world when all is said is don't, but some outsiders are waiting to put Chicago among the dead or failed American cities.

[the urban politician]

^ I don't understand your question, perhaps we are talking past eachother.

I don't really care who Houston "challenges". Why is that important?

Chicago has zero hope of preventing Houston from surpassing it in population, and I actually think that has little to do with how Chicago is perceived from the outside.

[ChiMIchael]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ I don't understand your question, perhaps we are talking past eachother.

I don't really care who Houston "challenges". Why is that important?

Chicago has zero hope of preventing Houston from surpassing it in population, and I actually think that has little to do with how Chicago is perceived from the outside.

You make this claim like Houston will always have perpetually high or moderate growth while Chicago will always be treading water. While that is probable, I just don't agree that the course can't change over the next 50 years. How exactly it would change, I don't know.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by ChiMIchael

You make this claim like Houston will always have perpetually high or moderate growth while Chicago will always be treading water. While that is probable, I just don't agree that the course can't change over the next 50 years. How exactly it would change, I don't know.

^ I'm just not focused on that. I can't predict where things will be in 50 or 100 years. I'm sure that in 1900 nobody could have dreamed that an upstart town in Texas would challenge the mighty Chicago 120 years later.

All that Chicago can do is to make itself a better and more desirable place to live, visit, and do business. If it succeeds, the population will grow and more wealthy residents will come. If it doesn't, it will remain stagnant and shrink.

The focus should be on crime, making things livable and fair for business and residents, and getting its financial house in order. Everything else follows that.

[the urban politician]

^ So black population dropped by 84k from 2010-2020
It had dropped by 180k from 2000-2010. So black flight continues to slow down.

Just for kicks, if there were no black flight at all from 2010-2020, Chicago’s population now would be around 2.83 million people. That would be a much more respectable growth rate of 5%

If, from 2000-2020 Chicago had not lost ANY black residents, our current population would be 3.01 million, if everything else were equal. That would be a modest but not too shabby 3.9% growth rate in a cold weather, rustbelt city that is gentrifying like crazy.

So everything that is holding down Chicago’s growth rate has to do with black flight. Every single other group is growing. And black flight is slowing down, not speeding up, so that bodes well. I do hope that recent upticks in murders from 2020-present don’t cause black flight to re-accelerate, though...

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ So black population dropped by 84k from 2010-2020
It had dropped by 180k from 2000-2010. So black flight continues to slow down.

Just for kicks, if there were no black flight at all from 2010-2020, Chicago’s population now would be around 2.83 million people. That would be a much more respectable growth rate of 5%

If, from 2000-2020 Chicago had not lost ANY black residents, our current population would be 3.01 million, if everything else were equal. That would be a modest but not too shabby 3.9% growth rate in a cold weather, rustbelt city that is gentrifying like crazy.

So everything that is holding down Chicago’s growth rate has to do with black flight. Every single other group is growing. And black flight is slowing down, not speeding up, so that bodes well. I do hope that recent upticks in murders from 2020-present don’t cause black flight to re-accelerate, though...

I’d like to add to this post by pointing out that if you removed black population loss from 2000-2020 you get a 3.9% growth rate, and if you removed it JUST from 2010-2020 you get a 5% growth rate.

Thinking about that further, that means that the focus on black population loss is increasingly sharpening as the biggest factor hampering the city’s growth engine. It was much less clear prior to 2010, when other factors were also at play.

If growth rates go WAY up when you remove the ‘performance’ of a single demographic group, you can say that that demographic group is having a substantial impact on overall numbers.

So to summarize, 2 key things seem to be happening:

1. Black flight slowed WAY down from 2010-2020 compared to the prior decade

2. Black flight, however slowed down, increasingly became the singular reason why Chicago grew slowly from 2010 onward, whereas it may have been a more blended picture prior to that

[ChiSoxRox]

Double post.

[ChiSoxRox]

Quick screengrab of the Chicago percentage change by census tract from citypopulation.de:



Aurora noticed the number and the Mayor is planning to challenge. I could see a levelling off, but the east side of the city posted NOLA after Katrina type numbers.

[Klippenstein]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Quick screengrab of the Chicago percentage change by census tract from citypopulation.de:

I'm not sure how interesting this is to people, but those 2 big purple census tracts indicating the biggest population loss are Cook County Jail and the census tract in Englewood where they leveled all of the housing for the railroad yard expansion.

[Randomguy34]

Illinois had a massive drop in its white population by 700,000! Basically the only reason Illinois' population was roughly constant was cause of the large rise in the state's Latinx and Asian population, with many folks also identifying themselves as multi-racial: https://abc7chicago.com/us-census-20...data/10947865/

[Chisouthside]

Maybe the moderately good news will be enough to push the Tribune tower into being built

Also it's gonna be interesting to find out what's happening in Aurora but from anecdotal evidence I know alot of Mexican families moved out to aurora from the city around the early 2000s and alot of them have left and gone out into the surrounding towns.

[Halsted & Villagio]

Lots can change over time. I don’t think it is a foregone conclusion that Houston will ever pass Chicago in population. As Marothisu pointed out, all Chicago has to do is stabilize and improve a few areas of the city, and our growth would be somewhat right in line with some of the bigger growth cities. Of course, a changing of the media narrative wouldn’t hurt either.

Many thought Houston would pass Chicago with this census. How did that turn out?? Again, I would not be so fast to predict the future. Is it likely within the next 20/40 years… probably so. But then again, stranger things have happened.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Halsted & Villagio

Lots can change over time. I don’t think it is a foregone conclusion that Houston will ever pass Chicago in population. As Marothisu pointed out, all Chicago has to do is stabilize and improve a few areas of the city, and our growth would be somewhat right in line with some of the bigger growth cities. Of course, a changing of the media narrative wouldn’t hurt either.

Many thought Houston would pass Chicago with this census. How did that turn out?? Again, I would not be so fast to predict the future. Is it likely within the next 20/40 years… probably so. But then again, stranger things have happened.

The only people who thought that Houston was actually passing Chicago this Census were people who either:

1) Are bad at math.

2) Didn't actually bother to look at the trends (even those that said Chicago was losing population)

3) People so motivated to believe a narrative that they will believe anything.

The Census actually estimated Houston 's population pretty accurately. They were off by something like only 11,000 people. You can find posts in here from me or some other forum showing people even a few years ago how Houston isn't surpassing Chicago anytime until the mid 2030s basically and at this rate probably more like 2040. And by then who knows what will happen. So much can happen in the next 10 years that I'm not going to even try and predict it. Different cities but let's just think about NYC in the 1970s. BIg decline from 1970 to 1980. I'm sure many people proclaimed it so dead. Nope - 20 years later in 2000 it had nearly 1 million more people than 1980. Now 20 years later it has 800,000 more than 2000. The point is - this is a long time and anything can happen. Don't count out any city or believe a city will continue at its current clip of population trend when you are talking about 20 years from now.


Also this is pretty spot on, for the most part, and entertaining

https://www.chicagotribune.com/colum...coa-story.html

[the urban politician]

I think that too many people on this site are short sighted and just want to hear any good news whatsoever, even if it’s really pretty minimal, so that they can go back to the business of rolling their eyes and scoffing at and labeling all critics—even sensible and practical ones—as knuckle dragging Trumpists who hate Chicago and want it to burn in hell.

Not that simple of a world, folks. I’m as big a Chicagophile as anyone else here, but my criticisms come from a position of loving what it could be if bad decisions didn’t keep happening over and over again. The tiny population gain really isn’t a cause for celebration, because we are still performing horribly. We need to make the city way more inviting to business and families, and not just gung-ho enthusiasts like Steely Dan and LVDW who would never think about leaving the city and region for any reason.

Chicago needs to broaden its appeal. And you start with honest discussions about what really needs to change to stop crime and lower taxes, as well as lowering barriers to business and home ownership. And yes, that means standing up to the empowered special interests who don’t want to lose their grip on this place. Good luck, because they ain’t interested in change.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

I’m as big a Chicagophile as anyone else here

Dubious claim.