What is the shadiest street stretch you have ever seen?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by The North One

IMO Much of Chicago will easily get much worse in the next 5-10 years

i might quibble with the word "much", but there is little doubt in my mind that large parts of the southside and westside black ghettos will get worse over the next decade.

chicago lost ~200,000 blacks last decade. and is on track to lose ~150,000 this decade. that trend shows all signs of continuing into the 2020s. the Urban Institute forecasts that chicago's black population will decrease another 150,000 next decade, leaving the city with around 650,000 blacks by 2030, a nearly 50% decline from a high of 1,200,000.

pretty much no one is currently moving into the areas that blacks are leaving. they're just continuing to empty out. the only prayer some of these areas might have is an inlfux of latinos priced out of gentrifying areas, but we'll see. i won't be holding my breath. some of these places are so violent and dangerous that they may have to empty completely, a la detroit's urban prairies, before anyone would even entertain the thought of living there again. and that's still decades in the future, if ever.



but your notion that the city of detroit is doing just fine while the city of chicago is floundering, overall, is too absurd to warrant a response.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

pretty much no one is currently moving into the areas that blacks are leaving. they're just continuing to empty out. the only prayer some of these areas might have is an inlfux of latinos priced out of gentrifying areas, but we'll see. i won't be holding my breath. some of these places are so violent and dangerous that they may have to empty completely, a la detroit's urban prairies, before anyone would even entertain the thought of living there again. and that's still decades in the future, if ever.

^ I've honestly pondered this scenario.

At what point does an area on the south side, say Englewood, become so depopulated that there just isn't anybody left?

Some of these areas are well served by transit, and once the gunfire and gangs are gone, you've got to imagine that they will once again be looked at as potentially livable places again and maybe even new homes will be constructed.

Sadly, they will have lost a majority of their once great building stock, and what will get built in its place will likely be a very inferior product....

[IrishIllini]

It’s a bit dramatic to say Illinois is in crisis or Chicago’s blight will worsen over the next 5-10 years, no? Regardless, neither Detroit nor Michigan are strangers to losses. It seems both states and metros are stable for the most part. It does feel like the bad will get worse but the good will continue to get better in both circumstances. The issues plaguing Chicago and Illinois are quite different than those of Detroit or Michigan, although there are glaring similarities between the two. Overall Chicago is a more dynamic city and a decent model for Detroit. If anything, I’d think Detroit benefits from a stronger Chicago.

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ I've honestly pondered this scenario.

At what point does an area on the south side, say Englewood, become so depopulated that there just isn't anybody left?

Some of these areas are well served by transit, and once the gunfire and gangs are gone, you've got to imagine that they will once again be looked at as potentially livable places again and maybe even new homes will be constructed.

Sadly, they will have lost a majority of their once great building stock, and what will get built in its place will likely be a very inferior product....

I’d rather it remain undeveloped parkland and infill directed to surrounding neighborhoods. It’d be pretty cool to have the L running through a large urban forest.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

pretty much no one is currently moving into the areas that blacks are leaving. they're just continuing to empty out. the only prayer some of these areas might have is an influx of Latinos priced out of gentrifying areas, but we'll see. i won't be holding my breath. some of these places are so violent and dangerous that they may have to empty completely, a la Detroit's urban prairies, before anyone would even entertain the thought of living there again. and that's still decades in the future, if ever.

Are there any black neighborhoods turning over into Latino neighborhoods? I mean, I see there are neighborhoods which are a mix, like Humboldt Park and Chicago Lawn, but I wasn't sure who was moving in and who was moving out.

I do wonder if there were any Metra stops whatsoever between Hyde Park and 27th Street (say Oakland) if the convenience would help gentrify the area.

[iheartthed]

I think both Chicago and Detroit have struggled to manage sprawl suburban sprawl, and that has sapped urban vitality away from both cities. It's been far more pronounced in Detroit, to the point of almost completely wiping the city out. But I think they both have the same fundamental problem.

[subterranean]

If by "struggled to manage" you mean "not managed at all," then you'd be right.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I do wonder if there were any Metra stops whatsoever between Hyde Park and 27th Street (say Oakland) if the convenience would help gentrify the area.

there is a stop at 47th st. in kenwood, but yeah that 20 block (2.5 miles) gap between 27th and 47th is egregious.

there is a move afoot to get metra's electric district to operate more like a CTA el line as opposed to commuter rail, and some infill stops along in that gap would be a good idea if that happens.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I think both Chicago and Detroit have struggled to manage sprawl suburban sprawl.

yeah, that describes most places in america. i mean fuck, look at the entire sunbelt.

chicago's and detroit's specific woes are much more tied to deindustrialization and racism.

[JManc]

I think Chicago has held its own despite all its challenges and hearing people around here talk about it, you'd think it was Caracas with a hockey team and halfway decent pizza. I've been there a number of times and I saw a prosperous town in transition on multiple fronts.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by JManc

I think Chicago has held its own despite all its challenges and hearing people around here talk about it, you'd think it was Caracas with a hockey team and halfway decent pizza. I've been there a number of times and I saw a prosperous town in transition on multiple fronts.

of course.

chicago is the most thorough "tale of two cities" in the nation at the moment.

the parts of town that visitors see are indeed quite nice and prosperous.

but the forlorn and violent parts of chicago that outsiders almost never venture to are among the worst to be found anywhere in the developed world.

[the urban politician]

The state of affairs of poor areas in America is what always grips me.

We have one of the most prosperous nations on earth, and yet our poor areas are just....half vacant. They aren't characterized so much by squalor or overcrowding like the rest of the world's poor areas. They are characterized by being semi-abandoned.

If you go to a developing country like India or Pakistan, you will actually see large amounts of masonry, multilevel new construction in areas that have per-capita incomes a mere fraction of some of Chicago's lowest income neighborhoods. Think about that. New, multistory buildings being built left and right, in areas with WAY higher poverty rates and much lower per capita pay rates. Yet go down to Englewood and you'll scarcely see anything new getting built whatsoever without massive Government subsidies.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

The state of affairs of poor areas in America is what always grips me.

We have one of the most prosperous nations on earth, and yet our poor areas are just....half vacant. They aren't characterized so much by squalor or overcrowding like the rest of the world's poor areas. They are characterized by being semi-abandoned.

If you go to a developing country like India or Pakistan, you will actually see large amounts of masonry, multilevel new construction in areas that have per-capita incomes a mere fraction of some of Chicago's lowest income neighborhoods. Think about that. New, multistory buildings being built left and right, in areas with WAY higher poverty rates and much lower per capita pay rates. Yet go down to Englewood and you'll scarcely see anything new getting built whatsoever without massive Government subsidies.

The answer is simple: building codes.

If we allowed shantytowns to be built, there would be plenty of market- rate low income housing.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by eschaton

The answer is simple: building codes.

If we allowed shantytowns to be built, there would be plenty of market- rate low income housing.

But that's just it, I kid you not--in Pakistan they aren't building "shantys". Sure, these buildings probably wouldn't pass Chicago's strict building code, but they aren't exactly hastily thrown together mud-brick walls covered by layers of sheet metal either.

There is more going on here. Labor costs? Lower crime? Less mobility of the poor?

[SIGSEGV]

Population growth? I'm in Romania right now (not a poor country but not super rich either) and there is plenty of abandonment in the countryside and smaller towns. Romania's population has been declining for a while now (emigrants like me don't help of course...).

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

But that's just it, I kid you not--in Pakistan they aren't building "shantys". Sure, these buildings probably wouldn't pass Chicago's strict building code, but they aren't exactly hastily thrown together mud-brick walls covered by layers of sheet metal either.

There is more going on here. Labor costs? Lower crime? Less mobility of the poor?

I don't think labor costs enter into it much. I mean, construction workers make way more here, but so do poor people in general. And virtually all smaller scale residential construction in the U.S. is nonunion anyway.

The biggest differences are due to the U.S. having incredibly strict building codes, a long with zoning and permitting related costs. Pretty much as soon as the U.S. invented codes in the early 20th you saw the invention of subsidized housing.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

yeah, that describes most places in america. i mean fuck, look at the entire sunbelt.

chicago's and detroit's specific woes are much more tied to deindustrialization and racism.

Definitely a lack of response to deindustrialization by the policymakers plus using racism to cover up their ineptitude. I think it's a little unique to the Midwest though. The biggest Northeast cities responded to deindustrialization fairly successfully, while midwest cities just seem to have just prayed for it to go away. Detroit not only did nothing to control sprawl, but mind-bogglingly, actually encouraged it through excessive freeway construction and pro-greenfield development policies. Chicago probably wasn't as bad, but from the postmortems I read on Chicago after the 2010 census, it seems like there is still little being done to curb greenfield development in exurbia.

This is much glossed over issue of why Rust Belt metropolises have declined so much, when most of them still retain somewhere close to their regional peak populations.

So this image shows the urbanized area of Detroit at 1900, 1950, and 2000.


Source: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2013/07/...nto-this-mess/

What's interesting is that between 1900 and 1950, Detroit's urbanized area looks like it roughly doubled, while population sextupled in that same time. Since 1950, it's been the complete opposite, with the urbanized area quadrupling or quintupling, and the population having only grown by 30%.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

We have one of the most prosperous nations on earth, and yet our poor areas are just....half vacant.

I think it can be argued that our poor areas are half vacant because we're, overall, extremely prosperous.

It isn't coincidental that the deterioration of our inner cities happened concurrent with the postwar economic boom and large income gains. Those inner city residents didn't disappear, they moved to larger homes on the fringe, with (in their view) higher overall quality of life.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Chicago probably wasn't as bad, but from the postmortems I read on Chicago after the 2010 census, it seems like there is still little being done to curb greenfield development in exurbia.

the market and geography have taken care of some of that. greenfield development in exurban chicago over the past 10 years is nothing like it was back in the '70s/'80s/'90s.

chicagoland has bloated itself to such absurd proportions that at a certain point, too far is simply too fucking far.

[mousquet]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Population growth? I'm in Romania right now (not a poor country but not super rich either) and there is plenty of abandonment in the countryside and smaller towns. Romania's population has been declining for a while now (emigrants like me don't help of course...).

A lot of the Romanian workforce is currently based in Western Europe as so called "travailleurs détachés". I don't even know how to translate this EU technocratic rule in English, but it roughly means they are taking advantage of better minimum wages and stuff in countries like mine, without having actually left their own places.

Once they made a bit more money out here, they purchase cheaper properties in their country. This has been something fairly common since the 2004 EU enlargement to the East.

It's true that some Bulgarian and maybe Romanian rural villages are dangerously struggling.
These are facing the current global trend at an even faster rate because their welfare states can't afford to subsidize their remote rural areas.
However, growth in urban areas out there would be something like twice faster than in Western Europe on average, because they still have so much to do to recover from the Soviet Union.

That's about it.