Impacts of Gentrification in New York City and Chicago
By Milo Reynoso | December 18, 2024 (Writing Contest)
Milo Reynoso
ALCS 283
Professor Tapia
12/18/24
Impacts of Gentrification in New York City and Chicago
In the twentieth century both New York City and Chicago have faced a significant change due to urbanization. Both cities have placed a large importance on the Urban Renewal Project that would improve the city through modernization. Both Chicago and New York City have chosen to forgo these projects as many white people have left the area in favor of neighboring suburbs, leaving some parts of the cities as “slums” for the marginalized communities. In an attempt to revamp the city these poorer neighborhoods have been targeted as centers for urbanization. Many of these urbanization projects have been done with the intentions of urging new people to move into the city rather than making the city better for those currently living in it, leading to significant gentrification, displacement of people, and destruction of neighborhoods and cultures.
In both cities marginalized communities became expendable factors for modernization. In New York City Robert Moses had not looked fondly at the peoples whose livelihoods he was destroying, saying that the process was a “legal tool for dispersing undesirable populations” (Londońo, 32). In Chicago the marginalized communities affected were held to the same regard as those in New York were, “Mexicans and Puerto Ricans became expendable populations, experiencing repeated dislocations that dispersed them across multiple neighborhoods and geographic communities in the urban core” (Fernández, 9). Both cities were able to target marginalized communities like the latinx communities as their centers for modernization because of the fact that they were considered less valuable compared to the white neighborhoods.
In Chicago the Modernization project was spearheaded by Mayor Richard J. Daley who sought Urban Renewal through modernization of the “dirty slums” of the Near West Side. At the time the conditions of the near West Side were horrible as “of the neighborhood’s nearly seven hundred Puerto Rican households counted that year, 60 percent were classified as either ‘deteriorating’ or ‘dilapidated.’ Less than half occupied ‘sound’ housing with at least some private plumbing facilities. Forty-one percent of Puerto Rican households had two rooms or fewer, although over 70 percent of them had three or more people” (Fernández, 138). Mayor Daley had chosen to target the slums that most marginalized communities occupied (the city’s segregation meant that much of the area was redlined and significantly less developed in comparison to the white neighborhoods where its residents are offered more opportunity for work and social mobility.
His urban renewal was grounded in racial discrimination as city planners targeted areas where Puerto Ricans would move around to in Chicago therefore repeatedly displacing the group in favor of “urban renewal, highway constructions, and public housing complexes” (Fernández, 132). Large portions of the Near West Side had been destroyed in order for the modernization project to happen and the people living there were displaced. “The city prided itself on being a leader in urban renewal nationwide. It boasted that it had cleared seventy-five thousand dilapidated housing units from 1952 to 1962. It did not explain the fact that housing units erected in its place was usually not affordable for previous occupants (unless it was public housing), nor did it explain where those previous residents went” (pg. 141). According to Fernández, an estimated 900 families were displaced from the North-LaSalle site by the urbanization project led by the Chicago Land Clearance Commission (Fernández, 141). Public housing for those displaced by city destroying slums but the building though looked good very often cheaply/quickly made so had integral issues and alienated residents from the rest of downtown or regular neighborhoods geographically (didn’t suit families as children could not play outside). Mayor Daley’s modernization project reflected that of Robert Moses’ as they both dreamed of building a modern city, however it was built on a foundation of racial segregation (Fernández, 92-3). Mayor Daley “preserved the city’s white neighborhoods and business districts by building racial separation into the very concrete of the city. New developments—housing, highways, and schools—were built where they would serve as a barrier between white neighborhoods and the black ghetto” (Fernández, 93). What solidified the legacy of both Daley and Moses was not their goals to develop the city, but their aspirations to do so by negatively affecting already existing residents in favor of new wave domestic migrants and white residents.
Robert Moses had similarly displaced a large number of residents in favor of his modernization aspirations, “residents and commercial establishments in some fifty blocks from the Prospect Expressway to 65th Street, were displaced to make way for construction and expansion (Muñiz, 71). Title I of the Federal Housing Act of 1949 allowed Moses to spend billions of public dollars to leave “thousands homeless, forcing them to relocate to other parts of the city” (Muñiz, 64). Muñiz claims that the urbanization project was able to occur because the city’s local government had purchased large sections leading to the mass eviction of residents and the demolition of countless buildings. “The destruction of old or ‘useless’ structures paved the way for the construction of some public works and buildings, enabling private developers to make huge profits. New office buildings were erected, residential and non-residential projects developed, including expressways, parks , stadiums, and cultural centers. The new projects were not to provide jobs or homes for those evicted” (Muñiz, 64).
Like Daley, Robert Moses cared little for those that would be affected nor how they were to bounce back from the issues created by displacement. While the residents that were displaced were originally promised “relocation assistance” they, like those displaced in Chicago, were usually left to figure it out on their own. “Some times, they were relocated in public housing, but with simultaneous evictions in different parts of the city, tremendous pressure was placed on a mostly fully occupied alternative” (Fernàndez, 65). Those that were unable to secure public housing found themselves bouncing from place to place, avoiding the consistent urban projects all throughout the city. Many displaced residents had looked to return to their neighborhoods after construction as housing was built in attempts to house displaced families, but the new rent prices were too high for former residents. A reporter named Dan Wakefield who witnessed these events occurring in 1955 described the scene as “A new category of citizens…those who moved from condemned site to condemned site, in a seemingly endless round” (Fernàndez, 65).
While things had looked bleak for latinx residents at the time, the situation allowed for a sense of community to be built. Residents banded together to fight back against the mistreatment both in New York City and Chicago. In Chicago residents created communities out of what they had by establishing “traditional hometown clubs and societies, and groups such as the Puerto Rican congress of Mutual Aid; the Latin American Association of Mutual Aid; and the Borinquen Health Club” (Fernàndez, 148). They had also established the Young Lords Organization (YLO) and the Mujeres Latinas en Accion along with many other organizations in hopes of reinforcing strength in the community and working to fight back with local governments and housing developers that had been erasing their communities without any consulting of those that would be affected. By established neighborhood communities, latinx people were able to have a voice among those who would be deciding their futures.
In New York City similar organizations and community groups had been created to resist gentrification and uneven development. Mujeres in Action is just one example of groups led by women to prevent displacements. According to Muñez women had not taken as much of an active part in electoral and government pushback but had actually focused on taking initiative in the community and voluntary deeds to support one another (Muñez, 103). Another unique way residents in New York fought back against segregation was through historical landmarking. Neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant that were experiencing mass gentrification had discovered a way in which they could resist gentrification. Residents would appeal to The Community Board Landmark Committee of their neighborhood and petition to have buildings and parts of the neighborhood be registered as historical sites so that real estate agencies would be unable to buy out the property to replace it with more expensive modernized buildings that the residents could not afford (Passell, 157).
In conclusion, in both New York City there was a movement towards incentivizing out of area whites to move into a modernized more expensive city despite the harmful outcomes that would occur to the residents (mostly poor and marginalized communities). In both cases the choice to do so had led to mass displacement and was met with significant public outcry as communities found ways to fight back against the injustice and protect their neighborhoods and communities.
Works Cited
Fernandez, Lilia. Brown in the Windy City Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago. Chicago ; University of Chicago Press, 2012. Web.
Londoño, Johana. Abstract Barrios : The Crises of Latinx Visibility in Cities. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. Web.
Muñiz, Vicky. Resisting Gentrification and Displacement : Voices of Puerto Rican Women of the Barrio. New York: Garland Pub., 1998. Print.
Passel, Aaron. Preserving Neighborhoods: How Urban Policy and Community Strategy Shape Baltimore and Brooklyn. New York, New York: Columbia University Press, 2021. Web.
