A Peculiar Divide
Age is a funny thing. I remember being age 9 and thinking I’ll be the coolest and most mature person ever just once I enter my teenage years. Of course, I realized by that point that perhaps my angsty middle schooler brain was still not at the pinnacle of formation. Nor was I yet a particularly legitimate human in the eyes of many institutions. Now that I am 24 years of age, I’m just a little gap away from the last right that truly matters in my view - not paying through the roof for a rental car. Between having the full ability to operate independently and bringing youthful energy to the table, it’s understandable that many people around my age consider this to be an ideal time in life. But while I’m not looking forward to knee pain or falling behind the latest tech, I think it’s more than a cliché that age brings wisdom that is difficult to come up with in a more limited timeframe.
Elderly wisdom really comes in handy for understanding complex urban dynamics. It’s easy to just see a city for how it is today, but one can never fully explain the circumstances of the present without a comprehensive view of past events that led up to the status quo. Recent transplants may be equally as valid in the eyes of the law and have a better awareness of certain areas than elderly residents, such as the business climate and nightlife scene. But no major city on Earth is solely defined by this class of residents. Long-standing inhabitants aren’t just great for telling interesting history - in many cases, their own life stories are an integral component of said history through movement between neighborhoods, involvement in local organizations and engagement with political institutions. They’ve had several times as long as us to learn, interact and get involved where it matters, largely prior to the age of the internet when circles of community started to take on a more nebulous meaning.
I have long been friends via my mother with a bona fide Chicagoan by the name of Judith Sayad. Her name is reflective of her mixed Jewish-Assyrian heritage, perhaps an unlikely combination in her infancy as she was born over 70 years ago, but nonetheless reflective of two groups that exist in big numbers in Chicagoland and often in the same communities. She grew up between the North Side and Cicero, an inner ring suburb of Chicago that has all the transit access, proximity to the Loop and layered corruption that the city itself tends to possess. At the time the town was heavily Italian, and the US defeating the Nazis not too long before was unfortunately not quite sufficient for Judith to avoid antisemitic bullying in school. I’ve long been intrigued by her stories of archaic ethnic tensions, troublemakers in her community “going legit” by scoring jobs within local government, consequential decisions in terms of changing policing priorities and so much more. This past weekend I had the pleasure to meet with her and a friend at Judith’s West Rogers Park place. The friend’s name is Wandy - she is middle aged, of Puerto Rican heritage, and grew up between Chicago, California and the home island. They both contributed to a highly enlightening dialogue about how the Windy City has evolved over the decades.
Judith has a lovely condo near Kedzie and Touhy in West Rogers Park. She was in her pajamas so she wasn't too keen on getting photos of herself. But we had a lovely time watching her neighbors go by on her front porch.
We talked first about what positive changes have been felt during this timespan. Judith and Wandy certainly agree that the lack of explicit forms of segregation these days is a marked improvement from the past. While I doubt many are surprised to hear that such practices were implemented to exclude African-Americans, this was by no means the only relevant dividing line. Developments in certain areas were explicitly marketed just for Italians, Poles, Jews, and whoever else the neighborhood was all but exclusively known for. Wandy grew up in Chicago's historic hub of Puerto Rican culture in Humboldt Park, but she praises that people of her shared background are no longer limited to living in this neighborhood, and that the area itself is not as violent as it was when she was a child.
Judith told me how her own far North Side condo building is part of an enormous complex which was built on a former garbage site, largely receiving South Side Jewish residents who sold their homes in the 1960s as their neighborhoods’ racial demographics rapidly changed. These days there is hardly any part of the city’s northernmost neighborhoods that is a true ethnic ghetto - in almost every instance there are at least a couple of distinct groups living side by side. West Rogers Park still has a huge Jewish population of which Judith is a part, but her building directory demonstrates a diverse array of Arab, Slavic, African, Hispanic names and more in addition to likely Jewish ones.
A racial map of West Rogers Park (AKA West Ridge) and Rogers Park from 2020.
Blue = White majority/plurality, Green = Black,
Orange = Hispanic, Red = Asian (primarily South Asian)
(The largely White community in the northwest side of the area is primarily Hasidic Jewish)
Source: bestneighborhood.org
While much of Chicago has remained rather segregated in practice even after explicit housing discrimination became illegal, greater Rogers Park is perhaps the best example of the opposite. It’s an area well known for a multitude of populations who have left very visible impacts much like the Jewish population has - various commercial corridors offer representation from countries as far and wide as India, Pakistan, Mexico, Jamaica, Iraq, Bosnia and Belize. They’re all sufficiently distributed among one another that interactions across disparate ethnicities are far more harmonious than one might expect given some respective geopolitical tensions.
Even in higher rent parts of town that are far more ethnically homogeneous, the reality these days is that those who don’t match the typical description can generally still buy their way into the neighborhood with the right income and credit score. This certainly wasn’t always the case - Judith has frequently told me about how many considered a singular black household on their block to be their doom no matter the family’s means or personality, a scenario which was often prevented via racially restrictive covenants. While she of course considers the current situation to be better than the alternative, she also had much to say about how residential patterns have evolved into a new but still troubling form. She presented a very unique take on the forces of gentrification that occur today, going beyond a purely economic or purely racial lens. She explained how she has seen a phenomenon of consolidation all across the city, and not just among the young new class with great financial means. Catholic churches, Jewish schools, immigrant cultural centers and more have gone from having several branches serving dense ethnic pockets scattered about, to existing in proximity to one another as various communities have centralized themselves in a select few neighborhoods or suburbs.
It may be a bit perplexing then that, anecdotally speaking, said groups are actually more likely than before to have significant neighborly relations with people of other backgrounds. Would more of them than ever in a specific area not mean that the environment is more homogenous than whatever smaller community they came from? Well, essentially what has happened is that many of these groups have gone from living in areas that comprise small, scattered singular tiles in Chicago’s social mosaic to being woven into larger and more complex patches of fabric but in a specific part of the map. There’s also the issue of urban flight - for communities that have been around for generations, their institutions within Chicago city limits often have the best shot of surviving if they’re at the edges of the city because they retain participation from folks who have left their original neighborhoods for nearby suburbs. Between these facts and rising rents in more central parts of the city, it makes sense that this pattern of ethnic consolidation is not immediately visible in many of Chicago’s most famous neighborhoods. With that being said, it is worth mentioning a major exception - Mexican-Americans are so numerous around here that they possess major centers of gravity on the North Side, Northwest Side, Southwest Side, Southeast Side and countless suburbs both near and far.
In the case of West Rogers Park, Judith attests to the increasing number of Jewish institutions operating around her. A few decades ago, there was some variety in terms of how the community’s various Jewish folks practiced the religion. Judith is now a very rare Jew in the neighborhood whose level of observance doesn’t even reach forgoing pork. The vast majority are now highly devout Hasidic populations who wear traditional dress, strictly observe Shabbat and have their own ecosystem of institutions albeit usually sitting adjacent to those for Muslims, Hindus and more. Hasidic Jews are moving to the neighborhood from far and wide, attracted by already-existent community organizations that cater to their practices and walkable infrastructure which bodes well for not operating vehicles on Shabbat. While this kind of internal migration is all well within the freedoms of our fellow Americans, Judith laments that there are no religious services left for those who take a more relaxed approach to adherence - you would have to visit nearby suburbs for that in today’s circumstances.
Judith provided an enlightening perspective on gentrification which relates to the phenomenon of ethnic consolidation that she too described. If you swap the temples and private schools for music venues and bars, concentrations of yuppies give off a similar vibe in their residential patterns. Usually this class of individuals doesn’t have much in the way of a shared ethnic identity besides being broadly American in some way, but other identity factors have come into play in its place. Boystown is the epicenter for the gay community, Logan Square for those who rock a hipster aesthetic, West Loop for middle aged empty nesters, you name it. Similarly to current ethnic distributions, these boundaries are not necessarily strictly defined. Nobody is surprised to see gay folks spilling north to Uptown or Logan Square hipsters “discovering” nearby Avondale and Hermosa. There may be some jarring divides like how Wrigleyville’s Clark Avenue gives off significantly more heterosexual vibes than Boystown’s Halsted just a few blocks east, but it’s not like days of old where social divisions were enforced with the not-so-implicit threat of a beatdown if you cross the wrong street.
Here’s where a tough pill to swallow comes if you’re part of this class of yuppies - as per Judith’s argument, their presence hasn’t done a great job of keeping neighborhoods economically stable. There’s nothing “destabilizing” about having young people with a decent amount of disposable income distributed around the city, but she makes the point that the very different buying habits of non-families do not make for a very sustainable model of hyper-local urban development if they’re heavily concentrated in certain spots. While many such residents do not own cars and favor walkable environments over car-oriented urban design, which should in theory invigorate local commercial stretches, there are many types of goods that they simply do not purchase often enough compared with families to keep small enterprises running. Judith gives the example of how she only needs new shoes every couple years, while one small family would need to buy shoes every few months for growing children. There’s no doubt that opportunities for leisure activities go up with gentrification, but practical needs can often become more difficult to fulfill than when the neighborhood received less attention. Families are less likely to move frequently or care much for “flavor of the month” type trends, which is conducive to greater life expectancies for local businesses if they sell the right essentials.
We also got into how the presence of families is important for safety. Sure such a thought may conjure up some Karen-like images, but on a practical level parents have a major incentive to ensure their surrounding environments are friendly enough to be suitable for children. I personally find myself willing to take far more risks as a lone individual than when I’m responsible for others - I would hope that any decent parent would attest to the same sentiment. Just by virtue of being a parent putting their child through local schooling, they’ve had ample time and interactions with various institutions to figure out nuanced knowledge of what goes down in the area and how best to avoid trouble. And while property values may not be the most altruistic reason to care about security, it is the simple truth that families with a home to their own name have a powerful financial incentive to keep the peace.
Allow me to preface this next point by emphasizing my love for walkable, bikeable and transit-friendly cities. Chicago is truly a mixed bag in this regard, with some neighborhoods being located in suburb-like transit deserts where not having a car would be a major struggle, while others have low car ownership rates despite high average incomes. But however you cut it, there are not many families living within the city who don’t own a car if they can reasonably afford one. It is much easier to operate as an individual adult when an area is somewhat flawed convenience wise - given sufficient physical ability, it’s not that much skin off one’s back to haul relatively few groceries for a mile or rent a Divvy bike to bridge transit gaps. However, as long as we’re stuck with a patchwork of limited neighborhoods that provide reasonable convenience without a car, those few ideal spots are going to be usurped by folks who don’t have as many bills to pay as parents do and are bound to provide significantly less square footage for the price than in less accessible areas.
If we want to create a sustainable model by which entire families can live in the city car-free or car-light more comfortably, we must take a more comprehensive approach than simply supporting new transit-oriented developments and calling it a day. We should also support new opportunities for family-oriented commercial development, bearing in mind that certain tasks like shopping for clothes are easier for families in brick-and-mortar locations than online shopping which our fully grown selves might instead resort to out of convenience. New residential developments ought to have not only affordable units, but also some that are of a sufficient size for something like 4 to 6 people. Safety and reliability of public transit is a goal that any sane person would strive for, but these factors become all the more important when the livelihood of small children is involved. And with all that said, we should avoid shaming families who may still need to own a car for occasional big hauls or more generally for their jobs - we can’t close every transit gap overnight, and it’s not like enthusiastic enjoyment of Chicago traffic is a common personality trait.
If there’s anything to take away from this rambling, it’s that we may not be doing enough to reap the benefits of age diversity in our urban communities. While it’s not the vicious hate-fuelled segregation of the past, self-selection in residential patterns combined with insufficient consideration of families’ needs living in the city have left much of Chicago with very few inhabitants who are either elderly or minors. This may increase the concentration of potential Hinge matches, but doesn’t bode as well for genuine neighborhood stability. And just as anybody remaining in a fading ethnic enclave would be bound to feel excluded from their community’s current lifelines, the patterns of hyper concentration of charismatic young adults in a few continuous neighborhoods that they don’t often leave can implicitly gaslight those who were born and raised in other areas of Chicago into feeling like they’re not a part of what this city truly is.
This is an interesting map that essentially shows how “local” you can expect adults to be in each part of town, both at the area level and at the specific neighborhood level. The results somewhat unsurprisingly favor neighborhoods that haven’t been on the media radar very much, particularly for the map of those not local to Chicagoland, but the census tract map tells a more complex story that also reflects significant internal migration patterns within the city.
Source: Chicago Tribune
In addition to more commonly discussed forms of diversity, it is essential for us to embrace age diversity within our urban communities and take meaningful action to cultivate a city that is inclusive and sustainable for people of all generations. We have a remarkable opportunity to strike a balance that caters to the needs of families, the elderly, and individuals from diverse backgrounds and lifestyles. This entails supporting the development of family-friendly businesses, providing affordable housing options that accommodate the needs of families, enhancing the safety and reliability of public transportation, and fostering a genuine sense of belonging for every resident. By tapping into the wisdom of the elderly, the enthusiasm of the youth, and the collective experiences of different communities, we can construct a city that thrives on inclusivity, stability, and a shared sense of identity for our mutual benefit.
More articles coming soon!