A surge in violence in the midst of the COVID pandemic has appalled Chicagoans, leaving in its wake broken lives and bankrupted businesses. Much of it is symptomatic of a different problem, though. Crime is concentrated in low-income communities and only occasionally spills over into other neighborhoods. This is not unique to Chicago; poor people are much more likely to commit crimes. Disinvestment and depopulation have gone hand-in-hand to blight once-thriving parts of the country, creating broken communities that drain resources and stand as tall obstacles in the path of success for children who grow up there. In Chicago, most of these communities are on the South and West sides of the city.
In many cases, this is at least partly because of the disappearance of jobs. The flow of money through a community dries up and deterioration drives more people to flee for greener pastures. In some cases, this can be compensated for by commuting, but in others there either isn’t enough access or insufficient jobs within an easy commuting distance exist for people with the skill set of those in the community. When the money in a community dries up, businesses start to leave as well in an unfortunate downward spiral.
Turning that around is a difficult proposition and requires significant investment. Even with those investments, sometimes it is not enough. Money is a limited resource, so targeting infusions based on where their effects can be maximized is paramount. Luckily, we have a little bit of data on what sorts of things help catalyze a revitalization. In Chicago, we can look to recent examples such as Wicker Park, Logan Square, and Pilsen. As their economies have grown, nearby communities have been able to enjoy some spillover benefits. Restaurants and retail stores have more customers which allows them to pay more employees who in turn spend money in the communities. The ‘velocity’ of money (how quickly a dollar moves around as it is spent by various people) increases, another key sign of sustainable growth.
The key to those communities’ growth is their perception as affordable substitutes for other already-vibrant neighborhoods. It started with good restaurants and other amenities and culminated in booming real-estate markets driving more and more businesses to set up shop. More businesses means both more amenities and more jobs inside a community, making an even more attractive place to live. None of that is possible, though, without access to jobs. New residents to ‘up-and-coming’ neighborhoods don’t come in there to work, they move into a convenient place to commute to another place where more high-paying jobs exist.
For Chicago, this is the Loop. The Loop’s central location in terms of transit access make it an ideal place for a business that wants access to the largest possible cross-section of the city’s pool of talented human capital. For a community to attract more residents (a requirement for revitalization), it must have transit stops to bring residents quickly to their place of work.
Early adopters to a formerly downtrodden community want to live in a nicer apartment than they can afford in other, more expensive, parts of the city without sacrificing convenience. When jobs disappeared in those communities decades ago, amenities like good restaurants, grocery stores, and entertainment disappeared as well. Convenience requires both access to transit and those amenities near your apartment or home. This creates a chicken-or-egg scenario where skilled new residents with money would attract the businesses offering those kinds of amenities, but businesses don’t want to invest without the money those residents bring.
This is where reinvestment programs come in. Chicago’s Invest South/West initiative looks to create commercial corridors that might return downtrodden communities to their prosperous ways of decades path. It’s a good idea and, if levered properly, could result in a stronger Chicago. Small wins can build momentum for bigger private sector investors who may want to see confirmation before deploying their capital. Still, it MUST be targeted in a thoughtful way. In an ideal world, we could redevelop all of the impoverished communities at once, but this is not the world we live in. Of the three initial corridors chosen, only Englewood’s is near public transit. Without that, commute times to the office become too long and the tipping point into sustainable growth never gets reached because new residents are never attracted.
This is not to say we should never turn to those communities, but doing so before commuters move out there is a recipe for losing our investment. We need to leverage existing infrastructure wherever possible so we have a bigger lever when we try to do the heavier lifting. Eventually, we can use revitalized South and West Side communities near transit stops to attract more businesses looking to sell their services to those future economic centers or utilize skilled workers there.
Employers become the centerpiece of redevelopment as they bring jobs into the communities themselves, but that can only happen after certain parameters are met. Access to a pool of employees with the skills that employers need is perhaps the most important one. The existence of transit infrastructure also expands that pool of employees. If it is a business that needs to be near its customers (think retail or service sector like accounting), the existence of potential customers with enough money to afford their goods or services is also necessary. The first businesses servicing those neighborhoods will also be price-conscious; affordable real-estate is perhaps the easiest part, but can be subverted when too many people cry gentrification and attempt to block development.
The blueprint for redevelopment is a short list, but each item is easier said than done. Bringing in amenities before people move in is a tall order and nobody wants to take public transportation if they don’t feel safe doing so. Still, it’s important to have some sort of guiding light. Otherwise, we are fumbling around in the dark and that helps precisely no one.