The Battle of Lincoln Park: Urban Renewal and Gentrification in Chicago

Hertz, a research director at the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago-based nonprofit think tank, uses the history of Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood to examine the dynamics of gentrification in this rote case study. Lincoln Park’s beginnings were modest: in the 1940s, “rehabbers,” middle-class residents in search of stable property values and the convenience, diversity, and character of an urban setting, began fixing up rundown homes on Chicago’s North Side. The rehabbers’ vision of a socially diverse community was quickly abandoned, Hertz explains, as their restoration of the neighborhood made it newly attractive to white, middle-class families who might otherwise have stayed in the suburbs, but instead moved in and pursued their own neighborhood improvement program, displacing low-income and working-class residents. What happened on Chicago’s North Side has occurred again and again, Hertz writes, in such places as New York and New Orleans. But acknowledging gentrification’s long history, Hertz argues, does not mean accepting it as natural: “Neighborhood change in Lincoln was not mainly the result of individuals’ actions but of economic, political, and social systems,” Hertz writes. “Many people worked hard to make Lincoln Park a predominantly white, middle-class community.” Though lacking narrative flair, this is nonetheless a cogent and concise study of how one neighborhood has changed drastically over time. [em](Oct.) [/em]