Ever since I first moved to the city of Chicago in the fall of 2018, I’ve always been fascinated by the duality the city has to offer. While every city has it’s own unique neighborhoods, Chicago is the only city I know that is so deeply different depending on what side of it you’re on. Those two sides being the North and South sides.
On the North side of the city, you have a burgeoning community of white collar professionals accompanied by large scale private investment in each neighborhood from Fortune 500 companies like Google, Salesforce, and Uber. On the other side of the city, meanwhile, you have a collection of neighborhoods experiencing a mass exodus at the hands of private divestment.
When Chicago is covered in national news outlets, it is usually the crime and political corruption that takes center stage. Though crime is a problem, Chicago is far from the worst city when adjusted for population. Per 100,000 people, Nashville actually has a higher crime rate than Chicago (1,138 incidents per 100,000 vs 1,099).
What national news outlets tend to gloss over is the fact that Chicago has added over 100,000 jobs to it’s downtown over the last decade. The influx of white collar jobs to the city has continued to climb at a steady clip since the financial crisis and is only continuing to grow. As far as major American cities go, only New York rivals it from an Urban development/talent pool standpoint.
This influx of white collar jobs, though, is juxtaposed against one of the greatest shortages of manufacturing jobs this city has ever seen.
For context, American manufacturing as a whole has been on the decline since the late 1970s, with the biggest drop in jobs coming between 2000 and 2011.
With each passing decade, the prospects for private investment in neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago become increasingly hopeless. Any investment that does come to the area is largely in the form of public stimulus packages.
This reality does beg the long-term question of what is to become of the South Side of Chicago. Does it continue to unravel into Urban Decay a la Detroit Michigan, or does it undergo a revitalization a la Brooklyn New York.
If the South Lake Shore is any litmus test, the latter will be the case. The site of the soon-to-be-open Obama presidential library and skyrocketing real estate prices, the South Lake Shore has become the crown jewel of the South side. The big challenge for it’s neighbors on the South Side of the city will be building out areas with sustainable night life that could attract people who work downtown to give it a shot.
Regardless of what happens, there will likely always be a true duality to this city, like there is with most American cities. Perhaps what makes Chicago’s duality so intriguing is the scale and stakes of it. That, or I’m just biased. Probably both.
