Logan Square: Bonafide Gentrified

For this first unit of our Humanities class this year, Journalism, we learned about the core values of journalism, how impactful news can be, and the different ways you can consume it smartly. We read the book Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago by LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, and we attended several digital workshops from Northwestern Medill University on journalism. To show our understanding of the core values of journalism, we were tasked with writing a spot story about a topic of our choice based on small interviews we did earlier in the term, and my choice was to write a spot story about gentrification in Logan Square, the neighborhood I've lived in all my life. Below is that story.

Ever since the year 2000, Logan Square (a small neighborhood on the Northwest side of Chicago) has faced continued gentrification accelerated by the popular 606 trail, conversions of historic multifamily units into single-family homes and new luxury developments near public transit.

Like Wicker Park, Logan Square used to be a hub of European immigrants in the 1950’s. In the 1960s, an influx of Hispanics moved in and in the 1980s, artists claimed Bucktown as their haven. By 1990, Hispanics made up almost two-thirds of Logan Square’s population, comprising the largest Puerto Rican, Cuban, and South and Central American populations in Chicago, together with a sizable Mexican community.

“Rising property values, taxes and rents are driving away the artists and musicians that attracted me to the neighborhood in the first place” Steve Havens, 63, a resident of Logan Square for the past two decades commented when asked about the state of the neighborhood. “It’s started to mirror neighborhoods like Wicker Park and Bucktown.”

After white residents moved from Chicago out to the suburbs, black and Latino residents occupied those neighborhoods. Logan Square was one of them. Now, as white residents are starting to move back into the city, they typically flock to neighborhoods that have access to public transit and are close to downtown. Logan Square is now a neighborhood filled with mainly white residents as the rising property values they bring with them have pushed out many longtime Latino residents.

According to census data, 19,200 Hispanic residents moved out of Logan Square between 2000 and 2014, making it the Chicago neighborhood that lost the most Hispanic residents during that period. The white population has seen a 47.6 percent increase, and as of 2017, the neighborhood’s white population has exceeded that of the Hispanic population. All this has resulted in less available affordable housing stock for longtime and low-income residents.

“It’s a diverse neighborhood- whether you’re talking about socio-economic, old and young families, and even ethnicity-wise. Or, it was, at least.” Lori Keen, 59 stated, another longtime resident of Logan Square. She’s been living here for two decades now, long enough to see the changes that the community has experienced over time.

People clearly aren’t happy with all of these changes. So what's being done about it? Not much, frankly, aside a few brave artists putting up anti-gentrification murals around the neighborhood. It’s still an ongoing issue and topic of debate here, whether or not the effects of gentrification are good or bad overall for the development of the community. The answer seems to depend on who is asked. The whiter, richer side of the neighborhood tend to agree that it’s a good thing and good for business. On the Latino side of the neighborhood, the majority of them are against the new changes brought by gentrification.

The Pink Wall, by Josue Pellot, located at 2110 N Milwaukee Ave. 


In conclusion, I thought that this action project was actually really interesting to research for. It was, regrettably, a little bit limited by the Covid-19 pandemic going on, but it was still cool to learn some more about my own neighborhood and what people around me think of it. I think the hardest part of this Action Project was actually finding the right data to use for the article, and the best part about it was getting to talk about where I live on a deeper level.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Walls Closing In

12 Hours of Endurance

Building With...Cacti?