Tuesday, January 1, 2013

The Atlantic on Bronzeville

The Atlantic considers Bronzeville, the neighborhood northwest of Hyde Park in Chicago. The neighborhood is relatively unique in being an example of minority gentrification.

I would add a couple of thoughts. First, I do not recall hearing the area actually called Bronzeville until after the gentrification got going. When I was a grad student at Chicago, it was just the bad neighborhood you drove through on the way from Hyde Park to Midway airport. Second, I don't think that lessons from Chicago, with its long and acrimonious racial history, necessarily generalizes to places like DC, which are full of whites who would pay to a premium to live in a stable, racailly mixed neighborhood.

1 comment:

David Barker said...

Several years ago some students I taught worked on a "real estate challenge" that involved coming up with a plan to renovate a building in Bronzeville. When I drove over to look at it a Chicago police officer pulled me over to tell me that I didn't belong in the neighborhood.