Physical Barriers Defining Chicago Neighborhoods

In the novel The Great Gatsby, a book focused on economic classes in the 1920s, two neighboring communities are the setting for the story. Separated by a bay, the community of West Egg on one side and the community of East Egg on the other. West Egg is a neighborhood filled with "new money" and is much less fashionable than East Egg, where all of the glamorous, old money resides. Throughout the novel, the difference between the two are strongly emphasized, each town virtually defining the characters residing in it.

The separation between the communities is by a vast, gorgeous bay, which prevents the two neighborhoods from mingling. I found this description to be extremely similar to the city of Chicago and its neighborhoods of Hyde Park and Englewood. Hyde Park is a neighborhood that houses the prestigious University of Chicago, and is known as a well-respected, sought out upper class community that is virtually all white. To the west of the community is Washington Park, which is a large community park which separates itself from Englewood: a community that is made up of over 98% African Americans and is considered the most dangerous neighborhood in the city and the most dangerous in the country in 2010. My American Studies class actually drove through the neighborhood of Hyde Park, through Washington Park, and into Englewood. Through this experience, we really got to understand the extreme differences between the two communities.

Many believe that this park, like many other natural barriers within the city, are purposefully created to separate different communities. This is to prevent violence in the upper class neighborhoods inflicted by their neighbors and to prevent the converging of the communities. Do you find that physical barriers have an overall positive outcome on the city? Is it detrimental to the two communities? Is it racist or unfair?

Race-Based Public Transportation Funding

The CTA (Chicago Transit Association) has recently been questioned in their fairness in distributing funds for the different types of transportation used throughout Chicago. There are three main forms of public transportation by commuters in Chicago: CTA rail and bus or the Metra. The CTA forms of transportation are widely used by Chicago inhabitants, allowing them to travel within the city versus the Metra, which is a train for commuters from the usually white-dominant suburbs into the downtown business district.

Two commuters sued the state of Illinois, claiming that "regional funding has systematically under-funded inner-city bus and L train service for the benefit of suburban train lines, therefore denying equal transportation access to the region’s minority populations and violating federal and state law." Looking at the Distribution of Total Expenditures Chart on the left, it's clear that CTA is much more widely used then Metra (4.5 million versus 1 million). Also, the large majority of the Metra riders are white, versus on the CTA who only has 31% of non-hispanic whites--the rest are minorities. This clear difference between the two types of transportation in racial makeup raises the question: is the funding for public transportation racist? Or is it just a coincidence that the racial minorities' transportation is underfunded?

The Windy City Being Blown Away by Segregation

As we all know, Chicago is the most segregated city in the United States of America. Made up of over 200 neighborhoods and 77 community areas, it's difficult to mentally imagine just how divided up our windy city is. To the bottom right, there is an image of the Chicagoland area. Every dot that is placed on this map represents 25 people (pink=white, blue=black, green=asian, orange=hispanic) and where they live (according to the 2000 census). The black lines represent the official community area boundaries.

This image was attached with an article by The Chicagoist entitled Chicago Still the Most Segregated U.S. City. The 28% of whites maintain the majority of the north side and the suburbs of Chicago, while the black population (35%) are mostly found on the south and west sides.
When Mayor Daley was fighting for the 2016 Olympics, he said "Out of our diversity comes our city's greatest strength" (Chicago Reader). Unfortunately, diversity turns into segregation when the abundant amounts of races in a city are separated by community borders. The disruption of borders such of these can lead to extreme situations (like the race riots of 1919 in Chicago, started when an Irish man killed a black boy named Eugene Williams because he swam past his "racial boundary" into the Twenty-ninth street beach). Diversity, in many ways, is our weakness.
This constant tension between races and neighborhoods within our city creates many problems for Chicago. The disconnection and aversion from neighborhoods within a city creates discrimination against individuals, unequal treatment, and significant economic differences.


Why do you think Chicago is such a segregated city? Do you think segregation is a choice, or is it forced upon the citizens of Chicago? How would desegregating Chicago have a positive affect on the city?