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2023 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

6. Chicago’s Southwest Redevelopment Frontier: Pilsen and Little Village

Author : Carolina Sternberg

Published in: Neoliberal Urban Governance

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter describes Chicago’s principal urban redevelopment projects during the period of analysis, including the Planned Manufacturing Districts (PMD) zoning deregulations, the Paseo rails-to-trails project, and the demolition of Crawford coal-fired power plant. In parallel, this governance has mobilized a powerful rhetoric for the southwest side that has begun to refashion these neighborhoods and nearby blocks to support Chicago’s neoliberal global agenda. Each of these initiatives have exercised significant market pressures on the community of Pilsen and its neighbor to the west, the community of Little Village.

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previous chapter Neoliberal Governance and Chicago’s Southwest Side

next chapter An Inclusive and Equitable New Chicago?

I use the term “port of entry” to build awareness that it naturalizes the process whereby recent immigrants settle upon arrival, only to later move on and be replaced by a new demographic (Magallón 2010). The term also glosses over the different structural reasons for demographic transitions and silences the different migrant trajectories of each migrant group.

Puerto Ricans moved further northwest to settle in Humboldt Park in the 1960s–1970s (see Fernández 2012).

By 1990, Latinxs represented 85% of LV’s 81,000 residents. The population peaked in 2000 at 91,000 but saw a loss of nearly 12,000 people by 2010 at 79,000 (2000 and 2010 US Census) with an estimated population of 75,000 today (The Community Chicago Trust Report 2015).

More than 1,800 employers support about 30,000 jobs in the neighborhood trade area. Many of these employ community residents. The healthcare sector employs 11,046 people. Other service jobs employ 7,061. Retail, manufacturing, and wholesale trade sectors total 8,612 employees combined. The high concentration of local employers also brings residents of other neighborhoods into LV, providing potential customers for local businesses (The Chicago Community Trust Report 2013, pp. 3–7).

Undocumented community members do not have access to many types of employment and are vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and low wages. Additionally, many residents work as day laborers with little to no protections. Many are paid below the minimum wage.

The homeownership rate is lower than the city-wide average of 45%, but higher than other low-income communities (The Community Chicago Trust Report 2015).

According to the Department of Planning and Development’s Community Area 2000 and 2010 Census Population Comparisons, the city of Chicago lost more than 200,000 people between 2000 and 2010, with 60 out of the 67 community areas declining in population. Eight out of the 17 that did not lose population were majority Latino/a/x; however, LV lost the third highest number of residents in the city, exactly 11,783 people, just after Austin (19,013) and South Shore (11,789). (https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/zlup/Zoning_Main_Page/Publications/Census_2010_Community_Area_Profiles/Census_2010_and_2000_CA_Populations.pdf).

Previous attempts to reactivate this area, particular in Pilsen, started with the industrial TIF, created in 1998. This constituted one of the prominent incentives for advancing redevelopment in Pilsen (see Sternberg 2012).

Danny Solis served as an alderman on the Chicago City Council from 1996 to 2019. He represented Chicago's 25th Ward which includes Pilsen or the Lower West Side. Throughout his career as alderman, Solis had been an ally of Mayor Daley and in 2001 was appointed President Pro Tempore of the city council, allowing him to oversee council proceedings in the mayor's absence. In 2018, he withdrew from the political sphere after corruption allegations turned him into a central witness in the federal probe of City Hall. Solis cooperated for two years in a federal corruption probe after the FBI developed evidence that he solicited campaign contributions and prostitutes in exchange for political favors.

In a recent article in Block Club Chicago, Pilsen’s Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez commented on the urge to increase affordable housing: “We have a huge shortage of affordable housing, especially when it comes to family-sized units” (Savedra 2022a).

In 2013, Enlace, a group of civic and community leaders working in LV, executed a neighborhood-planning process to define transformative strategies for the next 5 to 10 years, culminating in 2013 with the “LV Quality of Life Plan.” The neighborhood’s first comprehensive plan, released in 2005 as part of LISC Chicago’s New Communities Program Chicago (2005), served as the model. The 2013 process engaged more than 650 people and over 80 agencies and institutions through a series of public forums, focus groups, and one-on-one meetings led by a diverse steering committee consisting of nearly 40 community leaders, representing 22 organizations (Community Chicago Trust Report 2013).

The Bloomingdale Trail is a 2.7-mile elevated rail trail running east west on the northwest side of Chicago.

A social justice organization committed to building grassroots leadership and fighting displacement in Pilsen.

Chicago's 25th Ward includes Pilsen, West Loop, Tri-Taylor, McKinley Park, and Chinatown.

The cumulative foreclosure filings activity in 2020 for all residential properties in Chicago was 21.4%. If we compare this aggregate number with both communities of study, Pilsen registered 16.9% of this activity, and for the same year, LV registered a significant foreclosure activity with 25.6%, almost 9% higher than Pilsen (Institute of Housing Studies 2020a, b).

This resident has lived in Pilsen for more than 50 years. She also sits on the board of Alivio Medical Center and co-founded the Eighteenth Street Development Corporation (ESDC), an organization that supports local businesses in Pilsen.

Including builders, developers, aldermen of Pilsen and LV, the Chicago Department of Transportation, the Chicago Department of Planning and Development (DPD), and the mayor.

The index includes the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This project was funded by the city and the Park District. But the fight against environmental racism was led by the strong activism of LVEJO (La Villita Environmental Justice Organization) who pushed the city to file a lawsuit against Celotex factory due to industrial pollution. “The city and the Park Districts each [had] pledged $4 million for the project and the state $8 million” with the aid of the LV community and the strong activism of LVEJO (Cheever 2019).

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Title: Chicago’s Southwest Redevelopment Frontier: Pilsen and Little Village
Author: Carolina Sternberg
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Neoliberal Urban Governance
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-21717-3

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-031-21718-0

Copyright Year: 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21718-0_6

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