Chicago's South Side Blues-Scape - Geographies of Privilege - page 52

CHAPTER 3
Chicago's South Side Blues-Scape
Creeping Commodification and
Complex Human Response
DAVID WILSON
Introduction
Real-estate and finance capital continue their actions in the U.S. city, and with a ven-
geance.Astepped-upkindofeliteprivileging—landandblocksdramaticallytransformed
into globally declarative, affluent play spaces—now marks many major American cities
(Wyly et al. 2009). This restructuring, an affluent takeover of the urban currently moves
far beyond downtown cores. In the neoliberal era, redevelopment governances (alliances
of local government, prominent developers, realtors, city growth organizations) invoke
a fervent rhetoric (the need for their cities to compete for resources in supposedly new
global times) that elaborately rationalizes the drive to “upscale” and really expand elite
patternsofconsumption.Intheprocess,condominiumsandsecondhomessupplantapart-
ments, stores, and houses, with upper-income aesthetics, sensibilities, and recreational
whims extended to new terrains. Well-coordinated landscapes of pleasure and affluent
residency are cultivated, producing Gordon MacLeod's (2002) “cathedrals of consump-
tion.” To Fran Tonkiss (2005), elite privileging in current times takes many forms, but
this one is particularly overt and visible.
This coordinated takeover and remaking now grips Chicago, most recently, its histor-
ically neglected South Side “blues-scape” (blues clubs and their blocks). Once consigned
topolicyoblivion,thistwo-square-milearea,encompassingnineagingbluesclubs,today
attracts considerable attention and looms ambiguously in a rapidly changing city ( Fig-
ure 3.1 ) . A commercialism creeps across the South Side, from an aggressive “rediscov-
ery of the South Side” by a historically privileged redevelopment governance, remak-
ing many of these South Side clubs. This spread of commercialism was barely imagin-
able 12 years ago, with most of the South Side institutionally treated as Chicago's hor-