Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
increasingly spoken of a culturally and socially recoverable part of Chicago and have
inauguratedboldrestructuringefforts.Thegovernancehasactivatedapowerfulandspe-
cific discourse about the need to “reculturalize” the South Side to help the area and ad-
vance the go-global Chicago redevelopment project, which has been at the center of its
restructuring efforts. It now speaks of this terrain as the city's next “cultural catch” that
is deftly framed in the complexities of a contingent cultural moment—the need for Ch-
icago to become fully global. This framing, elaborately seizing the day's concerns and
anxieties, drives an ambitious restructuring.
Initially,governanceeffortswereconcentratedinasmallSouthCentralneighborhood
and were tangibly brick and mortar; they physically moved Chicago's gentrification
frontier beyond the South Loop into adjoining North Bronzeville. Bronzeville gentrific-
ation began in the late 1990s fueled by a rhetoric of “an area … seeking to re-claim its
soul” (see Reardon 2000). The area, once housing primarily low- and moderate-income
households in a widely disinvested terrain (Boyd 2008), came to house patches of up-
scale condominiums, restaurants, and shops in the early 2000s. This persisted, spurred
especially by Quad Cities Development Corporation, a city-based development group
that focused on the Bronzeville area. Since 2000 they have worked to attract boutique
businesses to Cottage Grove Avenue (between 43rd and 47th Streets), bigger “gentry”
stores to State Street, and new upscale housing along State, Cottage Grove, and Martin
LutherKingDrive(Wilson2012).MayorDaley,underscoringthearea'ssymbolictrans-
formation, moved into a Near Bronzeville condo and bucked a decades-old tradition of
Daleys living in blue-collar Bridgeport.
The move to restructure continued. The tactic shifted, given the reality of a more
restructuring-difficult middle and deep South Side. Emphasis shifted to the realm of the
discursivewithattemptstoreengineermiddle-classimaginingsofSouthSiderecreation-
alandresidentialpossibilities(thattodayismostresponsibleforcreatingthe“commodi-
fication creep” across the South Side and its blues bars). To be sure, physical change
pickedupinsomeareassouthofBronzeville(southof49thStreet)post-2005.Newcon-
dos,single-family homes,townhouses,andretail development cametodotblocksinthe
Washington Park, Chatham, and Woodlawn communities (see Bergen, 2008). But the
reality has not matched the rhetoric. The
Tribune
(2007), for example, portrays a de-
luge of exciting, new South Side investment: “Developers are expanding out of down-
townandsteadily breaking groundon$300,000-pluscondosandtownhomes…. Onthe
South Side, public housing high-rises are nearly all demolished. And the transformation
of once run-down graystones and six-flats into elegant homes is exciting. So is seeing
artgalleriesonKingDriveandcafeson47thStreet.”Thecherryonthetopping:“Anew
Starbucks on the South Side has been a cause for cartwheels.”
