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Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280
Well the anti development groups in Pilsen are losing and losing badly. The problem with Fisk is that the site is likely heavily contaminated and might never be suitable for residential uses.
Also, I think we have different definitions of Little Village and North Lawndale. I'm pretty certain that everything South of Douglas Park and the Pink Line is typically considered Little Village. This area has great transit access with both the Pink Line and Metra serving the area. So yeah, South of 26th Street you don't have great access to transit, but the corridor along Cermak has great access. Guess it depends if you view Cermak or 26th as "mainstreet" of LV.
Finally, I'll come right out and say it, hispanic areas tend to gentrify quicker because white people simply are not as afraid of Mexicans as they are of Blacks. So regardless of the "community groups" against gentrification, the waves of white people are much more likely to break on the beaches of a hispanic neighborhood. It's much easier to develop Humbolt Park, Logan Square, or Pilsen than it is to crack Bronzeville or Garfield Park.
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Well, to be fair there are many places in Little Village that don't need redevelopment as much as simply reinvestment in what is there, as well as infill on destroyed corners, etc. But as far as I'm concerned developers can take their superblock developments and go home. Fine grain is the essence of Pilsen/Little Village vitality.
I agree with your boundary definition; I recently lived at 21st/California, and I can attest to the L being the dividing line between the GDs and the LKs. However, Mexicans are now steadily pushing further North to Ogden.
I would contest the gentrification imminence, however. A 7 year old girl was caught in crossfire a few blocks away from me, and there were around 150 LKs on my block alone. For gentrification any time soon, Chicago must add Mexicans to the city itself far more quickly, and retain more of the earlier immigrants. It must also gain intrepid whites far more quickly than it is. I think these waves of gentrification you're talking about are shades of a boom euphoria that implied far healthier population growth than really exists. I'd love for these areas to rise (it's actually my passion), but I don't think it will soon happen in the same way as the ones before them. Bronzeville yes, but the future of the Lawndales is heavily dependent on population growth. Garfield Park deserves rebuilt dense victorian apartment buildings with bays -- on all the major streets. But what was built there at the height of the boom shows that that is not likely its fate. It has significant barriers keeping it from its birthright.
As to mexican vs black hoods regarding gentrification, bear in mind that it's (currently) not simply a function of their color. What you say is mostly true, but its also true that Mexicans move in to more stable, more recently white and working class neighborhoods with stable building stock. Building stock is paramount. First come the people, then the development. How do the people come after everything has been demolished except subsidized low income housing with strict income requirements?
Black neighborhoods are the ones that were screwed by the FHA, the city, and basically every bad public decision it was possible to make. Theirs are the hoods that were torn up and replaced by ghetto prisons. They got the bulworks erected around them (expressways and prairie shores and United Center, and the high rises as visual and socio-economic walls, etc). In some cases til they just didn't exist anymore, as in Maxwell and the public housing high rises to the West.
I think the various levels of gov't are more to blame for the current retarded recovery of black hoods vs Mexican hoods. Government dealt their most critical blows to these communities, and left, for example, the Irish in McKinley Park alone and the Czechs in Pilsen alone. The walls that the waves of change must first crash against are those erected by racist policy makers.
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