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Friday, December 10, 2021

Black community, economic and social capital: the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago/Chicago

charlie calls our attention to an interesting article in Politico, "How a South Side Chicago Neighborhood Is Trying to Keep Its Black Residents," about black outmigration from Chicago and how this impacts black neighborhoods alongside urban disinvestment and other ills. 

A companion article, "The Demise of America’s Onetime Capital of Black Wealth" discusses the decline of black businesses and black capital in Chicago, in particular larger businesses that operated at a national scale, like Johnson Publishing, or regionally like the Independence Bank, dairies (imagine, black-owned dairies!), etc.

Another companion article, "Black People Are Leaving Chicago en Masse. It’s Changing the City’s Power Politics," discusses how this is a result in part of "black flight," and leads to other urban changes.

The Englewood article covers how the neighborhood perseveres, with a variety of community initiatives and a strong block club network, even as outmigration, crime, and disinvestment continue.  

It's a great illustration of the urban sociology approach to "collective efficacy" and engaged communities and residents.

It does get at why I was originally somewhat skeptical of the collective efficacy approach ("Urban Health, Nasty Cities, Broken Windows, and Community Efficacy," 2005; "Broken windows/collective efficacy," 2019). 

You have efficacy, organized citizens, but things still languish. 

But my thinking about such issues at the time was under-sophisticated.  What I didn't understand at the time that it is not either/or.  (At a talk by Robert Fishman at AU I made this point, that I had been stuck on either/or, not thinking about and/and.) 

Chicago is one of the only cities in the country where block clubs post signs calling for positive behaviors ("New Signs On The Block," WBEZ-FM/NPR).

Community organizing may not be enough in the face of disinvestment. The community organizing and engagement part of community efficacy needs to be combined with systematic investment and support in building pan-neighborhood organizations and economic and community revitalization initiatives. 

Chicago-based Joe Louis Milk Company went out of business in the late 1970s.

Capital is required.  In other words, while community efficacy contributes to community success, it can't fully substitute for capital.  After all, the solution to disinvestment is investment.

At the end of the day, you need capital in order to initiate improvements in terms of commercial and residential buildings, the creation of businesses, the strengthening, expansion and operation of civic assets--schools, parks, libraries, recreation facilities, cultural spaces, etc.

-- "Social infrastructure in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami," 2020
-- "A wrinkle on BTMFBA: let the city/county own the cultural facility, while you operate it (San Francisco and the Fillmore Heritage Center)," 2021

The companion article, "The Demise of America’s Onetime Capital of Black Wealth," reiterates the importance of capital accumulation and how it influences the success of local economies and economic power, and how the decline of black banks in Chicago makes it that much more difficult to ward off disinvestment.

It reminds me of two stories.  There's a great section in Death and Life of Great American Cities about Jane Jacobs on a road trip through Northeast cities in decline, but one neighborhood in one city thrived.  The difference was this neighborhood retained a community bank which continued to lend to local businesses and residents.

The other is a New York Times Magazine article ("Why New Orleans’s Black Residents Are Still Underwater After Katrina") on the Liberty Bank and Trust Company of New Orleans, and its struggles after Hurricane Katrina.  Having locally-focused banks is key.  But as the American economy is increasingly organized at the national scale, it is much more difficult for community banks to exist, and for locally focused loan portfolios to not be considered high risk.

(Chicago had another nationally recognized locally focused community development oriented bank, ShoreBank, which didn't survive the 2008 recession.)

Social infrastructure.  What sociologist Eric Klinenberg calls social infrastructure in his book, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.

And systematic neighborhood revitalization initiatives.  It does reiterate the point I made about the need for systematic neighborhood revitalization programs.     

While I am a strong proponent of self help, it's not enough.  People need assistance, especially when they are already active.  Expecting them to do it all themselves, especially in economically challenged areas where investment capital is limited, is a fools errand.

-- "The need for a "national" neighborhood stabilization program comparable to the Main Street program for commercial districts: Part I (Overall)"
-- "To be successful, local neighborhood stabilization programs need a packaged set of robust remedies: Part 2"
-- "Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisance programs: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)"
-- "A case in Gloucester, Massachusetts as an illustration of the need for systematic neighborhood monitoring and stabilization initiatives: Part 4 (the Curcuru Family)"
-- "Local neighborhood stabilization programs: Part 5 | Adding energy conservation programs, with the PUSH Buffalo Green Development Zone as a model," 2021

Neighborhood plans.  And also for systematic community revitalization planning, and a strong focus on civic engagement, as I outlined for St. Louis:

-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 1: Overview and Theoretical Foundations"
-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 2: Implementation Approach and Levers"

and am remiss on for Eastern Montgomery County, Maryland, in terms of the second article:

--"East County, Montgomery County: Council redistricting spurs ideas for revitalization | Part 1 -- Overview"
--"East County, Montgomery County: Council redistricting spurs ideas for revitalization | Part 2 -- Some transformational concepts"

and lamented about concerning DC's poorer neighborhoods:

-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021

Conclusion.  You need both community organizing and civic engagement as well as capital.  Interestingly, in many places they think money is enough, but all too often it isn't.  Neighborhood revitalization initiatives often fail because of lack of community engagement.  But usually, the biggest issue is both lack of money and lack of substantive civic engagement.

14 comments:

  1. charlie8:19 AM

    Yeah as you found out if you poke around in Politico there are a series of articles on black Chicago. All well written, all could use a lot of context.

    I was able to squeeze in a trip after Thanksgiving to the USVI. Of course, I had to think about you during it -- not what I wanted for a tropical vacay. ;-)

    20 years ago when I was more of a non-questioning liberal, one way to model urban issues was to look at international development. "black" america as essentially the third world.

    No you can see how problematic that is takes away a lot of agency away. But you REALLY see that in the USVI, as it is a true post colonial situation.

    Again, in the last twenty years what has done to move people out of "poverty" globally? ChiComs, big business or the international dev folks. What we can say is the ID folks have failed miserable and are designed to fail miserably.

    But yeah good points on collective efficiency. And preservation.

    Now my point on the USVI. We've talked about how "auto dependance" in the US is more of a default mode, and a replacement for actually doing any planning or work on the public space.

    I'd say gentrification is other side of that. Our default answer to urban blight is population replacement with higher income, which can then spark urban growth.

    Homesteading can work in this places. Much like it did in DC very wasteful, but can be done.

    The density+income limited housing model is good for developers but ins't a real model on how to grow an urban space.

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  2. Will respond at keyboard. A lot here. Thx.

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  3. Lot to unpack. FWIW, I've always thought that international development has something to offer low income areas of the US. Maybe ideas more than specifics. E.g., microfinance like Grameen Bank can't work here the way it does there, especially the amounts. But the idea of bootstrapping capitalism, again understanding that the real idea is "access to capital" and less so the amount or exactly how they do it is key.

    But it happens many years ago I wrote about "enclave development" and Anacostia.

    http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2006/02/enclave-development-wont-save.html

    And I guess PGC

    http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2012/02/can-enclave-development-save-prince.html

    Anyway, wow, thinking about the colonialism in USVI and PR is pretty heavy. I don't know much about USVI, but I do know that a lot of the economic stagnation in PR is the result of "federal mandates and programs" either positive or negative -- like the Magnusson Act, but also how Congress legislated a favorable tax credit for pharmaceutical companies to manufacture there, then ended it, and the businesses left. So to me, they deserve some "bailout" because their problems are in part a result of federal actions of commission and omission.

    You need aid and AID, but it gets so screwed up. Like in Afghanistan. Oddly enough, I read _The Ugly American_ when I was in college (not for a class), and of course that was the time we were all enamored of EF Schumacher and "Appropriate Technology." And there was Walt Rostow's book on economic development in the third world, I read Gerschenkron, etc.

    Yes, straight up gentrification is "replacement theory" in action ("Negro Removal"). It's not a new concept.

    The challenge is how to rebuild broken micro-=economies in the face of "When Work Disappears" (William Junious Wilson).

    Temali's Community Economic Development Handbook focuses on neighborhood business district revitalization but also "workforce improvement" in terms of supporting the development of microenterprises as well as "good jobs in the neighborhood."

    -- continued --

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  4. -- continued --

    In my forthcoming 2021 obituaries piece, there is a woman in Boston who did that, Beth Williams, following her father.

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/04/25/metro/manufacturing-ceo-beth-williams-one-our-brightest-lights-black-community-dies-57/

    (And starting with Leon Sullivan in Philadelphia, https://www.inquirer.com/philly/business/20150116_New_director_of_OIC__job-training_outfit__faces_challenges.html )

    And that's what the article on the diminishment of black capital in Chicago is about.

    As we "embiggen" (hat tip to the Tom Tomorrow comic), nationalize, consolidate, and automate our economy, the kind of "small" business economy (mittelstand) still present in Germany disappears, and with it, jobs.

    For people not to be displaced, they have to make more money.
    Although there is no question that people participating in the knowledge economy disproportionately benefit, there is no question that there are jobs not requiring college degrees necessarily, but advanced education definitely, are there and quite lucrative.

    Eg our DC plumber has to gross more than $250,000/year. He lives in exurban Maryland but only works in DC, because he knows that's where he can get the greatest return. What's to prevent people living in Anacostia from doing the same?

    But people need help in organizing, managing, and administering such businesses. There is the Evergreen Cooperative group in Cleveland (of course the group in the Basque County that JJ wrote about), PUSH Buffalo I mention from time to time.

    And we need a lot more support of different kinds of business organization and operations.

    E.g., I saw this article, about a pizza store that lets people buy into the business.

    Extra Extra brings investment opportunity — and pizza — to Buffalo's West Side - Buffalo Business First.
    https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/news/2021/12/10/extra-extra-pizza-buffalo.html

    [I learned that to access bizjournals article open an incognito window, enter the URL, and quickly hit ESC after it starts loading.]

    Or Allentown

    https://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2020/06/lessons-from-cnn-story-on-allentown.html

    It's mentioned in point #8 "entrepreneurship and microenterprise development" in the second St. Louis entry.

    http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2021/09/st-louis-what-would-i-recommend-for.html

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  5. Sometimes I am derisive of certain ideas and approaches because they take forever to have impact and still might be enough.

    But the reality is that it's better than doing nothing and you need to do multiple initiatives, not just one.

    Like homesteading. Better for it to be slow than to deal with vacant property. And over time as additional residents move in, you rebuild community capital within neighborhoods.

    https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/can-this-muslim-community-create-a-model-for-rebuilding-detroit/

    In a way "urban homesteading" was a bit like people like us moving into DC, when prevailing attitudes about urban living were negative.

    I suggest that 40ish years of this, people moving in year by year, probably began to have enough momentum to hit critical mass in DC around 2000. But we'll never know because of the post 9/11 build up of the regional economy combined with a scalar change in attitude about urban living.

    So homesteading is key.

    A flip side program is recruiting residents who can telework like Tulsa, or Paducah and artists.

    http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2018/12/great-article-on-revival-of-western.html

    Again, you don't have to spend a lot of money, and you add people with talent, and hopefully some of them are motivated to contribute time and energy into improving the community.

    And even though it's about clustering, like in the days of old propinquity etc. can make a difference.

    Eg the microchip business in Idaho came about because the idea guy had done electronics-related work for Simplot processing plants. He had a different idea and Simplot had the capital.

    But all the "rules" say he should have done it in Silicon Valley.

    But it's hard for government to support small ventures. All the necessary checks etc.

    Somehow we need "credit unions" that are also business technical assistance programs simultaneously.

    In an article comment on a Post article someone said something about Chinatowns remaining viable. A person made the point that was because of constant immigration of Chinese speaking immigrants to these places.

    When you need more economic energy, immigrants are key. Be they gay, artists, teleworkers, or Portuguese, Chinese, Indian, Somali, Ethiopian, Korean, etc.

    Of course, in today's increasingly xenophobic political environment, that doesn't work well.

    (I've been meaning to write about how college enrollment drops aren't just about covid, but also a fall off in international student matriculation, especially from China, which is retaliating by cutting tourism and enrollments at overseas universities.)

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  6. "Reproducing space" in Kansas City's East Side.

    https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article256376687.html

    One couple bought a hovel for $9,000!!!!! and spent $30,000 renovating it into a two bedroom.

    https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article256377862.html

    But most houses are bought by investors.

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  7. The Wall Street Journal: The Downward Spiral of America’s Second City.
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/chicago-second-city-mayor-lightfoot-crime-decline-11639175588

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  8. charlie10:53 AM

    RE: immigration. You properly frame it as migration. If you remember we talked about the "Chicago model" of concentric development which was also reliant on immigrants to go in the "Center City".

    That basically ended in the 1930 as a result of restrictions, the depression and ww2.

    Honestly very few immigrants go into chinatowns anymore. they all want to Iive in the suburbs. Maybe the new push to enable non-us voters in municipal elections will change that.

    far too much community building focused on existing populations (lets build an auto zone!) rather than finding ways to attract people in.

    Need to get and read your Klineberg book. I think he's too poverty focused, but a lot of his themes are also true up and down the economic ladder.


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  9. Chinatowns... When I first came to DC in the late 1980s, Clarendon was home to a lot of post-war Vietnamese. As you know, they and other Asian groups moved farther out to Annandale. The DC Chinatown kept shrinking because of its centrality and cost of housing. The cost of housing thing is big. So later waves of immigrants just go directly to the suburbs.

    So I thought the point about continued waves of immigration from China, but to very specific communities such Flushing, maybe Chinatown in Manhattan, was a good point.

    cf. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/A-century-of-racism-has-Japantown-hanging-by-a-16469072.php

    There's an article in the Post about lesbian bars and I made some comments about "the diaspora" and mainstreaming. But then I made a point that with younger people, there still may be a need for separate "institutions" as people develop and strengthen their identities. But with assimilation and mainstreaming there's fewer patrons, making it harder to survive economically because the customer base is smaller (plus as people age they drink less, which is tough on bars, especially bars not based in regionally-serving commercial districts).

    That's the same thing going on with "ethnic immigrants" (as opposed to migrants in general). They need the separate communities, especially if there is a language issue.

    Eg. the description of the importance of this Japanese grocery in SF, and how as a child, the author would go there with her mother.

    https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/The-best-grocery-store-in-San-Francisco-you-ve-16642097.php

    So as these places face declining in-migration and second and third generation family members are assimilated, less support for continuation.

    ... I don't think being able to vote will make much difference. As households become assimilated, there is less reason to stay in ethnically homogeneous places.

    -- continued --

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  10. 2. WRT revitalization efforts focused on existing communities and more importantly "existing populations," the point I made about CDCs building new housing in cities, and that being the primary agenda, was that the issue was broken micro-economies at the neighborhood and city scale, and that while new housing for poor people was/is nice, it's not addressing the issue of the broken micro-economy.

    Eg disinvestment, capital. New low income housing doesn't really address either disinvestment or a paucity of capital.

    I made a point about historic preservation being a great tool for cities because except for the cost of regulation (personnel), the costs were borne by the homeowners (for the most part). And the housing attracted new residents, with income, and renovation generated economic benefits (labor, materials).

    Another way to say what you say, as costs of maintaining cities and neighborhoods increases, simultaneous with changes in how people shop and consume public services, you need more residents as customers to support the array of retail and civic assets you say you want. Plus, you need people with assets.

    The trick is how to do this without necessarily displacing people who are under-resourced. In a market economy that's difficult.

    And also, again, to do what Temali says and focus on redeveloping the local micro economy in terms of microenterprises and decently paying jobs.

    WRT new residents... I've argued that the reason that neighborhoods like Manor Park declined is because as they aged, they didn't attract new residents, and as they age, households purchase less, making it harder to support neighborhood retail (which is only harder now with e-commerce). And as you point out, as houses age, they need more maintenance, and aging households on fixed incomes tend to be unable to spend the necessary money.

    That's why I opposed Anita Bonds trying to make senior households property tax free. There needs to be more dynamism in neighborhoods, not encouragements to stay static.

    3. WRT Klinenberg, it's a good book, not absolutely amazing. It's good to combine it with _Next American City_ because in a way it's about the same kind of thing, investing in community.

    When I read Klinenberg, I thought about contacting him with an idea to create a kind of "manual" of thinking about how to implement the approach.

    It's basically the kind of stuff I write about social urbanism and equity planning, community revitalization, etc.

    It's just so frustrating to see the lack of systemic approaches, the spinning of wheels, etc.

    I should re-read it.

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  11. The Washington Post: Worker-owned food businesses proliferate in Baltimore.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2021/12/13/baltimore-worker-owned-restaurants/

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  12. Speaking of migrants/immigrants and otherwise declining places.

    CNN: Michigan city gets ready to inaugurate all-Muslim government.
    https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/18/us/michigan-hamtramck-all-muslim-council/index.html

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  13. https://news.yahoo.com/one-neighborhood-reaches-resilience-letter-125400228.html

    Christian Science Monitor

    The historic Pullman neighborhood has been a proving ground for resilience amid economic ups and downs. It holds lessons beyond Chicago.

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