Word: chicago
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...past 10 years have been a time of tremendous urban renewal in Chicago, both within the municipal government and among the city’s neighborhoods. While it is unlikely that any of the neighborhoods chosen by Wilson and Taub have seen significant gentrification, the references to the Board of Education—Chicago’s mayor took over the schools in 1995, appointing a CEO whose central administration is now responsible for most everything—seem antiquated, as do mentions of Chicago’s notorious housing projects, which have largely been demolished...
...Consider the case of Beltway—the white neighborhood that has a growing Hispanic population. For anyone with a moderate understanding of the geography of Chicago, my lifelong home, it’s not hard to figure out Beltway’s true identity. There are only two neighborhoods that are, as Wilson and Taub say, sandwiched between Midway Airport and the city limits, and only one matches the demographics outlined in the book. (In an e-mail, Wilson said that he could not confirm the identities of the neighborhoods...
Such is the nature of today’s Chicago machine...
Many argue that the HDO is a cynical co-opting of the Latino vote by Chicago Democrats; interracial tensions within the machine are never far from the surface. Two of the clearest examples of this are the relationships between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans—the latter are a greater political force, despite their inferior numbers—and West Side and South Side black politicians—the former are jealous of the latter’s influence. These intra-racial, inter-neighborhood power struggles stand in contrast to the inter-racial, intra-neighborhood clashes detailed...
...neighborhoods they examine. While one may have hoped for a timelier book with more cross-neighborhood, city-wide analysis, their method of zeroing in on individual residents and organizations has its strength: it makes the book more relevant to other cities, even as it misses some of what makes Chicago Chicago...