A closer look at Chicago 2010 census data
With the 2010 census results slowly trickling in, we are finally getting some sense of how the population changed in the Windy City over the past ten years. It's something I've been looking forward since... well, since before the census started, really. And so I has very happy to see the Tribune publishing a graphic about the the population changes in Chicago broken down by community area and census tract. It also broke down the demographic changes by race - except in that case, they showed the changes based on community areas rather than census tracts that make them.
Mind you, that information does not tell the whole story. In order to get a full context, one must look at median income, employment rates, ethnic make-up, the rates of death and out-migration, etc. It also doesn't help that the Tribune graphic uses percentages rather than actual numbers, which makes population increases in less populated areas look bigger than they actually are. But even so, the Tribune graphics still offer enough information to draw some conclusions - even if they pose as many questions as they resolve.
For those who are not as obsessed with the minutia of the City of Chicago, a quick explanatory note. Community areas are statistical areas that were developed by the University of Chicago back in the 1920s. They were supposed to provide a statistical constant. While neighborhoods grow, shrink and change over the years, the community areas have (largely) remained the same.
With that in mind - on to the meat of the statistics.
General Population Trends
The general trends aren't really surprising. South Side has been bleeding population since the White Flight. While South Side isn't as universally awful as most people think, it does have some pretty awful neighborhoods. The people who can afford to move out usually do. The issue has been further compounded by the fact that many traditionally stable working and middle class South Side enclaves are starting to show cracks. The young people don't settle there, the crime from the surrounding neighborhoods is starting to bleed in, etc. The demise of Stateworth Gardens, Robert Taylor Homes, the Ida Wells Homes, Darrow Homes and other public housing projects has caused significant population dispersion. In fact, if you look community areas #33-39, you will notice that huge declines almost directly correspond to former public housing locations.
The North Side and Northwest Side area a little more surprising. As anyone with two eyes can tell you, most Northern neighborhoods saw significant population increases do in no small part to gentrification and the late 90s-mid 00s housing boom. It's no coincidence that many census tracts with the highest population increases just happened to correspond with areas that saw significant new development. However, given all that development, I would expect to see more increases. I am also puzzled by what's going on in Uptown, Edgewater, Rogers Park, West Ridge, Albany Park and other traditional immigration hubs. We should, by all rights, be seeing more population increases. Edgewater and Rogers Park received thousands of refugees from Burma, Iraq and Afghanistan. The census should reflect this.
As far as West Side goes, I am not surprised to see enormous population increases in the area around UIC. The University really did the number on the Maxwell Street neighborhood, essencially wiping it off the face of Chicago and building the overpriced condoland known as University Village. I am also not surprised to see population drops in the census tracts that correspond to the location of ABLA Homes (CA 28) - the enormous public housing mega-complex that is still in the midst of demolition as of this writing. But further west, things, once again, get weird. South Lawndale and Lower West Side community areas have been major hubs for Mexican immigrants (and, to the lesser extent, immigrants from elsewhere in Central and South America). Some of it can be explained by upward mobility and the fact that many of the immigrants are here illegally - but still, I would not expect such noticeable declines (Although, on reflection, I realize that immigration from south of the border has dropped off during the Great Recession, so maybe that's not so odd).
Southwest Side is interesting. This part of Chicago is largely either working class or poor, with a few ethnic white communities, white middle class communities and mixed-race middle-class communities surviving out of stubbornness and, in case of the communities closer to the southwestern city limits, sheer necessity. Chicago laws prohibit city employees from permanently living outside Chicago, so most of them wound up settling as far away from the city center as possible. The area has actually shown some noticeable population growth, especially in the white-majority areas.
Finally, the Far Northwest Side is largely made up of middle-class neighborhoods that survive for the same reason as the outlying Southwest Side neighborhoods. Those things look almost suburban in everything but name (in no small part because they were settled later than most other parts of Chicago). To be honest, I expected to see more population growth than what the census indicates.
Community Area Trends
I could go on forever analyzing every single community area, but I don't have that kind of time, so I will focus on the community areas that particularly stuck out to me.
South Chicago (CA 46)
This oft-overlooked area has a fascinating demographic combination - it is one of the few Chicago CAs where poor blacks and Hispanics live side-by-side, with African-Americans forming a slim majority. Usually, the two don't mix well (for example North Lawndale (CA 29) remains largely black while the nearby South Lawndale(CA 30) is largely Mexican-American). Not that there aren't problems - the conflicts between black and Hispanic gangs have been going on since the 70s, and they've gotten especially bloody since the 1990s. But I digress.
The reason why I find South Chicago demographics fascinating is because the Tribune graphic shows that they lost similar percentages of Hispanic and Black population. Ditto the community's White population. The one racial group that showed increases is, oddly enough, Asian-Americans. Now, according to 2000 census, the area has a grand total of 55 Asian-Americans, so the increase isn't nearly as significant as it seems at the first glance. Still, it's curious.
East Side (CA 52) and Hegewisch (CA 55)
Both of those neighborhoods are virtually geographically isolated from Chicago. East Side is cut off thanks to the Calumet River on the west and north, Indiana border in the east and miles upon miles of post-Industrial wasteland in the south. Hegewisch got miles of industrial facilities (both active and abandoned) on the west, Wolf Lake Park and abandoned industry in the north, freight railroads on the southwest and Indiana border on the east. Many Chicagoans have no idea those neighborhoods even exist. Because of this, they were persistent South Side demographic anomalies for decades - they were largely white, largely working-class and largely safe. And while the employment rates were hardly ideal, they were much better than those of their neighbors.
For much of their history, they remained largely ethnic White (mostly from Eastern European and ex-Soviet countries). But that started changing in the 1990s. Hispanic immigrants settled in East Side in significant numbers, and they made some inroads into Hegewisch. But the most significant demographic change was a sharp upswing of African-Americans. Now, that isn't much considered that the numbers of African-Americans that lived there used to be literally in single digits, but the demographic implications could not be underestimated.
The 2010 census showed that the trends continued. As I suspected, Hegewisch saw a sharp increase in Hispanic residents while the white population declined. East Side saw a smaller, but nonetheless notable increase. African-American population increased dramatically - of course, the population is probably still under 2,000, but still - that's enough to swing elections in tight aldermanic races. I am curious to see how this will impact the politics within the neighborhoods.
Ashburn (CA 70)
Ashburn is often touted as one of the city's few integrated communities, but that description is somewhat deceptive. The community as a whole is, for the most part, evenly divided between whites and African-Americans. But this ignores the fact that aAshburn is actually made up of two neighborhoods - the majority-White Scottsdale and majority-Black Ashburn. While the relations between the two have been largely peaceful, there wasn't a whole lot of mixing between the two halves.
If you look at the overall population graphic, you'll see that the census tract that corresponds to Scottsdale has seen a population increase, while the census tract that corresponds to Ashburn has seen the population decline. This is especially interesting given that the overall white and African-American populations have increased (though black population increased at a slower rate than white population). What makes it even more interesting is that the neighborhood's Hispanic population has increased by over a hundred percent. As for 2000, Ashburn community area had 6,674 Hispanic residents, and they made up 16% of the community population. Assuming that their population increased by a hundred percent, their population would now be 13, 348. By comparison, according to 2000 census, Ashburn had 17,099 white residents and 17,171 black residents. All the sudden, the neighborhood's two-way majority becomes a three-way majority. This has potential to have far-reaching effects on just about every aspect of the community. I really hope some sociologist picks up on that.
South Shore (CA 43)
Michelle Obama's community of birth, South Shore has working-class and middle-class neighborhoods. The community is majority-black, which is why I was surprised to see increase in every racial group that's not black. White, Hispanic and Asian residents increased in numbers (in case of the last, dramatically so). According to 2000 census, South Chicago had 778 White residents, 636 Hispanic residents and 88 Asian residents. Even with the increases, African-Americans will still form a significant majority, but that's not the point. For the first time since the 60s that the number of white residents in South Shore actually increased.
Let me repeat that - the white population of a South Side African-American neighborhood increased.
This is not supposed to happen. This goes against the population trends that existed since White Flight of the 1960s-1970s. The potential future implications of it are staggering. This one area where we need more detailed data - pronto.
Douglas (CA 35) and Fuller Park (CA 38)
And speaking of things that are not supposed to happen, let's take a look at the two community areas that make up Bronzevelle - Chicago's oldest African-American neighborhood. Until a 1947 Supreme Count ruling that made housing segregation illegal, the vast majority of Chicago's African-Americans lived here. During the 60s, it became a site of one of the largest continuous stretches of public housing developments in United States.
Since the 1980s, many of Chicago's middle-class African Americans have worked towards transforming Bronzeville into a a safe, stable, culturally rich mixed-income community. As the housing projects were torn down, new condos rose along Bronzeville's battered streets, and it looked like the dream was starting to come true.
But then you look at the demographics.
Now, the decline in Bronzeville's African-American population was to be expected. As I mentioned earlier, the demolition of public housing displaced thousands of residents - there is no way all those condos could possibly make up for such a huge population drop. But I was not expecting the increase of white residents. According to 2000 census, Douglas CA had 1,683 white residents, while Fuller Park had a measly 46 white residents. Douglas' white population jumped by less than a half, while Fuller Park's white population jumped by over a hundred percent. Again, in the grander scheme of things, this does not represent much a population change, but, again, there are white people settling in areas that used to completely off-limits. Furthermore, what's with the increase in Hispanic and Asian population? In South Chicago, I could blame the increase on spillover from South Chicago, but that can't be the case with Bronzeville.... Can it?
What is going on here?
Chicago Lawn (CA 66)
This community area is much better known by the name of its biggest neighborhood - Marquette Park. That name went down in national history as the area where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's quest to pressure Chicago authorities into integrating the city was met with violent resistance from the ethnic White immigrants that settled there. It pretty much set the tone for the rest of Dr. King time in the Windy City - but that's a whole other tangent.
In that light, it's not surprising that the white majority persisted well into the 90s (though the ethnic make-up changed quite a bit since the 1960s). But by the time 2000 census was taken, the racial demographics shifted dramatically. African-Americans now made up a slim majority. White and Hispanic residents made up approximately 23% and 35%, respectively.
Since then, Marquette Park became infamous in the wake of the collapse of the housing bubble for suffering more foreclosures than just about every other community in Chicago.
According to the Tribune graphic, western parts of Chicago Lawn CA actually gained some residents. But looking at racial statistics, the number of white and black residents declined sharply. Ditto it's small Asian-American population. The only racial group to see any increases are Hispanics. Presumably, they account for the population increase. This means that the population dynamics have shifted in their favor, though the shift is unlikely to make much of a dent in the community's black majority. If anything, their majority might increase thanks to the decline of the white population.
East Garfield Park (CA 27)
This majority-black, poor West Side neighborhood has been through hell. It was never that wealthy, but the Great Depression really did the number on it's living conditions. The riots that erupted after Dr King's assassination gutted it's shopping areas, and the demise of the industry along what is now known as the Union Pacific West Metra Line caused the employment rate to plummet. The city has been trying to revitalize it, but aside from the area in the immediate vicinity of the Garfield Park Conservatory, the community doesn't have much to show for it.
This changed during the latest housing boom, when real estate developers were scouring Chicago for any neighborhood that might become the next Wicker Park. They were able to persuade hundreds of residents that East Garfield Park was on the cusp of a renaissance and sold them lots of overpriced condos. Never mind that it barely had any stores (or much in the way of the other amenities) - people were too eager to jump on the bandwagon to care.
But then, the Great Recession happened and any redevelopment pretty much froze in in it's tracks. Now, I assumed that most of those would-be gentriefiers would bolt the first chance they got, but apparently, enough of them stuck around to make a statistical difference. The Tribune graphic shows an over a 100% increase of White, Hispanic and Asian residents. Now, in 2000, there were 270 whites, 207 Hispanics and a measly 25 Asian-Americans. Even a hundred percent increase is a mere bleep on the community statistical radar. Still, I am curious to see how many of them will stick around by the time the next census comes out and whether or not their presence will have any effect.
And that will be all for now. I will try to write something more in the next few days, but for now, it's too late and I'm too bloody tired to go on. So good night, Internets.
Mind you, that information does not tell the whole story. In order to get a full context, one must look at median income, employment rates, ethnic make-up, the rates of death and out-migration, etc. It also doesn't help that the Tribune graphic uses percentages rather than actual numbers, which makes population increases in less populated areas look bigger than they actually are. But even so, the Tribune graphics still offer enough information to draw some conclusions - even if they pose as many questions as they resolve.
For those who are not as obsessed with the minutia of the City of Chicago, a quick explanatory note. Community areas are statistical areas that were developed by the University of Chicago back in the 1920s. They were supposed to provide a statistical constant. While neighborhoods grow, shrink and change over the years, the community areas have (largely) remained the same.
With that in mind - on to the meat of the statistics.
General Population Trends
The general trends aren't really surprising. South Side has been bleeding population since the White Flight. While South Side isn't as universally awful as most people think, it does have some pretty awful neighborhoods. The people who can afford to move out usually do. The issue has been further compounded by the fact that many traditionally stable working and middle class South Side enclaves are starting to show cracks. The young people don't settle there, the crime from the surrounding neighborhoods is starting to bleed in, etc. The demise of Stateworth Gardens, Robert Taylor Homes, the Ida Wells Homes, Darrow Homes and other public housing projects has caused significant population dispersion. In fact, if you look community areas #33-39, you will notice that huge declines almost directly correspond to former public housing locations.
The North Side and Northwest Side area a little more surprising. As anyone with two eyes can tell you, most Northern neighborhoods saw significant population increases do in no small part to gentrification and the late 90s-mid 00s housing boom. It's no coincidence that many census tracts with the highest population increases just happened to correspond with areas that saw significant new development. However, given all that development, I would expect to see more increases. I am also puzzled by what's going on in Uptown, Edgewater, Rogers Park, West Ridge, Albany Park and other traditional immigration hubs. We should, by all rights, be seeing more population increases. Edgewater and Rogers Park received thousands of refugees from Burma, Iraq and Afghanistan. The census should reflect this.
As far as West Side goes, I am not surprised to see enormous population increases in the area around UIC. The University really did the number on the Maxwell Street neighborhood, essencially wiping it off the face of Chicago and building the overpriced condoland known as University Village. I am also not surprised to see population drops in the census tracts that correspond to the location of ABLA Homes (CA 28) - the enormous public housing mega-complex that is still in the midst of demolition as of this writing. But further west, things, once again, get weird. South Lawndale and Lower West Side community areas have been major hubs for Mexican immigrants (and, to the lesser extent, immigrants from elsewhere in Central and South America). Some of it can be explained by upward mobility and the fact that many of the immigrants are here illegally - but still, I would not expect such noticeable declines (Although, on reflection, I realize that immigration from south of the border has dropped off during the Great Recession, so maybe that's not so odd).
Southwest Side is interesting. This part of Chicago is largely either working class or poor, with a few ethnic white communities, white middle class communities and mixed-race middle-class communities surviving out of stubbornness and, in case of the communities closer to the southwestern city limits, sheer necessity. Chicago laws prohibit city employees from permanently living outside Chicago, so most of them wound up settling as far away from the city center as possible. The area has actually shown some noticeable population growth, especially in the white-majority areas.
Finally, the Far Northwest Side is largely made up of middle-class neighborhoods that survive for the same reason as the outlying Southwest Side neighborhoods. Those things look almost suburban in everything but name (in no small part because they were settled later than most other parts of Chicago). To be honest, I expected to see more population growth than what the census indicates.
Community Area Trends
I could go on forever analyzing every single community area, but I don't have that kind of time, so I will focus on the community areas that particularly stuck out to me.
South Chicago (CA 46)
This oft-overlooked area has a fascinating demographic combination - it is one of the few Chicago CAs where poor blacks and Hispanics live side-by-side, with African-Americans forming a slim majority. Usually, the two don't mix well (for example North Lawndale (CA 29) remains largely black while the nearby South Lawndale(CA 30) is largely Mexican-American). Not that there aren't problems - the conflicts between black and Hispanic gangs have been going on since the 70s, and they've gotten especially bloody since the 1990s. But I digress.
The reason why I find South Chicago demographics fascinating is because the Tribune graphic shows that they lost similar percentages of Hispanic and Black population. Ditto the community's White population. The one racial group that showed increases is, oddly enough, Asian-Americans. Now, according to 2000 census, the area has a grand total of 55 Asian-Americans, so the increase isn't nearly as significant as it seems at the first glance. Still, it's curious.
East Side (CA 52) and Hegewisch (CA 55)
Both of those neighborhoods are virtually geographically isolated from Chicago. East Side is cut off thanks to the Calumet River on the west and north, Indiana border in the east and miles upon miles of post-Industrial wasteland in the south. Hegewisch got miles of industrial facilities (both active and abandoned) on the west, Wolf Lake Park and abandoned industry in the north, freight railroads on the southwest and Indiana border on the east. Many Chicagoans have no idea those neighborhoods even exist. Because of this, they were persistent South Side demographic anomalies for decades - they were largely white, largely working-class and largely safe. And while the employment rates were hardly ideal, they were much better than those of their neighbors.
For much of their history, they remained largely ethnic White (mostly from Eastern European and ex-Soviet countries). But that started changing in the 1990s. Hispanic immigrants settled in East Side in significant numbers, and they made some inroads into Hegewisch. But the most significant demographic change was a sharp upswing of African-Americans. Now, that isn't much considered that the numbers of African-Americans that lived there used to be literally in single digits, but the demographic implications could not be underestimated.
The 2010 census showed that the trends continued. As I suspected, Hegewisch saw a sharp increase in Hispanic residents while the white population declined. East Side saw a smaller, but nonetheless notable increase. African-American population increased dramatically - of course, the population is probably still under 2,000, but still - that's enough to swing elections in tight aldermanic races. I am curious to see how this will impact the politics within the neighborhoods.
Ashburn (CA 70)
Ashburn is often touted as one of the city's few integrated communities, but that description is somewhat deceptive. The community as a whole is, for the most part, evenly divided between whites and African-Americans. But this ignores the fact that aAshburn is actually made up of two neighborhoods - the majority-White Scottsdale and majority-Black Ashburn. While the relations between the two have been largely peaceful, there wasn't a whole lot of mixing between the two halves.
If you look at the overall population graphic, you'll see that the census tract that corresponds to Scottsdale has seen a population increase, while the census tract that corresponds to Ashburn has seen the population decline. This is especially interesting given that the overall white and African-American populations have increased (though black population increased at a slower rate than white population). What makes it even more interesting is that the neighborhood's Hispanic population has increased by over a hundred percent. As for 2000, Ashburn community area had 6,674 Hispanic residents, and they made up 16% of the community population. Assuming that their population increased by a hundred percent, their population would now be 13, 348. By comparison, according to 2000 census, Ashburn had 17,099 white residents and 17,171 black residents. All the sudden, the neighborhood's two-way majority becomes a three-way majority. This has potential to have far-reaching effects on just about every aspect of the community. I really hope some sociologist picks up on that.
South Shore (CA 43)
Michelle Obama's community of birth, South Shore has working-class and middle-class neighborhoods. The community is majority-black, which is why I was surprised to see increase in every racial group that's not black. White, Hispanic and Asian residents increased in numbers (in case of the last, dramatically so). According to 2000 census, South Chicago had 778 White residents, 636 Hispanic residents and 88 Asian residents. Even with the increases, African-Americans will still form a significant majority, but that's not the point. For the first time since the 60s that the number of white residents in South Shore actually increased.
Let me repeat that - the white population of a South Side African-American neighborhood increased.
This is not supposed to happen. This goes against the population trends that existed since White Flight of the 1960s-1970s. The potential future implications of it are staggering. This one area where we need more detailed data - pronto.
Douglas (CA 35) and Fuller Park (CA 38)
And speaking of things that are not supposed to happen, let's take a look at the two community areas that make up Bronzevelle - Chicago's oldest African-American neighborhood. Until a 1947 Supreme Count ruling that made housing segregation illegal, the vast majority of Chicago's African-Americans lived here. During the 60s, it became a site of one of the largest continuous stretches of public housing developments in United States.
Since the 1980s, many of Chicago's middle-class African Americans have worked towards transforming Bronzeville into a a safe, stable, culturally rich mixed-income community. As the housing projects were torn down, new condos rose along Bronzeville's battered streets, and it looked like the dream was starting to come true.
But then you look at the demographics.
Now, the decline in Bronzeville's African-American population was to be expected. As I mentioned earlier, the demolition of public housing displaced thousands of residents - there is no way all those condos could possibly make up for such a huge population drop. But I was not expecting the increase of white residents. According to 2000 census, Douglas CA had 1,683 white residents, while Fuller Park had a measly 46 white residents. Douglas' white population jumped by less than a half, while Fuller Park's white population jumped by over a hundred percent. Again, in the grander scheme of things, this does not represent much a population change, but, again, there are white people settling in areas that used to completely off-limits. Furthermore, what's with the increase in Hispanic and Asian population? In South Chicago, I could blame the increase on spillover from South Chicago, but that can't be the case with Bronzeville.... Can it?
What is going on here?
Chicago Lawn (CA 66)
This community area is much better known by the name of its biggest neighborhood - Marquette Park. That name went down in national history as the area where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's quest to pressure Chicago authorities into integrating the city was met with violent resistance from the ethnic White immigrants that settled there. It pretty much set the tone for the rest of Dr. King time in the Windy City - but that's a whole other tangent.
In that light, it's not surprising that the white majority persisted well into the 90s (though the ethnic make-up changed quite a bit since the 1960s). But by the time 2000 census was taken, the racial demographics shifted dramatically. African-Americans now made up a slim majority. White and Hispanic residents made up approximately 23% and 35%, respectively.
Since then, Marquette Park became infamous in the wake of the collapse of the housing bubble for suffering more foreclosures than just about every other community in Chicago.
According to the Tribune graphic, western parts of Chicago Lawn CA actually gained some residents. But looking at racial statistics, the number of white and black residents declined sharply. Ditto it's small Asian-American population. The only racial group to see any increases are Hispanics. Presumably, they account for the population increase. This means that the population dynamics have shifted in their favor, though the shift is unlikely to make much of a dent in the community's black majority. If anything, their majority might increase thanks to the decline of the white population.
East Garfield Park (CA 27)
This majority-black, poor West Side neighborhood has been through hell. It was never that wealthy, but the Great Depression really did the number on it's living conditions. The riots that erupted after Dr King's assassination gutted it's shopping areas, and the demise of the industry along what is now known as the Union Pacific West Metra Line caused the employment rate to plummet. The city has been trying to revitalize it, but aside from the area in the immediate vicinity of the Garfield Park Conservatory, the community doesn't have much to show for it.
This changed during the latest housing boom, when real estate developers were scouring Chicago for any neighborhood that might become the next Wicker Park. They were able to persuade hundreds of residents that East Garfield Park was on the cusp of a renaissance and sold them lots of overpriced condos. Never mind that it barely had any stores (or much in the way of the other amenities) - people were too eager to jump on the bandwagon to care.
But then, the Great Recession happened and any redevelopment pretty much froze in in it's tracks. Now, I assumed that most of those would-be gentriefiers would bolt the first chance they got, but apparently, enough of them stuck around to make a statistical difference. The Tribune graphic shows an over a 100% increase of White, Hispanic and Asian residents. Now, in 2000, there were 270 whites, 207 Hispanics and a measly 25 Asian-Americans. Even a hundred percent increase is a mere bleep on the community statistical radar. Still, I am curious to see how many of them will stick around by the time the next census comes out and whether or not their presence will have any effect.
And that will be all for now. I will try to write something more in the next few days, but for now, it's too late and I'm too bloody tired to go on. So good night, Internets.