(I got a couple requests for the text of the speech I gave on Wednesday. I'd planned to hyperlink source materials and include some photos, but I'm in a bit of a rush so I'll just throw the text up and beautify it later.)
Good evening. My name is James Withrow. I chair the Transit Task Force of the Conference. I also write a blog called Hyde Park Urbanist.
Oh, I know what some of you are thinking right now: “This guy's one of those nasty bloggers.” Maybe you're thinking of that other blog in Hyde Park where they call people names. But that's not my blog. At Hyde Park Urbanist, we try very hard not to dehumanize. We also don't take the Lord's name in vain.
One of the names that other blog calls long-time Hyde Parkers is NIMBYs. That's N-I-M-B-Y, short for “not in my back yard”. Their accusation is that long-time Hyde Parkers are fighting all change. There's a kernel of truth to that, I suppose. Folks who've built institutions get a little attached to them, even if it's an institution like the Co-op, which was a little hard to love at the end. But long-time Hyde Parkers welcome change. They just don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water.
In any case, it's important to understand how our neighborhood came to look like it does, to understand its history before we go down the road of wholesale change. Again.
Tonight, in the span of 15 minutes, I'm going to cover the last 60 years of Hyde Park and a bit of its future. 60-plus years in 15 minutes. I may leave out a few things. I may even have to generalize a little. Please forgive me.
Between 1915 in 1965, some 25 million people moved from the southern states to cities in the north. Most stayed. Of those who stayed, about half were white and about half were black. Industrial jobs in cities were drawing in migrants, but very little housing was built during the Depression or during World War II. The Depression sapped investment and resources were needed elsewhere during World War II. But people were still moving to northern cities. Where were they supposed to live?
The authorities tried to contain an ever-growing population of Blacks within Bronzeville. But by 1947, a corridor from Cottage Grove to State Street, all the way from 25th Street to South Chicago Avenue was majority black. The Chicago Real Estate Board led a campaign to promote racial covenants in the adjoining nearly all-white neighborhoods of Englewood, Kenwood, Hyde Park and Woodlawn. (http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1761.html)
But in 1948, the Supreme Court declared racial covenants to be legally unenforceable. Some whites in these adjoining neighborhoods then resorted to extralegal tactics, including violence and property damage to keep blacks penned into that corridor from Cottage Grove to State Street. Other whites moved en masse out to all-white suburbs. But Hyde Parkers generally blanched at the thought of such tactics and the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference was formed to talk out problems, to stamp out rumors, to confer-- to confer and figure out a way to make integration work.
And in fairness to all, I should point out that at this time in America's history, even if you wished racism never existed, even if you would have been comfortable with blacks living on your block, integration had some risks. In the first place, city services were markedly unequal. In African-American neighborhoods, the trash might or might not get picked up. The police might fight crime in your neighborhood or they might figure out how to make crime pay for themselves.
And at the federal level we had redlining. Beginning with the New Deal and then expanding with the GI Bill, the federal government promoted home ownership by underwriting credit. But the federal government worried that neighborhoods “in transition”, neighborhoods with significant or majority black populations-- the government worried that these neighborhoods would decline. So they “redlined” whole neighborhoods. Of course, once credit vanished, whole neighborhoods did decline in this self-fulfilling prophecy. Not until the 1970s, would redlining be outlawed. Even if you were a white person living in a black neighborhood, the government at all levels discriminated against you.
Ok, so we're now in the fifties. Wholesale racial changes are possible. The housing stock is horrid because so little was built or even rehabbed during the Depression and World War II. And there was a credit crisis-- a neighborhood credit crisis because people were afraid to invest in this community.
But as a nation, we were powerful. America had just won a two front war against fascism, a war that ended when the most devastating weapon ever devised was dropped on Japan. American industrial strength was the envy of the world. Our standard of living was far, far better than most of the world. At that time, more than any other time in our history, Americans believed that we could do anything we set our minds to do, that the government could solve all manner of problems if only the program were big enough.
So, in this neighborhood with its University of Chicago scholars and high-powered progressive politicians, a program was hatched. This program was called urban renewal and the compromises made during urban renewal would re-shape Hyde Park. Federal money would be brought in to raze dilapidated buildings and expand our institutions.
The urban renewal program was developed mostly by the powerful institutional actors in our neighborhood, but after years of meetings and presentations and forums, the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference signed off on Plans A & B. The Conference had large concerns about the urban renewal plans, but it's clear it never felt it had the choice of simply opposing them. The Conference worried that, if it opposed urban renewal, it would lose its seat at the table, lose its chance to shape the plans.
The Conference pressed for more public housing to be built and this ended up being the regret the Conference voiced the loudest. In the end fewer than 100 units were scattered across Hyde Park. One sociologist claimed that the lack of public housing disappointed the Conference as a whole while members as individuals were relieved.
The Conference played a small role in shaping the program, but it appears that the main way the Conference influenced these last 50 years of Hyde Park history was to articulate a vision for Hyde Park. Hyde Park would be a community of high standards, an interracial community of high standards.
Urban renewal cleared away many working-class homes as well as several single room occupancy hotels. The South East Chicago Commission was established with the help of the University to enforce municipal codes so that buildings could not be cut up into smaller and smaller apartments. The idea was that urban renewal would clear away the kinds of places that poor proplr had been moving into. This famously led comedian Mike Nichols to describe Hyde Park as a place where blacks and whites stood shoulder to shoulder against the poor.
I think you can only consider this vision for Hyde Park as progressive if you really understand the times. Sure, the poor were kept at bay, but in other neighborhoods like Woodlawn and Englewood, whites chose to move out in droves rather than establish integrated neighborhoods. Maybe there were other communities that chose to become interracial at this time of great change in America's cities, but I bet you could count those communities on one hand.
In any case, this compromise worked. Hyde Park is that interracial community of high standards. The vision that the Conference articulated at the moment of urban renewal became the accepted vision for Hyde Park and many people who moved here since urban renewal chose the neighborhood at least partly for its diversity. Its interracial population is an amenity.
Those who invested in Hyde Park decades ago have probably done well. The value of homes here has generally outpaced suburban neighborhoods. But it wasn't always clear that that would be the outcome. I know a woman who came here during the late 60s with her husband to raise their family. They could have afforded to live elsewhere, but she wanted her children to grow up in an interracial community. Soon after she moved in, a gang skirmish broke out on the Midway a couple blocks south of her. She told me she remembers sitting in a chair, putting her head in her hands and asking herself: “What have I done?”
Integration was no day at the beach for black people either. It takes some guts to live in a place where you suspect people may discriminate against you for the color of your skin. I'm sure every African-American in Hyde Park had some friend or relative didn't trust any white people and wondered why black people would want to live among them. But blacks and whites together made integration work.
I grew up in a town called Mattoon in downstate Illinois—20,000 people, probably 95% white. As a child, I had a strong suspicion that my life would be richer if I lived among both white and black people. Today, I just couldn't imagine living in a place where everyone was white like me. The folks who insisted upon an interracial community of high standards and stuck with the neighborhood through thick and thin—those folks are heroes to me. They created the community I dreamed of as a child.
And this vision of an interracial community with high standards has borne important fruit. Hyde Park was the political base of Harold Washington and Barack Obama. Is it just a coincidence that a community that chose to be interracial would become the political power base for the first black mayor of Chicago and the first black president of the United States, the first black president of any white democracy in the world? Do you think that's just a coincidence?
Now, Barack Obama is a brilliant guy. Maybe he could've chosen some other place to live and launch his career from. But he chose Hyde Park. Maybe he would have succeeded elsewhere and eventually become the first black president. It's conceivable. But the world doesn't have to worry about that alternative universe, does it? The President chose Hyde Park and everything worked out. On the most important issue of these long-term Hyde Parkers’ adult lives, they were on the right side and we have President Barack Obama as the tangible fruit of their labors.
They’re heroes to me. When other people call them NIMBYs, they should take it as a compliment. Because at a critical moment in American history, neighborhoods around them were resorting to racism, telling Hyde Parkers that racism could save their neighborhood, telling them that an integrated neighborhood was impossible. And they stood up and said, “Racism? Not in my backyard.”
Still, there's work to be done. There's a moat to fill in.
You know the moat-- the moat around Hyde Park. Sometimes it's almost literal, with Lake Michigan to the east and a sunken Midway Plaisance on the south. Washington Park forms a barrier to the west.
Sometimes the moat is figurative. We've done many things that are nearly invisible that make Hyde Park difficult to visit, but transit and retail are two things I know something about, so I’m going to talk only about them.
Urban renewal did something a bit insidious. Urban renewal made transit less useful for shopping.
Again, let me set the stage. Several urban planning ideas of the fifties are now discredited. Urban planners used to believe that mixed-use blocks are a problem. During the 50s and 60s they tried to separate industrial areas from commercial & residential areas, which makes some sense. But they also tried to separate commercial areas from residential areas, something today’s urban planners consider a colossal mistake.
I can't really blame them the urban planners of the fifties. Hyde Park at the time, before widespread integration, had one of the highest crime rates in the city. Along 55th Street from Cottage Grove to Lake Park, there were 47 bars. Today, there are two bars on that stretch of 55th St. Somewhere between two and 47 is the magic number of bars that 55th Street ought to have.
I think it was very easy to look at those bars and then look at the crime rate and make a connection. It's possible that the commercial buildings seemed like the most dilapidated structures in Hyde Park. Certainly, some of the single room occupancy hotels that were then being rented out to transients actually housed criminals. Rooting out the bars and those hotels made some sense. The thinking at the time probably was that there would be districts of bars in cities set away from the neighborhoods-- places like Rush Street. Those urban planners were wrong about bars; plenty of people now consider neighborhood bars to be an amenity.
Plus, urban planners were under the assumption that in some bright, shiny future everyone would own a personal automobile and drive wherever they wanted to go. Boomtowns of the 50s and 60s were planned according to these principles, which urban planners today hate. That's one of the reasons why I contend that the worst thing about urban renewal was how sudden it was. Gradual changes make more sense. Probably half of what urban planners today believe will turn out to be bad ideas and we don't know which half. So, let's make gradual changes and we can correct our mistakes as we go.
So, these twin ideas of separating residential from commercial and assuming people would someday drive everywhere led the business community in Hyde Park to support urban renewal. I believe many of them looked forward to having shopping centers with parking, these futuristic places where customers would be able to drive to and then park in front of their businesses.
But a couple things got in the way of this futuristic vision. Shopping center parking lots take up lots and lots and lots of space. And, even if you construct a large shopping center like the one that now houses the big-box retailers Office Depot and Treasure Island, small businesses found they had trouble getting in because shopping center developers preferred national chains. This was not an aesthetic choice, but rather a cold hard fact that developers had to contend with. Banks lending money to build shopping centers charged lower interest on the loans if the tenants were national chains because they were seen as more creditworthy tenants.
So, what does this have to with transit and the moat?
Urban renewal, without anyone meaning to, I think, reduced the number of businesses in Hyde Park because there was far less commercial space. Hyde Park therefore became less attractive for folks from other neighborhoods to visit just because there fewer retail shops and restaurants and bars. But urban renewal dug part of the moat with amazing precision.
Almost all the commercial spaces we lost during urban renewal were along the transit corridors of Lake Park and 55th Street. Now, we have a situation where our supposed Main Street--53rd Street-- has no bus line. Ditto 57th Street. On the other hand, there are plenty of buses on 55th Street, but only a few places to shop.
On that other blog, the head writer recently looked at the block building exercise that was held for 53rd Street and noticed that one Harper Court proposal had 114 retail units. Could Hyde Park really support 114 retail units, he asked?
Wrong question. If we weren't so provincial, we'd ask if Hyde Park could attract enough people from outside the neighborhood to shop here so that we could have 114 units of retail to walk to. Sometimes we just take the moat for granted.
Was the Conference any better about this? I'm afraid not. We recently put a survey on the web asking Hyde Parkers what they wanted in a new, improved Harper Court. Shouldn't we have asked what we could have in a new Harper Court to bring outsiders here to shop? Shouldn't we ask what would appeal to our neighbors who live in a worse retail desert than we do?
If folks from outside the neighborhood come here to shop—even if it’s at a business Hyde Parkers aren’t that interested in—they’re likely to linger to shop and eat and drink at other places we value. And more shoppers mean more eyes on the street, which will make us feel safer.
We have to fill in this moat. We need to build retail with transit in mind. It's fine to put a commercial center at Harper Court, but let's improve transit so that it will be easier for people to shop in Hyde Park without driving here. Let’s get behind the Gold Line.
And let's take another look at gradually re-commercializing 55th Street, where the buses are. It's really 55th Street where diverse Hyde Parkers come together. White and black, young and old, we tend to meet along 55th Street-- at the Neighborhood Club, at Jimmy's, at the Seven-Ten. (And for decades we met at the Co-op.)
The University is actually a little ahead of the community in filling in this moat around Hyde Park, investing in the schools in the neighborhoods around us and extending police protection to include all of Kenwood and Woodlawn and much of Washington Park. These neighborhoods will continue to get safer and more attractive.
This expansive vision, however, needs to extend to retail & transit, to once again make it more attractive for neighboring communities to visit us. That’s the logical extension of the Conference’s vision of an interracial neighborhood of high standards. The Conference and the neighborhood need to make Hyde Park a welcoming place for all.
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