Introduction
For our project we have decided to focus on crime and how crime affects the people who reside in Pilsen and how they have been affected by the gentrification that this neighborhood is currently going through. Through the use of annual crime reports from CPD we will compare and contrast how crime has changed throughout the years in Pilsen. We will also be conducting interviews to gather more information about past and current crime patterns from people who currently reside in this neighborhood. We will ask them how they feel about this gentrification process and weather this is changing the neighborhood for the better or worst in regards to crime and violence. Our project will be this webpage in which we will display all of our information gathered through research as well as the interviews.
Academic essay
Gentrification in Pilsen and its effect.
Gentrification is the shift of an urban community, in this case Pilsen, toward wealthier residents and/or businesses and increasing property values. In other words property prices, rents, and living costs rise allowing wealthier residents to move in meanwhile displacing the native populations which often times happen to be minorities. For this project my partner and I decided to focus on Pilsen and the gentrification process they now face. We created a web page with information on the gentrification process as well as how this compares to crime rates in the area. We also conducted interviews with current residents to get their take on this ongoing process.
We can see signs of gentrification everywhere in the neighborhood. Old Mexican owned restaurants and family operated businesses are being replaced at a very rapid rate by more modern gentrified businesses. The taco shops are now bar and grills, the family corner store now a modern clothing store. The run down old houses now big apartment complexes. We can also see gentrification process in the residents. 10 years ago if you took a stroll down 18 street perhaps the busiest street in Pilsen you would rarely bump into someone that wasn’t Latino or Hispanic. Today this same stroll would have you see whites, African Americans and so forth. UIC students flood the streets of Pilsen looking for a good time.
Gentrification in Pilsen has defiantly had an effect on the crime rate. From data we collected we can see that crime rates have decreased drastically since 2001. In fact according to the Chicago tribune crime trends, violent crime, property crimes and quality of life crimes are all down significantly since the beginning of the decade. These crime patterns have been declining year by year. The gentrification process has defiantly had positive effects in regards to crime levels but according to John Roman, Ph.D. he mentions in his article that gentrification can only continue to be good for crime rates if the poor residents or minorities stay, if they are not completely pushed out of their own neighborhood. “The bottom line is, just as we cannot arrest our way out of crime problems, we also cannot economically segregate and isolate our way out either. That approach is self-destructive and has led to many of the problems our cities face today. Figuring out how to fix those mistakes is at the core of creating prosperous places…. Economic integration, where the rich and poor live side by side, leads to the safest cities”. Gentrification may be good for the crime rates but it has very negative effects on the minority community. In his study John Betancur comes to the conclusion that Latinos continue to face displacement from a bad neighborhood to another deteriorated area. “Even when they became the majority, gentrification undermined their community building and advance, splitting the community from within and from without” (18). In his study his findings revel that although gentrification affects market displacement the real tragedy is community disintegration. “Displacement not only wasted the investment and sacrifice that went into community fabrics, but it prevented them from consolidating in place and becoming the launching platforms that got European ethnics going. Class and race-mediated restructuring did not help. Instability, fragmentation, separation, racism, deindustrialization and continuous displacement undermined Latino settlement significantly” (19). The truth is that gentrification has drastic effects on the native population.
Gentrification does have an effect on crime rates. It does lower them especially in Pilsen as the trends show. The more gentrified it became the less crimes occurring however the effects of gentrification are far more than just crime reduction. The displacement of the native population is not the solution. As John Roman mentions we need to build places where the rich and the poor live side by side not push the minorities out and send them to another bad neighborhood. With gentrification we take away their chance to grow and succeed and perhaps just push the crime to a different part of the city.
Gentrification is the shift of an urban community, in this case Pilsen, toward wealthier residents and/or businesses and increasing property values. In other words property prices, rents, and living costs rise allowing wealthier residents to move in meanwhile displacing the native populations which often times happen to be minorities. For this project my partner and I decided to focus on Pilsen and the gentrification process they now face. We created a web page with information on the gentrification process as well as how this compares to crime rates in the area. We also conducted interviews with current residents to get their take on this ongoing process.
We can see signs of gentrification everywhere in the neighborhood. Old Mexican owned restaurants and family operated businesses are being replaced at a very rapid rate by more modern gentrified businesses. The taco shops are now bar and grills, the family corner store now a modern clothing store. The run down old houses now big apartment complexes. We can also see gentrification process in the residents. 10 years ago if you took a stroll down 18 street perhaps the busiest street in Pilsen you would rarely bump into someone that wasn’t Latino or Hispanic. Today this same stroll would have you see whites, African Americans and so forth. UIC students flood the streets of Pilsen looking for a good time.
Gentrification in Pilsen has defiantly had an effect on the crime rate. From data we collected we can see that crime rates have decreased drastically since 2001. In fact according to the Chicago tribune crime trends, violent crime, property crimes and quality of life crimes are all down significantly since the beginning of the decade. These crime patterns have been declining year by year. The gentrification process has defiantly had positive effects in regards to crime levels but according to John Roman, Ph.D. he mentions in his article that gentrification can only continue to be good for crime rates if the poor residents or minorities stay, if they are not completely pushed out of their own neighborhood. “The bottom line is, just as we cannot arrest our way out of crime problems, we also cannot economically segregate and isolate our way out either. That approach is self-destructive and has led to many of the problems our cities face today. Figuring out how to fix those mistakes is at the core of creating prosperous places…. Economic integration, where the rich and poor live side by side, leads to the safest cities”. Gentrification may be good for the crime rates but it has very negative effects on the minority community. In his study John Betancur comes to the conclusion that Latinos continue to face displacement from a bad neighborhood to another deteriorated area. “Even when they became the majority, gentrification undermined their community building and advance, splitting the community from within and from without” (18). In his study his findings revel that although gentrification affects market displacement the real tragedy is community disintegration. “Displacement not only wasted the investment and sacrifice that went into community fabrics, but it prevented them from consolidating in place and becoming the launching platforms that got European ethnics going. Class and race-mediated restructuring did not help. Instability, fragmentation, separation, racism, deindustrialization and continuous displacement undermined Latino settlement significantly” (19). The truth is that gentrification has drastic effects on the native population.
Gentrification does have an effect on crime rates. It does lower them especially in Pilsen as the trends show. The more gentrified it became the less crimes occurring however the effects of gentrification are far more than just crime reduction. The displacement of the native population is not the solution. As John Roman mentions we need to build places where the rich and the poor live side by side not push the minorities out and send them to another bad neighborhood. With gentrification we take away their chance to grow and succeed and perhaps just push the crime to a different part of the city.