Download or read book Harold Washington and the Neighborhoods written by Pierre Clavel and published by New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harold Washington's period as mayor of Chicago in 1983-1987 will be remarked as one of the high points of American city history. Not only was the the city's first black mayor, he put together the first successful rainbow coalition and introduced reforms that signaled the end of the Richard Daley machine. This book documents another, less-noted but equally important aspect of Washington's mayoralty: a progressive neighborhood and economic development agenda, pursued by a network of neighborhood-oriented organizers and professionals, which played a crucial role in legitimating the adminstration generally and institutionalizing major reforms. Neighborhood organizers found themselves in city government after Washington took office. In this book they discuss the roles they played, the experience of being on the inside, and the frustrations of government. Members of the administration pursued such policies as the reallocation of city investments from downtown to the outlying neighborhoods, the redefinition of city economic policy toward providing good jobs rather than developing real estate projects, use of community based organizations to implement city policy, and a committment to broad-based participation. At a time when national policy had withdrawn from urban affairs, such initiatives were remarkable. They also confounded mainstream academic and public opinion. Perhaps it was not impossible, as many claimed, to develop redistributive policies, explore public ownership, address racial discrimination. It is important to examine Harold Washington's policies for what they set out to accomplish and for what they showed about the potential for redistributive policies in American cities.
Download or read book The Third City written by Larry Bennett and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our traditional image of Chicago—as a gritty metropolis carved into ethnically defined enclaves where the game of machine politics overshadows its ends—is such a powerful shaper of the city’s identity that many of its closest observers fail to notice that a new Chicago has emerged over the past two decades. Larry Bennett here tackles some of our more commonly held ideas about the Windy City—inherited from such icons as Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Daniel Burnham, Robert Park, Sara Paretsky, and Mike Royko—with the goal of better understanding Chicago as it is now: the third city. Bennett calls contemporary Chicago the third city to distinguish it from its two predecessors: the first city, a sprawling industrial center whose historical arc ran from the Civil War to the Great Depression; and the second city, the Rustbelt exemplar of the period from around 1950 to 1990. The third city features a dramatically revitalized urban core, a shifting population mix that includes new immigrant streams, and a growing number of middle-class professionals working in new economy sectors. It is also a city utterly transformed by the top-to-bottom reconstruction of public housing developments and the ambitious provision of public works like Millennium Park. It is, according to Bennett, a work in progress spearheaded by Richard M. Daley, a self-consciously innovative mayor whose strategy of neighborhood revitalization and urban renewal is a prototype of city governance for the twenty-first century. The Third City ultimately contends that to understand Chicago under Daley’s charge is to understand what metropolitan life across North America may well look like in the coming decades.
Download or read book Queer Clout written by Timothy Stewart-Winter and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Queer Clout weaves together activism and electoral politics to trace the gay movement's path since the 1950s in Chicago. Stewart-Winter stresses gay people's and African Americans' shared focus on police harassment, highlighting how black political leaders enabled white gays and lesbians to join an emerging liberal coalition in city hall.
Download or read book Great American City written by Robert J. Sampson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-04-08 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Great American City demonstrates the powerfully enduring impact of place. Based on one of the most ambitious studies in the history of social science, Robert J. Sampson’s Great American City presents the fruits of over a decade’s research to support an argument that we all feel and experience every day: life is decisively shaped by your neighborhood. Engaging with the streets and neighborhoods of Chicago, Sampson, in this new edition, reflects on local and national changes that have transpired since his book’s initial publication, including a surge in gun violence and novel forms of segregation despite an increase in diversity. New research, much of it a continuation of the influential discoveries in Great American City, has followed, and here, Sampson reflects on its meaning and future directions. Sampson invites readers to see the status of the research initiative that serves as the foundation of the first edition—the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN)—and outlines the various ways other scholars have continued his work. Both accessible and incisively thorough, Great American City is a must-read for anyone interested in cutting-edge urban sociology and the study of crime.
Download or read book The South Side written by Natalie Y. Moore and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lyrical, intelligent, authentic and necessary look at the intersection of race and class in Chicago, a Great American City.Mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel have touted Chicago as a "world-class city." The skyscrapers kissing the clouds, the billion-dollar Millennium Park, Michelin-rated restaurants, pristine lake views, fabulous shopping, vibrant theater scene, downtown flower beds and stellar architecture tell one story. Yet swept under the rug is another story: the stench of segregation that permeates and compromises Chicago. Though other cities - including Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Baltimore - can fight over that mantle, it's clear that segregation defines Chicago. And unlike many other major U.S. cities, no particular race dominates; Chicago is divided equally into black, white and Latino, each group clustered in its various turfs.In this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation in the city's South Side; her reported essays showcase the lives of these communities through the stories of her family and the people who reside there. The South Side highlights the impact of Chicago's historic segregation - and the ongoing policies that keep the system intact.
Download or read book Bedrock Faith written by Eric Charles May and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2014-02-10 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ex-convict returns to his Chicago community a changed man—but maybe not for the better—in this “vivid, suspenseful, funny, and compassionate novel” (Booklist). One of Booklist’s Top 10 First Novels of the Year One of Roxane Gay’s Top 10 Books of the Year After fourteen years in prison, Gerald “Stew Pot” Reeves, age thirty-one, returns home to live with his mom in Parkland, a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. The residents are in a tailspin, dreading the arrival of the man they remember as a frightening delinquent. The anxiety only grows when Stew Pot announces that he experienced a religious awakening in prison. Most folks are skeptical, with one notable exception: Mrs. Motley, a widowed retired librarian and the Reeves’ next-door neighbor, who loans Stew Pot a Bible, which is seen by him and many in the community as a friendly gesture. With uncompromising fervor (and with a new pit bull named John the Baptist), Stew Pot soon appoints himself the moral judge of Parkland—and starts wreaking havoc on people’s lives. Before long, tension and suspicion reign, and this close-knit community must reckon with questions of faith, fear, and forgiveness . . . “[A] novel of epiphanies, tragedies, and transformations . . . perfect for book clubs.” —Booklist, starred review “May slowly builds suspense as he persuasively unfolds the narrative in this work that reads like an Agatha Christie mystery.” —Library Journal “A wonderful urban novel full of vitality and pathos and grit.” —Dennis Lehane
Download or read book Block by Block written by Amanda I. Seligman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2005-05-10 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades following World War II, cities across the United States saw an influx of African American families into otherwise homogeneously white areas. This racial transformation of urban neighborhoods led many whites to migrate to the suburbs, producing the phenomenon commonly known as white flight. In Block by Block, Amanda I. Seligman draws on the surprisingly understudied West Side communities of Chicago to shed new light on this story of postwar urban America. Seligman's study reveals that the responses of white West Siders to racial changes occurring in their neighborhoods were both multifaceted and extensive. She shows that, despite rehabilitation efforts, deterioration in these areas began long before the color of their inhabitants changed from white to black. And ultimately, the riots that erupted on Chicago's West Side and across the country in the mid-1960s stemmed not only from the tribulations specific to blacks in urban centers but also from the legacy of accumulated neglect after decades of white occupancy. Seligman's careful and evenhanded account will be essential to understanding that the "flight" of whites to the suburbs was the eventual result of a series of responses to transformations in Chicago's physical and social landscape, occurring one block at a time.
Download or read book I Am Somebody written by David Masciotra and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are few figures and leaders of recent American history of greater social and political consequence than Jesse Jackson, and few more relevant for America's current political climate. In the 1960s, Jackson served as a close aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, meeting him on the notorious march to legitimate the American democratic system in Selma. He was there on the day of King's assassination, and continued his political legacy, inspiring a generation of black and Latino politicians and activists, founding the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, and helping to make the Democratic Party more multicultural and progressive with his historic runs for the presidency in the 1980s. In I Am Somebody, David Masciotra argues that Jackson's legacy must be rehabilitated in the history of American politics. Masciotra has had personal access to Jackson for several years, conducting over 100 interviews with the man himself, as well as interviews with a wide variety of elected officials and activists who Jackson has inspired and influenced. It also takes readers inside Jackson's negotiations for the release of hostages and political prisoners in Cuba, Iraq, and several other countries. As Democratic politics sees a return to radicalism and the rise of a new generation of committed advocates of racial and economic justice, I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters is a critical book for understanding where America in the 21st Century has come from and where it is going. Featuring a foreword by Michael Eric Dyson.
Download or read book Activists in City Hall written by Pierre Clavel and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1983, Boston and Chicago elected progressive mayors with deep roots among community activists. Taking office as the Reagan administration was withdrawing federal aid from local governments, Boston's Raymond Flynn and Chicago's Harold Washington implemented major policies that would outlast them. More than reforming governments, they changed the substance of what the government was trying to do: above all, to effect a measure of redistribution of resources to the cities' poor and working classes and away from hollow goals of "growth" as measured by the accumulation of skyscrapers. In Boston, Flynn moderated an office development boom while securing millions of dollars for affordable housing. In Chicago, Washington implemented concrete measures to save manufacturing jobs, against the tide of national policy and trends. Activists in City Hall examines how both mayors achieved their objectives by incorporating neighborhood activists as a new organizational force in devising, debating, implementing, and shaping policy. Based in extensive archival research enriched by details and insights gleaned from hours of interviews with key figures in each administration and each city's activist community, Pierre Clavel argues that key to the success of each mayor were numerous factors: productive contacts between city hall and neighborhood activists, strong social bases for their agendas, administrative innovations, and alternative visions of the city. Comparing the experiences of Boston and Chicago with those of other contemporary progressive cities—Hartford, Berkeley, Madison, Santa Cruz, Santa Monica, Burlington, and San Francisco—Activists in City Hall provides a new account of progressive urban politics during the Reagan era and offers many valuable lessons for policymakers, city planners, and progressive political activists.
Download or read book Neighborhood Defenders written by Katherine Levine Einstein and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public participation in the housing permitting process empowers unrepresentative and privileged groups who participate in local politics to restrict the supply of housing.
Download or read book Making Mexican Chicago written by Mike Amezcua and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-03-08 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of how the Windy City became a postwar Latinx metropolis in the face of white resistance. Though Chicago is often popularly defined by its Polish, Black, and Irish populations, Cook County is home to the third-largest Mexican-American population in the United States. The story of Mexican immigration and integration into the city is one of complex political struggles, deeply entwined with issues of housing and neighborhood control. In Making Mexican Chicago, Mike Amezcua explores how the Windy City became a Latinx metropolis in the second half of the twentieth century. In the decades after World War II, working-class Chicago neighborhoods like Pilsen and Little Village became sites of upheaval and renewal as Mexican Americans attempted to build new communities in the face of white resistance that cast them as perpetual aliens. Amezcua charts the diverse strategies used by Mexican Chicagoans to fight the forces of segregation, economic predation, and gentrification, focusing on how unlikely combinations of social conservatism and real estate market savvy paved new paths for Latinx assimilation. Making Mexican Chicago offers a powerful multiracial history of Chicago that sheds new light on the origins and endurance of urban inequality.
Download or read book At Home in the Loop written by Lois Wille and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 1998-10 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lois Wille's illustrated account provides behind-the-scenes insight into how a small number of Chicago business leaders transformed the dangerous and seedy South Loop into an integrated and thriving community in the heart of the central city. The obstacles to the evolution of Dearborn Park were quite formidable, including a succession of six mayors, huge economic impediments, policy disputes engendered among people used to making their own corporate decisions, the wretched reputation of the South Loop, problems with the Chicago public school system, and public mistrust of a project supported by the wealthy, no matter how altruistic the goal. It took twenty years and millions of dollars, but it will pay off and in fact is paying off right now. With Dearborn Park, Chicago left a formula that other cities can use to turn fallow land into vibrant neighborhoods--without big government subsidies. As Wille explains, the realization of this vision requires shared investment and shared risk on the part of local businesses, financial institutions, and government. It links private and public influence and capital. Wille explains how these elements worked together to build a neighborhood in a blighted tract of Chicago's Loop. She also describes how key decisions affecting the public interest were made during a time of profound change in the city's political life: Dearborn Park was conceived during the final years of the most powerful political machine in America and had to adapt as that machine crumbled and city government was reshaped
Download or read book The Politics of Place written by Joseph P. Schwieterman and published by Lake Claremont Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only in Chicago Can Zoning Be Epic... Chicago is renowned for its distinctive skyline, its bustling Loop business district, and its diverse neighborhoods. How the face of Chicago came to be is a story of enterprise, ingenuity, opportunity--and zoning. Until now, however, there has not been a book that focuses on the important, often surprising, role of zoning in shaping the 'The City that Works.' "The Politics of Place: A History of Zoning in Chicago" reviews the interplay among development, planning, and zoning in the growth of the Gold Coast, the Central Area, and, more recently, massive 'Planned Developments'; such as Marina City, Illinois Center, and Dearborn Park. It tells the story of bold visions compromised by political realities, battles between residents and developers, and occasional misfires from City Council and City Hall. What emerges is a fascinating, behind-the-scenes inspection of the evolving character of the city's landscape. Schwieterman and Caspall recount the many planning innovations that have originated in Chicago, the complexities and intrigue of its zoning debates, and the recent adoption of a new zoning ordinance that promises to affect the city's economy and image for years to come.
Download or read book Never a City So Real written by Alex Kotlowitz and published by Crown. This book was released on 2004-07-06 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author of There Are No Children Here takes us into the heart of Chicago by introducing us to some of the city’s most interesting, if not always celebrated, people. Chicago is one of America’s most iconic, historic, and fascinating cities, as well as a major travel destination. For Alex Kotlowitz, an accidental Chicagoan, it is the perfect perch from which to peer into America’s heart. It’s a place, as one historian has said, of “messy vitalities,” a stew of contradictions: coarse yet gentle, idealistic yet restrained, grappling with its promise, alternately sure and unsure of itself. Chicago, like America, is a kind of refuge for outsiders. It’s probably why Alex Kotlowitz found comfort there. He’s drawn to people on the outside who are trying to clean up—or at least make sense of—the mess on the inside. Perspective doesn’t come easy if you’re standing in the center. As with There Are No Children Here, Never a City So Real is not so much a tour of a place as a chronicle of its soul, its lifeblood. It is a tour of the people of Chicago, who have been the author’s guides into this city’s—and in a broader sense, this country’s—heart. From the Hardcover edition.
Download or read book The Third Coast written by Thomas L. Dyja and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Chicago Tribune‘s 2013 Heartland Prize A critically acclaimed history of Chicago at mid-century, featuring many of the incredible personalities that shaped American culture Before air travel overtook trains, nearly every coast-to-coast journey included a stop in Chicago, and this flow of people and commodities made it the crucible for American culture and innovation. In luminous prose, Chicago native Thomas Dyja re-creates the story of the city in its postwar prime and explains its profound impact on modern America—from Chess Records to Playboy, McDonald’s to the University of Chicago. Populated with an incredible cast of characters, including Mahalia Jackson, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, Sun Ra, Simone de Beauvoir, Nelson Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Turkel, and Mayor Richard J. Daley, The Third Coast recalls the prominence of the Windy City in all its grandeur.
Download or read book Gleanings of Archer Road written by Joseph Hamzik and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2013-09-19 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Archer Road, told here for the first time, is a long and interesting story spanning from the time of the first Native Americans to the time this manuscript was written. It served as a portage route for native Americans and explorers, an access road to monitor the building of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, a stagecoach route, and a host of other transportation purposes. Mr. Hamzik's history will describe each of these uses in detail and enlighten the reader to the importance of this great transportation highway.
Download or read book The City in a Garden written by John Mark Hansen and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
