The New Republic: Trading Places

The New Republic: Trading Places

"In the past three decades, Chicago has undergone changes that are routinely described as gentrification, but are in fact more complicated and more profound than the process that term suggests. A better description would be 'demographic inversion.' Chicago is gradually coming to resemble a traditional European city--Vienna or Paris in the nineteenth century, or, for that matter, Paris today. The poor and the newcomers are living on the outskirts. The people who live near the center--some of them black or Hispanic but most of them white--are those who can afford to do so....

"[T]he deindustrialization of the central city, for all the tragic human dislocations it caused, has eliminated many of the things that made affluent people want to move away from it. Nothing much is manufactured downtown anymore (or anywhere near it), and that means that the noise and grime that prevailed for most of the twentieth century have gone away....

"This is the generation that grew up watching 'Seinfeld,' 'Friends,' and 'Sex and the City,' mostly from the comfort of suburban sofas. We have gone from a sitcom world defined by 'Leave It to Beaver' and 'Father Knows Best' to one that offers a whole range of urban experiences and enticements."