Chicago Is Dying: A Default World City Because Someplace Had to Be One
Pick a city, any city. Parts of that city are dying. Other parts are thriving. Rust Belt Chicago:
Chicago had 33,902 vacant homes at midyear, up 22 percent from the end of 2010, according to DePaul University’s Institute for Housing Studies. In some census tracts in South Side neighborhoods such as Englewood and Back of the Yards, 1 in 6 homes is vacant.
Many people blame the foreclosure crisis, but that recent calamity has merely aggravated a depopulation trend on the city’s South and West sides that has been going on for decades. Englewood, for instance, has lost two-thirds of its residents since 1950.
And it’s not just a city problem: Vacancies in suburban Cook County have jumped 79 percent since the end of 2010, to 21,479 homes at midyear. In one census tract in Harvey, the vacancy rate is 17 percent, while it topped 16 percent in a tract that includes parts of Chicago Heights, Steger, Ford Heights and Sauk Village.
Declining population? Yep, Chicago has that. Abandoned homes? Chicago looks like Detroit. The demographic death blow:
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