Global Journal of Human Social Science, C: Sociology and Culture, Volume 22 Issue 1

© 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue I Version I 7 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 C The Revanchist City: Downtown Chicago and the Rhetoric of Redevelopment in Bronzeville of downtown Chicago to keep public housing out of white working and middle class neighborhoods (Hirsch, 1998). a) The Rent Gap One concept that has been developed in the literature on gentrification and is used to measure the revanchist city hypothesis outlined in this paper is the devalorization cycle measured by the size of the ‘rent gap’ in Revanchist cities (Smith, 1979 and 1996). This cycle entails a set of racialized decisions—made by public policy makers, private financial institutions, developers, landlords, and real estate agents—to determine the best and most profitable time to reclaim and reinvest in the value of property in disinvested areas (Smith and LeFaivre, 1984: 49; Omi and Winant, 1994). The devalorization cycle includes five stages. The first stage is the appearance of new construction or the first cycle of use that occurred in the 1950s when Downtown capital and local, state, and federal interest converged to produce the Chicago Land Clearance Commission (CLCC) to make way for the building of South Commons, Prairie Shores, and Lake Meadows in the 1960s. The area where these new “mixed income” housing complexes were slated for development was defined as “slum and blighted” under the Illinois Slum and Blighted Act of 1948 (Hirsch, 1998). However, as noted above, the city and downtown private interest simultaneously built public housing on the western border of Bronzeville which led to the second stage of the devalorization cycle. In the second stage there is a transition to landlord control and disinvestment of financial savings and loans institutions and retail and commercial establishments. This stage is linked to a plan to disinvest in the core infrastructure of the community. That is, the construction of mixed income apartments on the eastern border of Douglas was contiguous with the Lakefront, Michael Reese Hospital, and the McCormick center—all areas with anchored institutions and employees that needed residential space close to work. These developments were built with spacious picture windows and out door patios resembling hotel complexes along the water fronts of Hawaii or Miami. Thus, the rhetoric about mixed-income housing in the 60s was another revanchist strategy for attaching subsidized housing to market development (Smith 1996: 24-25, 46). Along the western border and further south through Bronzeville, housing projects took up vast amounts of land leading to a cycle of landlord control and the White flight of private financial and savings institutions, commercial and retail establishments, and the eventual flight of the Black working and middle class. This process was also steered on by the practices of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and its discriminatory policies which led to the third stage— redlining. Redlining was made possible by the FHA, the Home Owners Loan Corporation, and the blockbusting tactics (fourth stage) of real estate brokers who took advantage of White homeowners by encouraging them to sell their homes soon before the value of their property declines because of Black ‘invasion’ (Hirsch, 1998; Massey and Denton, 1993; Mahoney, 1995). The final stage is abandonment. The result of the devalorization cycle is the creation of a rent gap. The devalorization cycle accomplishes a systematic decrease in the ground rent of a neighborhood. The end product of the cycle is reflected in lower median rent for an area and a relatively low median home value in the selling price for structures in a disinvested area (Smith and LeFaivre, 1984: 50). The rent gap , the primary variable to analyze when disinvestment is occurring over a long period of time, is the percent change in the median value of housing and the median rent over time. When the percent change in the median value of housing falls below or near the percent change in the median rent, an area is said to be ready for reinvestment because this is when the “value gap” or the highest profit can be made by private developers, financial institutions, and real estate brokers (Smith, 1996). Thus, the rent gap is the maximum difference between the percent change in median rent and median home value. When both the median rent and home value are at their lowest, reinvestment is predicted to begin. City officials, private developers, land speculators, and real estate brokers take full advantage of low cost land, especially when they’ve been initiated by long-term plans and policies for a specific area. The rent gap is expressed when developers take advantage of the low median value of housing that has fallen below the median rent and purchase at a low price property for rehabbing and new construction while all along making low mortgage and interest payments with a large return in profits from the sale or rent of the property (Smith and LeFaivre, 1984). What follows is a dissection of Bronzeville into the Douglas and Grand Boulevard community areas of Chicago to measure the historical patterns and trends that gave rise to the cycle of disinvestment and reinvestment in the area. i. The Rent Gap in Bronzeville: Douglas The Douglas community area of Bronzeville (see Map 1) is contiguous to the lake and the South Loop—Downtown areas of Chicago. It is in Douglas where the first urban renewal effort took place to reclaim the eastern border of the community area adjacent to the Lakefront, Michael Reese Hospital, and the McCormick Center. Figure 1 below depicts trend data from 1960 to 2000. Between 1960 and 1970 the percent change in median rent was (34.4%) compared to a negative percent change in median home value (-5.8%) (See Figure 1).