As we enter the Fall season, we send you good wishes for an enjoyable season.
In the last couple of months, GCI released two new fact sheets on shifts in population. As has been much discussed in the news in recent years, the city has seen a loss in Black population. Our Fact Sheet, Black Population Loss in Chicago, demonstrates the decline in the black population of Chicago since the 1980 census. The data shows from 1980 to 2017, Chicago has seen a 32.9% decrease in the black population. Out of 29 majority black community areas, all of them have lost population. Chicago’s black population loss in percent is similar to that of Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Detroit, and St. Louis, in contrast to cities that have seen slight or large increases in black population such as Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and New York City. (Be on the lookout for a forthcoming report by the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy (IRRPP) on black migration).
The other fact sheet, Population Change in Illinois, compiles data on the change in population state-wide and examines where the population loss is occurring. This fact sheet provides yearly population figures from 2010 to 2018, comparing population change in Illinois to other states, examining population change in individual counties in Illinois, and examining population change in all the counties in the continental U.S. While population change overall in Illinois has remained negligible from 2010 to 2018, counties in the southern and western parts of Illinois had the largest percent decline in population.
We are kicking off our fall events and invite you to join us here at the Great Cities Institute on the 4th Floor of CUPPA Hall at 412 S. Peoria St.
Two UIC partners will also be hosting events in September related to cities and urban planning. On September 26 at noon, the Urban Transportation Center will be hosting Jeffrey Wytaniec of the Chicago Department of Aviation to discuss the O’Hare 21 Program and Midway airport modernization. The next day on September 27, the Master of City Design program will host Robert Fishman and Douglas Kelbaugh to discuss the “The Craft of City Design”, rsvp requested to citydesign@uic.edu.
On October 8th, we have two events.
Our first Real Time Chicago lecture of the Fall semester, National Parks in Your Neighborhood: The Role of the National Park Service in Metropolitan Communities will take place at noon on October 8th. This talk will feature Paul Labovitz, superintendent of Indiana Dunes National Park, Sue Bennett, chief of visitor services & community outreach for Pullman National Monument, and Michael Mencarini, community planner for the Midwest Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program (RTCA). The superintendent and park service staff will share the National Park Service’s relatively recent new focus on developing park and trail resources in urban areas and the move to recognize and steward historic sites in cities that are important to the national history and culture of the United States.
The second event on October 8 at 5pm is a part of our Cities Across the Globe lecture series. Water Diplomacy and the Water-Energy Nexus is co-hosted with the UIC Freshwater Lab and will feature Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli director of Ecopeace Middle East, a cross-border environmental organization that seeks to bring together and work with Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli environmentalists. Gidon will be talking about the organization’s Water-Energy Nexus Project to counter climate change and bring energy resources to regions across borders.
