Garland Thomas-McDavid: Addressing trauma is paramount in helping North Lawndale to rise and thrive

Chicago police walk with community members on Douglas Boulevard in the North Lawndale neighborhood on July 23, 2021, in a display of unity after recent shootings.

Image Source: Terrence Antonio James, Chicago Tribune

The impact of Great Cities Institute’s recent report on North Lawndale is discussed in a commentary written by Garland Thomas-McDavid, president and CEO of North Lawndale College Prep.

A recent report from the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago focused on revitalizing the North Lawndale community. It was uplifting and gratifying to see North Lawndale making headlines for its incredible potential while simultaneously being acknowledged for the steep uphill battle this neighborhood continues to face after generations of strategic, damaging disinvestment.

But there was a key issue that appears as a mere afterthought. As impactful as it may be to make targeted efforts to revive North Lawndale’s economy — from housing to employment to food scarcity — there is a piece of this equation that we cannot overlook: community violence and the trauma that comes with it.

Garland Thomas-McDavid continues in his commentary to discuss the importance of addressing youth trauma and reinvesting in Chicago neighborhoods.

Full Story from Chicago Tribune »

Great Cities Releases Updated Hardship Index for Chicago Community Areas

In 2016, The Great Cities Institute created a Hardship Index as a tool to show the extent and difference in economic and social hardship in a given community area relative to other community areas. Originally developed as an index to compare the economic disparities between the suburbs and inner cities, the Great Cities Institute utilized the methodology and applied it to Chicago community areas. 

GCI has updated its Chicago Community Area “Hardship Index” with the latest available data and is available for use. 

Since our original publication of the “Hardship Index” Fact Sheet in 2016 (using American Community Survey 2012-2016 estimates), the index has been utilized to compare hardship between cities, served as resource for journalists (WBEZ, Chicago Reporter, and ABC 7) to contextualize policy issues, and by Chicago Public Schools to determine the prioritization of laptop loan distribution to households during the first year of remote learning.

We are releasing the updated Hardship Index using 2016-2020 data as an interactive online map. One of the main features allows users to navigate between the 2006-2010 to 2016-2020 Hardship Index maps to allow for comparisons over time.

Users can scroll between the two maps by adjusting the navigation pane in the middle of both maps to reveal changes in hardship scores for that time period. An additional feature allows users to open the Percent Values table in a new tab to allow users to copy the data onto a seperate spreadsheet. If you have any questions about using the interactive tool, contact Alex Linares at alinares@uic.edu.

The Chicago Community Area Hardship Index can also benefit policy makers, government agencies, foundations and service organizations in determining resource allocation.

Click here to access the newest GCI Hardship Index interactive tool.

Great Cities Institute Collaborates to Produce Community Databook

Most important to the Great Cities Institute is our ability to serve Chicago and its communities by harnessing the power of research through strategic engagement.  A recent example of such engagement is the production of Lawndale Service Area Databook that we produced for/with the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation and presented at the Chicago City Club on Monday, April 25th.  The City Club event included a presentation of the data by our Director, Teresa Córdova and panel of North Lawndale Community Leaders: Dr. Teresa Córdova Rodney Brown, Brenda Palms Barber, Richard Townsell, Debra Wesley. The event and the report have received media coverage in the Chicago Sun Times, the Chicago Tribune, Block Club, NBC Chicago, WBEZ, and WVON, including columns from the editorial boards of both the Tribune and the Sun Times. The editorial from the Sun Times Editorial Board, which featured the Great Cities Institute report, appeared in Wednesday, April 27th’ paper and stated: 

The findings are valuable —and should be studied — by city planners, business owners or anyone interested in revitalizing North Lawndale and similar neighborhoods that are wrongly seen as too poor to support proper economic development.

The Databook identifies trends of wealth leakage and employment/education mismatch and argues for investment that benefits the residents.

Some major trends identified in the Lawndale Service Area Databook are that: 

    • $124 million in resident spending is leaving North Lawndale every year. This leakage is mainly due to: 
      • Insufficient living wage jobs within North Lawndale for North Lawndale residents
      • Underdeveloped commercial corridors or centers, and
        Minimal availability of goods and services within North Lawndale 
    • When economic development opportunities arose in North Lawndale, they tended not to benefit existing residents. Jobs within the community grew by approximately 3,000 between 2010 and 2018; however, most of those jobs went to workers who live outside of the community. 
      • In 2018, while more than three quarters of North Lawndale employed residents identify as Black, more than half of the jobs in the area were held by workers who identify as white (non-Hispanic), yet 2020 Census Data shows that the white (non-Hispanic) population of North Lawndale comprised just 2.3 percent of the total population. 
      • Jobs located within the community tend to pay higher than those held by employed residents who leave the community for work. 
      • Over half of jobs (51.9 percent) in North Lawndale paid more than $3,333 per month in 2018, however most employed residents (76.8 percent) were paid $3,333 or less per month. In 1980, median household income was already much lower in North Lawndale when compared to more affluent neighborhoods. Yet from 1980 to the period of 2015-2019, the inflation-adjusted median household income in North Lawndale decreased by an estimated $4,000. 
    • There is a mismatch between jobs in the community that require a bachelor’s or advanced degree and the percentage of residents that have a bachelor’s degree or higher. 
    • In 2018, 21.2 percent of jobs in the community required a bachelor’s or advanced degree but 12.7 percent of employed residents had a bachelor’s degree or higher. 
    • In 2018, the largest employing economic sector in North Lawndale was the Health Care and Social Assistance industry, which consisted of 43.4 percent of the jobs in North Lawndale. However, only 20.1 percent of North Lawndale employed residents worked in the Health Care and Social Assistance industry. The second largest employing sector in North Lawndale was in the Educational Services industry, in which only 2.4 percent of North Lawndale’s employed residents worked.

New study finds ‘generations’ of disinvestment, systemic racism in North Lawndale

Image Source: Anthony Vazquez, Sun-Times

A new study by the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Great Cities Institute has documented generations of “disinvestment, systemic racism and neglect” in North Lawndale.

“The well-being of residents is bolstered by the economic health of a neighborhood,” said Teresa Córdova, director of the Great Cities Institute. “The problem occurs when … the wealth-building opportunities aren’t enough. When those wealth-building opportunities are denied, you start to have various quality of life indicators that are parallel to that.”
These efforts, Córdova said, show to the entire city that North Lawndale is “like many other communities. They want homes, safe streets, good schools, dignified living-wage jobs.”

Editorial: Fixing North Lawndale isn’t just City Hall’s job. Corporate Chicago must step up

Image Source: John J. Kim, Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune editorial board calls on corporate leaders to step up in the wake of a UIC Great Cities Institute report on the economic conditions in North Lawndale.

A new report from the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago starkly outlines the plight North Lawndale faces today. Violent crime in the neighborhood far outpaces the rate for all of Chicago. Nearly 8% of North Lawndale’s lots are vacant or mostly vacant. Fewer than 500 people who live in North Lawndale also work in the neighborhood — more than 11,600 residents leave the community to go to work.

Full Article from Chicago Tribune »

Report: Revitalizing North Lawndale will require more

Image Source: Jose M. Osorio, Chicago Tribune

A Chicago Tribune story covers a UIC Great Cities Institute report, commissioned by Lawndale Christian Development Corp., that examines the trends for potential growth and the economic needs for North Lawndale residents, and what it will take to revitalize the West Side community following decades of disinvestment. Teresa Córdova, director of the institute and professor of urban planning and policy, is also interviewed.

“The most basic rule of economic development is you have to have dollars circulating in your community,” she said. “North Lawndale residents have to leave the neighborhood for almost everything because almost every category of goods and services is not available.”

“What is needed right now is to plug the leaks,” Córdova said.

Full Article from Chicago Tribune »

Public Space, Rivers, and Climate Change

Don’t miss this conversation on public space, rivers and climate change at Studio Gang with urban planner and architect Jennifer Buyck, a resident of Villa Albertine Chicago.

Studio Gang
3rd Floor Treehouse
1520 West Division Street
Chicago, US 60642
April 26, 2022 | 6pm

By following the course of rivers from Chicago to New Orleans, this conversation will address the issues of transformation of the urban environment in general, and of urban design and landscapes in particular. By placing her camera and her regard on the public spaces traversed by these rivers, Jennifer Buyck questions the urban transition by paying particular attention to the links between urban forms and forms of social life. By questioning the notion of public space from singular and often paradigmatic situations, Jennifer Buyck’s work aims to account for the possibility of ecological experiments in urban planning, while taking seriously the difficulties of the discipline to think them. Indeed, in the context of urban planning, a discipline intrinsically linked to action, both the status of the living and the way in which it is experienced appear problematic: the scale of the ecological and climatic crisis questions the preconceptions of the livable, and political ecology questions those of the planning design. Urban planning, in search of ecological and social justice, takes a break here, a freeze frame, to think itself into the field of environmental humanities. What does it mean, or could it mean, to open up the urban design to its ecological dimension?

Moderated by Professor Teresa Córdova at the University of Illinois Chicago with the participation of architects from Studio Gang and local climate activists followed by refreshments.

This event is part of Villa Albertine’s City/Cité conference series organized in partnership with the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago.

RSVP for the event here: https://villa-albertine.org/events/public-space-and-climate-change

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Smart investment can unlock North Lawndale’s economic potential

Image Source: Anthony Vazquez, Sun-Times

Findings from UIC Great Cities Institute report on the economic conditions in Lawndale is the subject of a column from the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board.

“The well-being of residents is bolstered by the economic health of a neighborhood,” Great Cities Institute Director Teresa Córdova said Monday as she presented the study at the City Club of Chicago. “When those wealth-building opportunities are denied, you start to have various quality of life indicators that are parallel to that.”

Full Article from Chicago Sun-Times »

Lawndale Has Been Robbed Of Equitable Investment For Generations, New Study Finds

Image Source: Video Parachute

Chicago’s West Side has been robbed of equitable investment for generations — and it has left legacy Lawndale residents with little economic opportunity, according to a new study.

Researchers found $124 million leaks out of Lawndale each year, seriously impeding community wealth building, said Teresa Cordova, director of the Great Cities Institute. That loss occurs through workers who live outside the neighborhood but earn money within Lawndale, or when “residents in the community must spend their money outside the community for basic necessities,” Cordova said.

“You want dollars circulating through your community. If those dollars are leaving … there are conditions created by the absence of that wealth,” Cordova said.

Full Article from Block Club Chicago »

IMPACT 2022

moderated by Dr. Teresa Córdova
featuring Rodney Brown, Brenda Palms Barber, Richard Townsell, Debra Wesley

The Invest Southwest initiative spotlights communities that have a history of disinvestment and poverty and offers new economic development opportunities to Chicago’s westside. An UIC Great Cities Institute report commissioned by Lawndale Christian Development Corp. examines the trends for potential growth and the economic needs for residents of North Lawndale — who wins, who loses, who gets to stay and who goes.

This panel will explore the the impact of gentrification and displacement with the potential benefits for existing community residents.

Purchase your tickets here: https://www.cityclub-chicago.org/event/2/3518/impact-2022

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