From Englewood to Chinatown, residents fight to keep their communities together in Chicago’s remapping

Image Source: Esther Yoon-Ji Kang, WBEZ

A WBEZ story on community continuity and racial equity in the Chicago aldermanic remap process includes perspective from Jim Lewis, senior research specialist at UIC’s Great Cities Institute, who addresses the difficulties and politics involved in achieving majority representation.

“It is just not possible to keep all communities that have some form of integrity together when you’re trying to solve these other remap problems,” said Jim Lewis, a researcher at the Great Cities Institute within the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Lewis explains that while aldermen are tasked with creating wards that are roughly the same population – about 55,000 people in Chicago – many are attempting to draw a map that creates as many majority-Black or majority-Latino wards as possible, to maximize the chances of sending minority candidates to council.

“That’s what happened in the last remap appears to be happening again in this one,” Lewis said.

“It may be that 50% is all you can get,” Lewis said. Still, Lewis said 50.03% may be enough to ensure a future Asian American alderman in City Council. “[It] comes down to the politics,” Lewis said. “I think if they are organized… and get out the vote and have a good candidate, then I think, absolutely, they can win.”

Lewis echoed that sentiment, adding, in general, “more disadvantaged communities — communities that have suffered more poverty — would benefit from more coherent representation” than communities that can advocate for themselves in other ways.

Full story from WBEZ »

OSHA investigation underway after tornado wrecks Edwardsville Amazon warehouse killing 6

Video Source: Glenn Marshall, Associated Press

An Associated Press report on the tornado striking an Amazon delivery center in southern Illinois last week features analysis from Beth Gutelius, research director for the Center for Urban Economic Development at UIC and senior research specialist with the Great Cities Institute at UIC, who addresses workplace safety issues, the potential impact of climate change on the warehouse industry, and American consumer demand for fast shipping. Her comments also appeared in related coverage from Newsweek and PBS.

“We don’t think of warehousing as one of the industries that’s going to be severely impacted by climate change but then you have a case like this,” said Beth Gutelius, research director at the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois-Chicago. “How do we make sure the facilities are built in a way to best protect the workers inside?”

Gutelius said its central location and cheaper costs has led the warehouse industry to triple over the past decade in the greater St. Louis area, of which Edwardsville is a part, growing faster than the industry nationwide.

Gutelius said she couldn’t help but view the tragedy as a spillover effect of American consumer demand for getting packages shipped quickly.

Full story from WGN Chicago »

Unwinding Privatization: (Re)municipalism and the Public Interest – Interdisciplinary Online Conference

The purpose of the conference is to examine responses to failures of privatization in cities, especially in the United States and Europe, and what to make of those responses. Since the 1970s municipalities have sold public assets such as water, electricity, gas, waste systems, and transport, to private companies or else transferred the management or delivery of city services to private actors. The results have been at best mixed. Of late, municipalities have been cancelling contracts, letting them expire or repurchasing the resource systems, sometimes as mandated by public referendums. On other occasions, private firms proved either unwilling to bid for a contract or canceled contracts early. This state of affairs has been variously characterized as “re-municipalization,” “new municipalism,” “in-sourcing,” “de-privatization,” and “reverse privatization.”

The conference examines: Which actors, institutions, and forms of finance, enable cities to take ownership of an asset or service previously outsourced or privatized?  How sustainable are these controversial activities and what are their  wider consequences? What explanations best account for these policy directions? What outcomes are missed by posing a private-public divide? What are the levels of power in the political system that facilitate the local “capacity to act”? What do (re)municipalizations portend for the future?

The event is free, but registration is required to attend.

Organized by Alba Alexander (UIC, Political Science), Larry Bennett (DePaul University, Political Science), Evan McKenzie (UIC, Political Science) and Michael Pagano (UIC, Public Administration).

Cosponsored by UIC Department of Political Science, Great Cities Institute, Institute for the Humanities, and College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs.

Welcoming Remarks

8:55-9:00 AM CST

Evan McKenzie, University of Illinois at Chicago

Panel One. Origins of Municipalism: Historical and Conceptual Lessons 

9:00-10:25 AM CST

Chair. Alba Alexander, University of Illinois at Chicago

Gail Radford, State University of New York at Buffalo

The Myth of American Hostility to Public Enterprise

Marco Rosaire Rossi, University of Illinois at Chicago

The Failure of the “Failure of Regulation”

Richardson Dilworth, Drexel University

Suburbanization, (Re)municipalization, and the Right to Water

David McDonald, Queens University, CA

Back to the Future? Pendulum Swings and the Lessons of History for Remunicipalization

Panel Two. Capacity to Act: Legacy and Impact of Privatization in Cities

10:30-11:55 AM CST

Chair. Evan McKenzie, University of Illinois at Chicago

Gregory Pierce, University of California, Los Angeles

Beyond the Strategic Retreat? Explaining Urban Water Privatization’s Shallow Expansion

Martha Kaplan, Vassar College

Radically Municipal Water: Decolonizing the City in Singapore

Heather Whiteside, University of Waterloo

Canadian Public Land Sales and UK Public Finance Initiative Handback: Contradictions and Opportunities

Todd Swanstrom, University of Missouri, St. Louis

Suburbanization as Privatization: The Future of the Public City

Keynote Speaker. The Honorable Dennis Kucinich

12:00-12:45 PM CST

Moderator. Michael Pagano, University of Illinois at Chicago

Panel Three. De-Privatization in Cities: Resistance and Adaptation

1:00-2:25 PM CST

Chair. Larry Bennett, DePaul University

Andrew Cumbers, University of Glasgow

Remunicipalisation, Neoliberalism and the Return of the State

Timothy Moss, Humboldt University

The Many Faces of Municipalisation across Berlin’s Turbulent History

Emanuele Lobina, Public Services International Research Unit, University of Greenwich

Remunicipalisation versus the Zombie: A Taxonomy of Policy Containment Strategies

Germà Bel, University of Barcelona

Remunicipalisation: Are we Heading to a New “Progressive Era”?

Panel Four. Toward (Re)municipalism? The Future of Urban Public Services

2:30-3:55 PM CST

Chair. Jefferey Sellers, University of Southern California

Mildred Warner, Cornell University

Pragmatic Municipalism:  Understanding Trends in Local Government Service Delivery

Nelson Lichtenstein, University of California, Santa Barbara

Sectoral Bargaining on the State and Municipal Levels: Revisiting a Progressive Idea

Rachel Havrelock, University of Illinois at Chicago

The Price of Water, Climate Change, and Remunicipalizing Utilities

Dennis Judd, University of Illinois at Chicago

The American Municipality and the Eclipse of Local Democratic Governance

Closing Remarks

Larry Bennett, DePaul University

Click for speaker biographies and abstracts (PDF) »

Categories:

2020 Census Hispanic or Latino Population Data

Author
Matthew D. Wilson
mwilso25@uic.edu

Abstract
Chicago community area map and graphs and data tables for Chicago, Illinois, and the U.S. of Hispanic or Latino population data from the 2020 Census and Aggregate Household Income and Specific Origin from the 2019 American Community Survey. Produced for the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance.

Full Text for Population Data (PDF) »

Full Text for Fact Sheet on Latino Community in Illinois (PDF) »

 

Will California labor shortage lift warehouse union drive? Dollar General workers call for vote

(Image Source: Craig Kohlruss, The Sacramento Bee)

In an article from the Sacramento Bee and published by other California-based news outlets, Beth Gutelius, research director for the Center for Urban Economic Development at UIC and senior research specialist with the Great Cities Institute at UIC, addresses the role of pay and working conditions leading to unionization efforts at some warehouses across the country, including at a Dollar General warehouse in the Sacramento area.

The plummeting unionization rate has also come with deteriorating pay and working conditions, said Beth Gutelius, the research director at the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago who authored the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center’s study on the logistics industry.

“The warehousing industry… has largely been invisible to the public for its entire existence. No one thought of warehouse workers,” she said. “I think the pandemic brought those workers out into the limelight. That matters for the workers themselves but also for the support for the unionization effort.”

Adjusting for inflation, wages in the warehousing industry are lower than they were in 1990, Gutelius said.

“In many cases, it’s very physical work so people are questioning am I getting paid the amount (commensurate with) all the physical tolls?” she said.

Full story from The Sacramento Bee »

Advocates Call For Chicago’s First Majority Asian American Ward

(Video Credit: WTTW News)

Kathleen Yang-Clayton, UIC clinical associate professor of public administration and research associate with UIC’s Great Cities Institute, joined WTTW-TV’s “Chicago Tonight” for a segment on the Chicago City Council’s remap process and Asian American political representation in the city.

Kathleen Yang-Clayton, UIC clinical associate professor and research associate with UIC’s Great Cities Institute, says greater political representation is also important at a time when Asian Americans are facing a spike in racism and violence.

“We should think more broadly (about) how everyone is impacted by the lack of transparency, the gaming of these ward boundaries. There are solutions that would benefit the Asian American community as well as other communities,” Yang-Clayton.

Full story from WTTW News »

1st Ward Residents Can Vote On How To Spend $1 Million For Neighborhood Improvements

(Photo Credit: Colin Boyle, Block Club Chicago)

A Block Club Chicago article on participatory budgeting taking place in Chicago’s 1st ward cites an online portal run by UIC’s Great Cities Institute that gives residents the opportunity to vote on potential projects.

Residents of the 1st Ward have until Dec. 3 to vote on how $1 million should be spent across the area. Residents can vote on 11 potential projects through an online portal run by the University of Illinois Chicago.

Full story from Block Club Chicago »

Les Lumières : Coldefy

A Chicago Architecture Biennial Partner Program

Register Here

Beyond questions of expression, we ask ourselves: how does this place make us feel? What do we see and hear, how does it dialogue with our memories?

For Coldefy, Architecture shapes our life and should be created for all of our senses.

Based in France and working with an international team, Coldefy “creates balanced environmental, urban and social compositions that push the boundaries of cities and life,” weaving landscape and personal narratives in projects such as the National Pulse Memorial & Museum in Orlando.

 

Coldefy, The Exhibition opens on November 11 and closes on December 18.  Admission is free and you can visit during our business hours: Monday to Friday 9 am to 5 pm, Saturdays 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Closed on Sundays.

Join us on November 11 at 6:30 p.m. for a special opening night for the Coldefy exhibition and their architecture, including a panel moderated by Teresa Cordova, from the Great Cities Institute at UIC, about issues of sensorial and memorial architecture. Featuring Thomas Coldefy and Zoltán Neville; Michael Strautmanis from the Obama Foundation project; and Lesley Roth from the Clayco Group.

Followed by a wine and cheese reception.

This program is possible thanks to the support of Coldefy and the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in the US.

 

Coldefy brings a new type of pragmatism through its projects. Convinced that buildings influence our behavior, just as they shape our cities, Coldefy bases its work on social and sensory experience at the very core of and beyond the matters of aesthetics. Practicing sensitive architecture that is connected to nature and open to the landscape, Coldefy envisions buildings as a desire for tranquility and as opportunities to escape a frenzied pace of living.

Projects by Coldefy leave ample interstitial space, which facilitates a free flow and encourages encounters. They place themselves at the borderline between nature – through the context in which they are based – and personal narratives. These buildings thus reflect the life of their inhabitants and users, becoming spaces for living and communicating. Each Coldefy project leans on three fundamental values: urbanity, clarity and phenomenology. –Coldefy

 

The Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) is dedicated to creating an international forum on architecture and urbanism. It produces year-round programs and a biennial exposition of city-wide activations for a diverse audience of designers, educators, advocates, and students. CAB’s mission is to engage and inspire professional and public audiences,  highlight the transformative power of architecture and envision a future for the field that is equitable and sustainable. Over the course of its first three internationally heralded editions, which hosted 1.5 million visitors, CAB has presented projects created by more than 350 architects, designers, and artists from over 40 countries.

The Available City, the 2021 edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, is a framework for a collaborative, community-led design approach that presents transformative possibilities for vacant urban spaces that are created with and for local residents. –Chicago Architecture Biennial

Categories:

This System Determines Who Holds Power—And Who Doesn’t

(Photo Source: GoodFreePhotos.com)

A Better Government Association column on political gerrymandering of state legislative districts includes perspective from Jim Lewis, senior research specialist at UIC’s Great Cities Institute, who addresses the Supreme Court’s role in the process that leads to strange shaped districts in Illinois.

Jim Lewis, a senior research specialist at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute, said Illinois’ strange-shaped districts are the expected outcome of a system designed to reward partisan gerrymandering.

Lewis said the result is utterly predictable: runaway gerrymandering. The distorted contortions in Illinois’ new map won’t even be among the worst 10 cases once all 50 states have finished their maps, he said.

“Everybody does it. That’s just the way mapmaking works. Of course, you’re trying for partisan advantage, and the Supreme Court ceded this a couple of years ago,” Lewis said.

Full story from Better Government Association »

After raising concerns about an undercount, Aurora does deep dive into census numbers

The Chicago Tribune interviewed Rob Paral, a senior research specialist with Great Cities Institute, who is helping the city of Aurora analyze data discrepancies to prepare for a Census Bureau recount ask.

Rob Paral, principal of Rob Paral and Associates, a data analysis company that provides demographic, social and economic information about communities, said Aurora showed a decline in population while most of the rest of the Chicago region showed a slight increase.

“So, it makes us wonder what’s going on in Aurora,” Paral said. “Aurora was definitely an outlier here.”

Paral talked to the City Council at its Committee of the Whole meeting Tuesday night. The demographics and research expert with the University of Illinois at Chicago Great Cities Institute has assisted more than 100 different human service, advocacy and philanthropic organizations by crunching comparative numbers through the years.

 

Full Story from the Chicago Tribune