GCI Director Teresa Córdova Named Chair of Chicago Plan Commission

Crain’s Chicago Business reports on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s naming of Teresa Córdova, director of the Great Cities Institute and professor of urban planning and policy, as chair of the Chicago Plan Commission.

Lightfoot announced four new appointees to the city’s Plan Commission, the 22-member body that gives first pass to major developments, industrial areas, lakefront projects and TIF districts.

Current Chairman Martin Cabrera, CEO of Cabrera Capital Markets and one of several of Emanuel’s appointees from the finance realm, is being replaced by Teresa Córdova, the director of the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Córdova is also professor of urban planning and policy in the College of Urban Planning & Public Affairs. She also holds positions at UIC’s departments of Sociology, Gender & Women Studies, and Latino & Latin American Studies.

She’s no stranger to the political world—a former commissioner from Bernalillo County, Córdova served on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s transition committee for Job Creation & Economic Opportunity and is a member of Cook County’s Economic Development Advisory Committee. Alongside acting Plan Commissioner Eleanor Gorski, Córdova will be charged with ushering major real estate developments through a key city approval process.

Full Story from Crain’s Chicago Business »

Talking to North Korea: Ending the Nuclear Standoff


Despite recents attempts at ‘negotiation’, the attitudes of both Kim Jong-un’s regime and the West seem unchanged. North Korea is still shrouded in mystery, and there are no clear plans for the future … Can we trust either side to bring about peace? And if so, how?

This provocative insider’s account blasts apart the myths which paint North Korea as a rogue state run by a mad leader. Informed by extraordinary access to the country’s leadership, Glyn Ford investigates the regime from the inside, providing game-changing insights, which Trump and his administration have failed to do. Acknowledging that North Korea is a deeply flawed and repressive state, he nonetheless shows that sections of the leadership are desperate to modernise and end their isolation.

With chapters on recent developments including the Trump / Kim summit, Ford supports a dialogue between East and West, whilst also criticising Trump’s facile attempts. Talking to North Korea provides a road map for averting the looming threat of a war in North East Asia that would threaten the lives of millions.

Glyn Ford was a Member of the European Parliament for over 25 years, until the June 2009 elections. In the European Parliament he served on both the International Trade and Foreign Affairs Committees, particularly on dossiers related to Asia. During his time as an MEP, Mr Ford was responsible for following the Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN, for the implementation of the Scientific Partnership Agreement with the Republic of Korea, and he was shadow spokesman on the EU-Japan and EU-ROK trade agreements. He was also a member of the Delegation with the Japanese Diet from 1984 to 2009 and the Delegation with the Korean Peninsula from its inception in 2004 to 2009.

After leaving the Parliament, he carried on his work in this field by starting Polint, a Consulting company specialised in EU Public Affairs and in particular Trade Policy, of which he is the Director. In a personal capacity, he is a European Board Member of North East Asian Economic Forum (NEAEF), which is supported by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Mr Ford is also the Director of Track2Asia, an NGO specialised in track II relations between the EU and Asia. Within this framework, he carries out significant activity on North Korea with Jonathan Powell. He has travelled to the DPRK for over 40 times and he is author of the book Talking to North Korea (Pluto, 2018).

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GCI Youth Employment Research Cited in The Atlantic Column

BENOIT TESSIER / REUTERS

An analysis of Chicago youth unemployment conducted by Great Cities Institute is cited in a column in The Atlantic on the feud between President Donald Trump and U.S. Women’s Soccer player Megan Rapinoe.

When the president has spoken about gun violence in Chicago, he almost never mentions providing better education, or bringing jobs and training to a city where 45 percent of black men ages 20 to 24 are not working or going to school. Instead, he has said Afghanistan is safer than Chicago, and threatened to “send the feds” into the nation’s third-largest city.

Full Column from The Atlantic »

Trade Policy Expert and Former Member of European Parliament Visits Great Cities Institute

On July 25, 2019, we are pleased to host Glyn Ford, a former member of the European Parliament for over twenty-five years, during which time he served on both the International Trade and Foreign Affairs Committees.  His focus has been on issues related to Asia particularly as it relates to trade agreements and issues of free trade. While in the European Parliament, Mr. Ford also worked on Scientific Partnership Agreements with the Republic of Korea along with the Delegation with the Japanese Diet and the Delegation with the Korean Peninsula from 1984-2009.

After leaving the Parliament in 2009, Glyn Ford continued to work on related issues through Polint, a consulting company specializing in EU public affairs with his continued focus on trade policies.  He is also a European Board Member of North East Asian Economic Forum (NEAEF), which is supported by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Currently, Mr. Ford is Director of the NGO Track2Asia, an elected Constituency Representative on Labour’s National Policy Forum and a member of the Labour Party’s International Committee. He is the author of North Korea on the Brink (Pluto, 2007) and Talking to North Korea (Pluto, 2018). He has visited North Korea almost 50 times.

Please join us at noon at GCI on Thursday, July 25, 2019, to hear Glyn Ford speak on “Talking to North Korea: Ending the Nuclear Standoff.” Particularly during these critical times, Mr. Ford will provide us with much illuminating insight.

The Jam and Justice Project: Innovative Co-Research to Address Complex Urban Issues

Jam and Justice is a research project which aims to create a unique space for social innovation to co-produce, test and learn from new ways of governing cities. ‘Jam’ is about trying to bring together different partners in the city to innovate to address shared problems. ‘Justice’ is about re-connecting with those who have been disenfranchised and excluded from the search for solutions. We are particularly interested in the value and practice of coproduction to address complex urban problems and understanding how we can bring different groups together to achieve fairer and more inclusive outcomes for different groups.

Liz Richardson is a Reader in Politics at the University of Manchester. She is a Trustee for the National Associsation for Neighbourhood Mangement, a national network of practitioners and others interested in strategic locality working.

No RSVP necessary. Seating is first come, first serve.

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Jam and Justice Visiting Chicago 

Finding more effective, inclusive and equitable ways to govern our cities are urgently needed.  This is a major challenge for communities, businesses and decision-makers.  There are many seemingly intractable social issues to address.  Top-heavy technocratic models have not delivered equitable outcomes.  But what might an alternative look like?

Liz Richardson, Reader in Politics at the University of Manchester, is part of a team of researchers trying to look at these tough questions.   They have been doing action research in greater Manchester, UK, in a project called Jam and Justice.  Part of the answer, they argue, lies in co-production.  Put simply, co-production  is where different actors and interests come together to collectively problem-solve.  In urban governance, co-production can mean citizens, civil society groups, and others, putting their heads together with city and city-regional governments to come up with different answers to sticky problems, such as climate change, or the challenge of an aging population.

But there are many questions about co-production and other forms of civic engagement.  It is really hard to get right.  Those involved have many experiences of where things have gone badly.   Can we overcome these legacies?

Liz is visiting the Great Cities Institute this week to exchange with academics, activists and others some of this work.  The Jam and Justice team wants to see what is the same and what is different about the Chicagoan experience, compared to the Greater Manchester experience.  The two cities and city-regions have much in common; proud traditions of activism, creative responses to de-industrialization, persistent inequalities, etc.  Liz is excited to lean more and hear about activity in the city.

Please join us Thursday, June 6, at noon at GCI to hear more about Jam and Justice and exchange ideas with Liz.  We are pretty sure that you will find it very interesting.

Lower Wages and Continued Occupational and Industrial Segmentation of Latinos in the Chicago Economy

Authors
José Miguel Acosta-Córdova

Abstract
In 1993, John Betancur, Teresa Córdova, and Maria de los Angeles Torres published “Economic Restructuring and the Process of Incorporation of Latinos into the Chicago Economy,” in Latinos in the Changing U.S. Econom,y edited by Rebecca Morales and Frank Bonilla. They concluded, “The history of the incorporation of Latino workers into the economy best explained the Latino experience in the Chicago area and provides a backdrop for understanding the impact of restructuring (110).” The authors argue that “the condition of ascriptive low-wage labor” restricted the mobility options for the Latino work force in the region. Examining PUM census data for the Chicago metro area from 1950 – 1980 on labor force participation, the study demonstrated that Latino labor, composed primarily of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, facilitated the growth of the service sector in the Chicago economy while continuing to further entrench the segmentation of Latino labor in low-wage service sector employment.

The Latino population in the city has grown significantly since the Betancur et al. study (Cervantes, 1996; Suro, 2002; Paral et. al., 2004; Acosta-Córdova, 2017). However, no recent study has examined the industrial and occupational mobility of Latinos to the same extent as Betancur, et. al. Given the demographic growth of Latinos in Chicago and the continued changes in the Chicago economy, this study provides an update of the Betancur et. al. study to examine the changes taking place between 1980 and 2016 and to determine the extent of economic mobility for Latinos in Chicago. Using updated PUM census data, this thesis seeks to determine whether, since 1980, we continue to see what they described as the “continuation of occupational and industrial segmentation and lower wages” among Latinos in Chicago and how their labor force status affects policies and perspectives towards Latinos in the Chicago area.

This thesis finds that despite progress for Latinos in several industries and occupations, they continue to be segmented into jobs and industries with the lowest-wages. While African-Americans and Latinos both displayed similar conditions in most of the categories, Latinos had lower wages in more industries and occupations than any other group in Chicago. Even when accounting for a college degree, Latinos and African-Americans still earned far less than Non-Latino Whites and Asians, with Latinos earning lower wages than all other groups. This is crucial to understanding the reality of the economic conditions of Latino households throughout the region. On an individual basis, Latinos earn the lowest wages within the Chicago economy.

Regardless of any economic progress for Latinos since 1980, the amount of the labor force concentrated in low-wage industries and occupations shows that there is still ample room for growth. Latinos did not progress to the same extent as other racial/ethnic groups. Since 1980, the Latino population has exploded in the region, and if it were not for this influx, both the city and the metropolitan area would have lost a significant amount of total population during this period. What is crucial to understand about the restructuring of the Chicago economy, were it not for the influx of Latino immigrants, many industries that have grown or remained in the area since would not have found the labor to do it. It is because of the large source of low-wage labor that these industries have prospered. Latino labor has helped transform Chicago from an industrial metropolis into a modern-day, service-based metropolis. One could argue, Latinos saved Chicago’s economy.

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150 years of Jewish Community Building in the City of Budapest

Video from the May 2, 2019 event with Zoltan Haberman.