A month ago, or so, I missed out on participating in a work-related book club discussion session organized by one of my colleagues – as usual, I had a project deadline to meet. I hated to miss it since the subject of discussion was the book, How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood, published in 2018 and written by P.E. Moskowitz, a freelance journalist based in Philadelphia. Gentrification pops up as an issue now and then in my preservation planning work but most of the time, the communities I work in face significant economic challenges and preservation is either a hindrance or an opportunity to progress. And sometimes, my graduate students, and even some work acquaintances, seem more anxious about gentrification than my clients. Usually at the beginning of a new school year, at least one student will declare very earnestly that preservation is bad when it starts gentrifying places.
I struggle with the gentrification issue. Is it a phenomenon that takes place as part of a natural cycle of neighborhood growth and development, population shift and disinvestment, and then rediscovery and reinvestment inherent in American cities, or is it truly just part of an intentional push to reclaim neighborhoods with policy changes and massive capital infusions without care about the socioeconomic consequences? Or is it a combination of the two? And is purposeful historic preservation also a culprit? What can we do about it as professional preservation planners? I know of studies that provide longitudinal perspectives and even more news articles that capture the immediacy and impact of the issue in some places. But these studies and journalistic undertakings do not offer a practical framework for dealing with the issue.
Back to the book. How to Kill a City is a good read on gentrification from its varied discriminatory impacts on people to the displacement of businesses due to rising rents and creeping redevelopment. It also discusses the efforts of local activists and advocacy organizations trying to influence local planning and decision-making processes that often lay the groundwork for gentrification. The most compelling aspects of the book are the personal stories of people impacted by the more insidious dimensions of gentrification that are not always associated with pending redevelopment – the declining number of rent-controlled apartments in Brooklyn and tax foreclosures in Detroit’s outlying neighborhoods, for instance, which force long-time residents to find new housing not in their current neighborhoods but in unfamiliar, far-flung places.
Across the book’s chapters, Moskowitz methodically lays out two of the key drivers for gentrification in American cities: first, the nation’s burgeoning income inequalities and, second, the lack of serious civic commitment to building new affordable housing in our major cities. If household incomes were more equal, more people would be able to live and stay in their neighborhoods of choice. If our country had committed philosophically to the notion that access to adequate housing is a fundamental human right, then maybe we would not have ended the construction of new public housing. Without addressing these two serious issues, gentrification will continue to make people vulnerable to displacement.
Besides reading How to Kill A City for the subject matter, it reminded me of something more personal. Before the pandemic, I had the distinct opportunity to work with local business leaders on the creation of a new strategic plan for the Greektown commercial district in Chicago’s fast-growing West Loop neighborhood, a place flourishing with new apartment towers, hipster restaurants, and sky-rocketing real estate prices. Greektown has long held a special place in my heart and mind, however. Concentrated at the intersection of Halsted Street and West Jackson Boulevard, Greektown has long hosted a plethora of Greek restaurants, bakeries, groceries, and specialty stores serving Chicago’s Greek American community and its suburban diaspora. Greektown is where my parents would take me for many special occasions – graduations, weddings, and baptisms. In more recent years, it’s been memorial meals for dearly departed uncles and aunts. I still take many friends and colleagues to enjoy the Greektown restaurants. As one would expect, as a Greek American born in Chicago, naturally, the place holds a special attachment. It feels like a home, a place of identity and familiarity for sure.
It was naïve of me to think that Greektown, as I’ve come to know it after so many years, would not be subject to the same change that so many other neighborhood business districts in cities across the country experience over time. I thought I could always count on visiting the same dining spots and buying the same Greek “koulourakia” butter cookies and other baked goods over and over again as if Greektown was the only permanent fixture in an ever-on-the-make Chicago. Over the years, the number of Greek restaurants in the business district declined from 11 in the 2000s to just four today. Other Greek bakeries, music stores, and small businesses have also closed. These closures are attributed to several factors: retiring business owners who never found a son, daughter, or relative willing to take on running a new restaurant, a building fire that took out several Halsted Street storefronts, and, not the least of which, rising lease rents spurred by the rapid redevelopment of the West Loop neighborhood and its nearby competing Fulton Market area – a former meat-packing and warehousing district transformed into a haven of hipster businesses and eateries.
Oddly enough, business displacement is nothing new to Greektown. Originally located near the Little Italy neighborhood in Chicago’s Lower West Side, the construction of the Eisenhower Expressway and the new University of Illinois at Chicago campus during the 1950s and 60s, forced the Greektown business district to relocate further north to Halsted and Jackson. Along the way, the once-thriving Greek American neighborhood adjacent to the commercial district disappeared as well. Greektown, long a port of entry for many Greek immigrants arriving and settling in Chicago, no longer had a traditional base of customers. Now it had to rely on a Greek diaspora living in the suburbs, visitors to Chicago, and city customers who did not have a Greek restaurant in their own neighborhoods. How long this base of patrons can last for Greektown is anyone’s guess.
Creating a strategic plan for a rapidly changing neighborhood business district was not an easy task. And rapidly changing it was. As we began work with Greektown leaders in 2019, two of my all-time favorite Greektown restaurants, Roditys and Pegasus, closed due to business owner retirements. Today, Roditys is a marijuana dispensary and the former home to Pegasus – once a one-story commercial building housing two Greek restaurants – is now the site of a multi-story mixed-use apartment tower. While business owner retirements are common to all business districts, it was the update to the City of Chicago’s 2003 Central Area Plan, which upzoned the east side of Halsted Street in Greektown to “Downtown Mixed-Use” zoning – the same zoning employed for Chicago’s Loop – that laid the groundwork for swelling development pressures. Soon enough, in the years that followed, the many surface lots along Halsted Street that once served as accessible parking for Greektown customers made way for gleaming new apartment towers. Yes, I know it’s better to have dense development in dense neighborhoods like the West Loop as planners would say. But it’s not out of line for me to claim those parking lots were lifelines to the Greektown businesses that relied on suburban patrons who still preferred to drive to the neighborhood rather than take public transit – the very same people who now have other choices for Greek dining a short drive away from their homes.
It’s hard to say what will happen next for Greektown. The small core destination of Greek restaurants remains but those shiny, brand-new high-rise developments hardly provide affordable storefront lease rates for most new independent start-ups let alone new Greek-themed businesses and eateries. At least with the presence of the National Hellenic Museum, which constructed a new facility in 2011 at the southern edge of Halsted Street at Van Buren, there are prospects for creating a more tangible cultural dimension to Greektown beyond restaurants and bakeries. The strategic plan also proposes several business development strategies and initiatives that aim to build back some depth in Greek-themed retail and restaurant ventures. Some of the strategies are realistic, others more complex and long-term. It will certainly take commitment, resourcefulness, and patience to implement. But does Greektown have time on its side to reinvent its cultural edge before it disappears altogether?
The larger question for Greektown and other similar places undergoing rapid change is whether any one person or group can turn back the forces remaking our neighborhoods. This brings me back to How to Kill a City. While the book primarily focuses on the human stories related to gentrification taking place in cities such as New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York, the book presents several ideas on addressing income inequality, the need to bring back public housing, and the lack of equity in local land use decision-making. However, like other treatises on the subject, these ideas are not a methodology for dealing with neighborhoods already in flux. And, I wish the book had explored the roles that local planners and policymakers have had and continue to have in gentrifying our cities. It’s not hard to argue that urban plans – with their zoning rule changes, incentive programs, and new outlays for infrastructure and streetscapes – put the gentrifying wheels in motion.
Time will tell on Greektown. I miss what it once was – an enclave of thriving businesses that made me feel connected to my own cultural identity. I hope it can become a compelling place for not just Chicago area Greek-Americans, but for many others who want an experience. I want Greektown to still be my home.
The Places of Sense Chronicles 