Cabrini Green Demolition

Final Paper: Cabrini Green Demolition

In the Chicago area, there is a "ghetto" known to everyone as Cabrini Green. Cabrini Green is an area where drug dealers inhabit every street corner, gunshots ring through the night, and crimes are a daily occurrence. It is an area so dangerous that local police have attempted to make new laws for the area alone such as needing to live there to be there. The people of Cabrini Green have grown accustomed to this dangerous life, but still hope for better way of living for their children (Mabrey). To better their lives, the local government of Chicago put a policy of gentrification into effect; to raze the old buildings, and build new upper middle class condos with a reduced rent for the prior residents seems to benefit many, but this is not always the case.

In the article in the Chicago Tribune, Walter Burnett is faced with inner turmoil and conflicts on the issue of gentrification. He has a unique view on the issue, because he grew up in Cabrini yet not as a politician working for the local government. He talks to many of the residents of Cabrini Green who all have different views. Gentrification is suitable for a specific demographic mainly for parents. Parents would like their children to be able to live in a habitable area that is not faced with drugs and violence every hour. The parents are the ones that want to move in order to have a better life not for themselves but for their children.

The parents have grown up in the society of Cabrini-Green and feel that the type of life is not a positive one where a child could succeed and become successful. The parents know of the cycle that they are stuck in and want their children to have better, more opportunities than they had. They want a better life for their children to grow up in, without the risk of dying or falling into the same cycle that they are stuck in. To them, the change would impact not only their lives but their children's futures. The change would be practically a new beginning for many of the families and children from the old Cabrini-Green community. The gentrification of Cabrini-Green brings these parents hope that they will be able to provide all these things for their children.

Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune writes that mostly single men are the ones who are against the plan. To them, life will never change, and they have already grown accustomed to the life style of drugs and violence. They choose to ignore it and live with it daily. If they were moved, it would only be a hassle. Also, growing creates memories of becoming an adult. These memories are all centralized around that one single neighborhood. This mentality of "not being able to get out of the ghetto" has deeply affected the ways of those who grew up in the Cabrini-Green location.

Knowing the fact that there are grown single men, who revoke the gentrification of Cabrini-Green, is quite disturbing. Children of all communities are influenced by a male figure whether or not they are related to them. With this said, these "single men" of the old Cabrini-Green community are single-handedly showing the future generations that it is accepted to steal, gangbang, and use drugs in order to survive because those are the only methods that they know how. They are destroying the dreams of the young minds that want to move forward from living in the projects. Without these role models within the community, these children can learn that there are many possibilities to better their lives and their family's lives as well.

Also, in the article "Tearing Down Cabrini-Green," Vicki Mabrey writes that the largest demolition of public housing in the nation's history will be completed by the end of 2009. All 53 of Chicago's public housing high rises will be gone, and some 40,000 people will be uprooted and displaced. The displaced residents pose a huge problem as the original towers continue to come down. An estimated 14,000 residents are left without a place to stay. After the demolition of all 53 high-rises, there will be 14,000 fewer public housing apartments than when the demolition first started. Also, although 36 of the public housing high-rises are gone, construction of new replacement housing, save a few, has barely begun. There will be families who have lived in a house for several generations who will be forced to move having to leave an area that holds so many feelings and values to them, representing their lives by serving as a daily reminder for events that they hold dear, for over a quarter of them, with no place to go after.

Many private property owners and current residents of the buildings do not like the fact that people who used to live in the projects are coming to live in their buildings. They feel that these people will not be able to adjust to the new environment and will, in a worst case scenario, bring their past environment into their new homes. Bringing in drug dealers and convicts into a respectable community could be harmful to the current residents. The criminals could even change the face of the neighborhood into one just like that of Cabrini Green. This would change the lives of many people, including the property owners who would lose money due to less business, current residents who would need to uproot their lives and move to feel safe, and the displaced past residents of Cabrini Green who would be moving to a different area but the same dangerous environment. It would be a waste of millions of dollars and countless hours of time.

In addition, Edward Keegan states that the area also seems unlikely to cohere into a community in the article, "Chicago's Notorious Cabrini-Green Towers are Coming Down," (Keegan). Although the mixed income community has people from all different types of backgrounds, the stores in the area are still separated. The luxury goods stores and high end grocery stores such as Starbucks and Whole Foods are situated away from the low end corner stores run by a single owner. Burnett also mentions that in the new areas to which the current residents are assigned are not only inconvenient but also put rivals gangs in the same location.

This is an issue that needs to be addressed. To move rival gangs into the same location is to cause more violence than before. The rival gangs are used to having at least their own block or area that they can claim as their "territory." If that is taken away and they are moved into the same location, this would cause different gangs to fight to own an area that different members wanted. The idea was to end the violence not create new fight.

Keegan talks about the names given to the new communities in Cabrini Green. The developers have been shunning the name Cabrini Green due to the negative connotation associated with it.