If Chicago wins the 2016 Olympics, many will question whether the city's guarantee to cover any financial setbacks from the Games will ultimately hurt taxpayers. But there's one sure-fire guarantee we won't have to question in terms of the Olympics' impact on Chicago: people will be displaced and parts of the city will be forever changed.
The Olympic Games have displaced
more than two million people in the last 20 years, disproportionately affecting minorities and the poor, according to a 2007 report by the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, known as COHRE.
The impact of the 1996 Olympics on housing in Atlanta should provide a number of lessons for Chicago. According to COHRE, the 1996 Olympics accelerated gentrification in Atlanta, spurred the arrests of thousands of homeless individuals and coincided with the demolition of public housing. In COHRE's background paper on the legacy of the 1996 Olympics, Anita Beaty, director of the Metropolitan Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, said the Olympics gave Atlanta officials an ideal tool to lure middle-class, white suburbanites downtown. For years, they settled in suburban Atlanta towns rather than that city's central business district. "What better way to draw those suburbanites to the downtown area than to host the mega event being imagined?" Beaty asked.
In the wake of the Atlanta Olympics, new neighborhoods emerged and thousands of new residents settled near Centennial Olympic Park. In 2000, just four years after the closing ceremonies, the vast majority of residents in the area immediately surrounding the park had moved there within the previous five years, according to an analysis by The Chicago Reporter.
In Chicago, a similar framework is forming. The demolition of public housing has opened once-isolated areas to billions of dollars in residential and commercial development and several Chicago communities, including neighborhoods surrounding some of the proposed Olympic venues, have been in transition for years. From 2000 to 2007, the area surrounding Michael Reese Hospital, site of the proposed Olympic Village, experienced the greatest level of residential movement, according to an analysis by The Chicago Reporter.
But even if Chicago doesn't win the 2016 Olympics, dramatic changes will occur on the South Side where city officials and developers already control much of the land surrounding Michael Reese and Washington Park, where the Olympic stadium would be constructed.
The City of Chicago already owns more than 400 properties within roughly two blocks of Washington Park. And city officials have already said they will move ahead with plans to redevelop the Michael Reese site whether or not Chicago gets the Games. That plan calls for a mix of affordable, market-rate, student and senior housing, as Fran Spielman reported back in July.
In addition, Draper and Kramer has announced plans to redevelop the massive Lake Meadows development, which sits just south of the Michael Reese site. Factor in the demolition of the Ida B. Wells and Madden Park public housing developments and what we're witnessing is the clearing of two miles of lakefront property from McCormick Place to Oakwood Boulevard.
While the city and developers are promising to designate a percentage of the new development for low- to moderate-income families, it is a near-certainty that it will cost more to live in that area in the coming years. And, as a result, many of the current residents there will likely have to find someplace else to live.
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You site Atlanta, where prior to and after the 1996 Olympics "... the Olympics gave Atlanta officials an ideal tool to lure (thousands of) middle-class, white suburbanites downtown." Hasn't the flight of the white middle-class to surburbia been a cry of discrimination by the black community for years? My guess, without statistical proof, is that within those thousands who moved into renovated and rejuvenated areas of downtown Atlanta were a large number of middle-class blacks and other races.
As to Chicago, I did read some background on the areas you mentioned. Entire housing projects empty, hospitals closed, entire shopping centers burned to the ground, some of the highest crime statistics in the city. Even your own Chicago Reporter reports that it is a virtual wasteland.
If it is publicly owned, as you write, and if low income properties are promised, then why not develop it, then make it your job to call him out on this and see that this promise is kept.
As to the thousands of white, middle-class suburbanites who may move into this proposed area, what can be wrong with that? Unless you specifically want it to remain black...which would make you a racist.
Oh how beautiful it could be, with lake views, people-paths, children's areas, senior citizens enjoying the walk along the "beach front".
The funding that is going into that money pit has made our right-wing government cut every social and cultural program in existence. Billions are being poured into 2 weeks of sports entertainment for the benefit a a few athletes and their entourage and a few developers. In the meantime, cuts to medicare, cuts to arts & culture, even libraries are being enacted. In order to describe the Olympics as culture, they use the term "physical activities" as a euphemism for "sport" on the website of the Minister of Tourism Arts & Culture.
They spend a fortune and do nothing to improve our lives.
When the old residents are displaced by gentrification, many of the new residents will laud Daley as a visionary and a man of action for "turning around" a once blighted neighborhood.
However when looking at the problem in depth, one can see that gentrification is simply the displacement of the poor and does very little to address the issues of poverty and crime other than moving it elsewhere so the new residents do not have to inconvienced by poverty and the issues surrounding it.
Just look at the towns of Harvey, Hazel Crest, Park Forest, and University Park. These municipalities have an inordinate amount of Section 8 rental units, they have weak local economies with high property taxes, poor schools, higher unemployment than other suburbs, and also suffer from many other problems that are ubiquitous to the inner city.
In addition, as the population of displaced inner city low income residents increases, these towns find themselves struggling to provide the social services that are associated with low income areas.
Not only does gentrification displace the poor, it also strains and sometimes causes other communities to decline as they absorb the displaced residents.
In my opinion, gentrification is a very short sighted social poilcy.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alden-loury/an-olympic-guarantee-you_b_288389.html
I'm tending to see the Olympics as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do something big to change the direction of the south side, but it needs to be done smart. By no means should we let Daley run the show and I completely support South Side community groups in making demands from the city, but we need to change how we frame the problem.
The Olympics would be a great idea if there weren't so many lingering questions about financing, income projections, and open and transparent contracting and development. If those issues could have been addressed with certainty along with providing a long range and realistic goal of building a stable local economy, providing an efficient public transportation system, and building affordable housing for the poor, in addition to the middle and working class, then I would have no problem supporting the City's Olympic vision.
The problem still stands...Daley is running this show.
Daley wants wealthier citizens back into the city to drive up property values and increase property taxes, which will be funneled back into his administration. This has been a longtime plan, that started at the turn of the century with Millennium Park, the flowers and excessive landscaping, destruction of public housing in prime areas and simultaneous decline of other South Side neighborhoods and suburbs with multi-housing units who took in these displaced citizens. Also, notice how neighborhood high schools have been closed and reopened as selective or specialized schools to attract wealthier families who are considering moving into the areas.
Daley may sound like a bumbling idiot, but he and his handlers have been quite slick in redeveloping the city. I'm not sure if voting him out of office will be the answer. His successor, whether black or white, will likely be motivated by the money as well.