Chinatowns across the nation, is very near and dear to me. Gentrification is a phenomena and more complex than Public Discourse would have us believe. We are in logan square in chicago where catalytic investments like the 606 rail to trails project forced residents to move because they cannot upkeep the increasing cost of housing and in other neighborhoods folks are leaving for a different reason because you havent seen investment in decades. If we as a city does learn from our mistakes we will continue to suffer from unintended consequences related to gentrification, inaccessible education, housing, displacement. So much to do and we are thrilled the conversation is resonating with a lot of people. As such tonights event will be shown by season and live tweeted using equity section, the hashtag for the metropolitan Planning Council asked metro planning. A short question and book signing so when that time occurs, sarah is going to walk around with the mic. Wait for her to get to you. I am happy to introduce lisa, executive director of Latin CommunityHousing Association which advances housing and human rights but parents and communities through advocacy, education, Affordable Housing, developers, and comprehensive services. She was born and raised in chicago, her family, and gentrification pushed the latino population wide. Without further a do please welcome lisette who will introduce matthew. [applause] thank you all, tonight we have the pleasure of talking to matthew schuerman. Matthew schuerman was born and raised in chicago and spent most of his life here, he is Senior Editor at w nyc radio in new york, a graduate of Harvard College with a bachelors degree in journalism at tequesta university. Thank you for coming out. What is it about . I was in hyde park last night, grew up in hyde park as a child of two social workers. People have heard jokes about a psychotherapist, a child of two social workers, and in Kitchen Table discussions, what are those words. Words like truancy, indigence, abortion, i didnt know what many of those meant. And parents told me, drilled into me and how important housing really is for their outcome. Dont let your zip code, dont let your zip code dictate one stage. And describing what it is all about. And personal security. In northwestern i was interested in covering housing, i remember covering press conferences with vincent lane. Cha sharon, the plan for transformation. It wasnt called that at the time. Growing up in chicago, cities were on the way out. That was the impression that i had. When i go to summer camp, everybody was from the suburbs. I moved to new york in 1998, i had been to a string of failing cities, new london, connecticut, the fourth largest city on the eastern seaboard with 25,000 people. 300 years later, was way down with suburbanization and deindustrialization. In germany in the early 90s, came to new york in 98. It was a thriving, exciting, expensive city and lining up in a rentstabilized apartment for the past two years. I just moved here, do you think i brought my utility subs with me . Sorry, we havent applied to this department. That reversal, i continue to report on the village voice, the new york observer. The narrative potential, these terrible underdogs to these raging victors of the urban scene, and to see all the unintended consequences in terms was really just crying out for a book, plenty of books about gentrification but it was crying out for a book that understood the pros and the cons, the tradeoffs, something that both encompassed how unexpected this urban revival was but how complex and doublesided this is. Part of the thesis of the book is gentrification is neither good nor bad but is a complicated issue. Tell us about the main points of the book. Gentrification, good or bad when i met with someone early on, is it good or bad . I dont know. I think your book would do better if you figure out which one it is. Whatever it is ten years later, still havent figured that out and became comfortable with this idea. Gentrification is comparable to gravity, rain, or wins. It is an element in our Society Today and it is that way because it is the result of this macroeconomic change where we lost manufacturing, and into a creative professional economy where people dont want to live in suburbs anymore because, white, upper middle professionals etc. Do not want to move to the suburbs anymore, they dont feel the need to live in a very nice, sparkling place with a nice lawn to have self respect. People who wants to be different, interesting connection between the growth of Silicon Valley and the computer industry in the 1960s counterculture. Apple came out of the homebrew computer club, was really into computers as a way to give people their own autonomy and greater power as we see today, what human rights activists have been able to do with the internet. This change in our economy made gentrification inevitable. Gentrification, the process by which your neighborhood goes from being poor to being rich. The median income, i go into it in a little more detail but that is what it is. The things you associate with gentrification, higher housing prices, changing racial makeup, the retail landscape really comes as a result of that demographic change. We can see gentrification is good or bad. We see results of gentrification, displacement to force people out of their home. We see Different Things available as being good. If we capture that wealth, wealthier people moving into the city we could pump that money into our city treasury which can have more money for the public. We captured a lot of what the story of logan square is. People lived in the neighborhood, raised their families and in the 70s there is movement where you have people heading to the suburbs and the city was no longer a thing. A majority community, this has been true until recently until logan square for the first time is a majority white community. What parallels do you hear . You discussed at length in your book, San Francisco or brooklyn. In the book i go through new york, brooklyn, San Francisco, especially the mission district, and chicago. In chicago i focus on the near north side, plan for transportation, the demolition of dha housing, highrise housing in the 2000s and their efforts to replace them with mixed income and in some ways every gentrification story is the same. It is the same story again and again and the characters and places change. In some ways, cha is a special case, cityowned property but you do have this scenario where it is very low income, and the encroachment of higher income neighborhoods finally gets to its boundaries and forces the city to do something about it. Someone who has grown up in chicago, i thought housing highrises were inevitable. We all knew that was what you should do. You should tear them down. Doing that, the way they did it had various unintended consequences that ended up pushing a lot of people, forcing them out of these areas into other neighborhoods that were fairly poor. It is poverty for everybody and another parallel is closer to logan square in San Francisco which a long time ago used to be irish workingclass white as those people move to the suburbs, it became latino and was a very strong, proud culture of air. In part because it was proud, special, different, really attracted young quite professionals. At first they didnt stand out. They were artists themselves, looks for an affordable place themselves. They were chased out of other neighborhoods that were more traditional. They werent wealthier than any of the other people who were there but in successive ways wider and wider. And repeated throughout the country. We were trying to go somewhere and we were not actually going somewhere. It feels more like history repeating itself. One of the things the council did some years back is they worked to establish a plan for milwaukee avenue and it resulted in the need for more Affordable Housing. The van looks like 100 units of Affordable Housing. On emmett street, what it is doing. The fight for that sounded like what i was reading in the book. Go back to Brooklyn Heights and talk about this piece of land, needs to be for profit, cant just be Affordable Housing. What we heard in the last few months, for Affordable Housing, it was a clergy person who participated in that. One of the groups that has been helping to move along the acute medical alliance. There are all these things that keep repeating themselves. What do you think are the things we should be learning from . Look at what you have studied and what you write about in the book, dont forget to learn about this thing because we make the same mistakes over and over. The hamster wheel is a great metaphor. I go back to the 1950s and i dont think people understand how gentrification has such a long history and you could go back earlier than that. One of the things we discover, gentrification a new, every neighborhood that happens here and we pretended it never happened before with nothing to build on. That is a big part of lessons learned. We cant use that excuse anymore. I dont think gentrification is good or bad, but we have to look out for displacement, people being forced to move from their apartments or homes because they cannot afford the rent anymore. It doesnt have to always happen with gentrification. Some studies suggest it doesnt happen anywhere near as much as you might think it does but still it does happen to some extent and a big lesson and the reason i did the book the way i did which is less a Public Policy book where you have a lot of studies and so on and so forth and more of a narrative that this is how it was like to live in these times, to be a city official, what it was like to be a developer, is to show how people did not think this was going to happen. They didnt think cities were going to revive. I was surprised as i was researching this book in the 1970s there was a National Movement to do something about gentrification. It was lets do something to harness its power and keep it from displacing people come of the department of housing and urban development, commission studies about it and there was a policy created, very moderate policy and shortly afterwords reagan came into office and reversed that and we got distracted by other things. Part of it is the biggest lesson, dont think it is not going to happen here. Logan square is fortunate, very clear that not only has it happened to us but it is happening here. To cooperate and fail, what have we learned and helped others learn about things we have been through. What are the best practices bridging the differences between newcomers and those who have been here longer . I hear a lot about community organizations. Journalists are skeptical of those. We have to be realistic when it comes to gentrification. There is a story in the la times about a popup coffee store with a couple of newcomers to a black neighborhood in la Holding Around their neighborhood in order to talk about gentrification and it struck me as tone deaf to have weight people invite black people to talk about gentrification like pilgrims inviting indians to thanksgiving and running them out of town. We have to be i almost think what works better than Community Conversations is coming together as a community to work on common goals so instead of lets get together to talk about gentrification and how the neighborhood is changing lets figure out what we have in common with one another. An event i went to last week in oakland with a group called east bay for everyone there was a diverse crowd being gentrified and this group is all about yes in my backyard, now in my backyard, pro density but this group was pro tennis rights, pro Affordable Housing, pro small business, antidiscrimination, pro transportation so it was a very broad organization. I could tell the black homeowner who had been there for 20 years and the white newcomer had to share a flat with three other people even though he worked at a corporation of some sort they had common cause. They wanted to increase the housing supply for one so that there would be places for everyone to live and hopefully affordable rents but were smart enough to understand we have stipulated Affordable Housing to be part of that. We have to have tenant protection. That is the best thing i would recommend but coming together as a community to talk about gentrification, what goals we have in common that we should fight to gather, so we could persuade the city, the state, the federal government to change something that will help us stay where we are. The local alderman held a meeting around emmett street, very well attended meeting, 500 people in will will local schools. One of the things to see how many people believe in favor of the project. There were those who were not. People were in favor, all just looked like me, not those who have been here for a long time and suffering at the hands of displacement but a lot of newcomers saying yes in my backyard, i am here and understand the need for this. That does resonate. Housing is not enough. And in the housing sector, we talk about the fact that Housing Starts with everything else. How does housing and the intersection of transportation and government play a role in this . I would add jobs and the most of all in a way. If you look back in history the history of gentrification people were applauding city officials and planners, this neighborhood look so much better. The people who had been there before, just moved them out and replaced them with people who have jobs. So i think one way this intersect housing, intersects with jobs. All that windowdressing and gentrification of the retail landscape, we have find ways that happened to it. We are helping create jobs for people who have been there in the longterm. That is one way of doing it. We have to work to keep Public Transportation accessible and desirable for everybody and same thing with parks. It is important to keep the parks maintained and nonexclusionary. Of famous example in San Francisco was when some of the soccer fields are so in demand you have to put them through an apps and neighborhood kids who come for a pickup game dont know about the apps and there was a conflict of the new yorker, this one group from a tech company and one group from the neighborhood came and they clashed over the soccer field and watch out for those things as well. That is what makes the street so unique and important. It will be built in a cityowned a lot almost right on top of the blue line and the blue line going straight downtown 20 minutes from here and that makes it an important intersection with that job accessibility so we absolutely understand the point of that here. I wont ask you to solve the issue but what are some policies we should be considering to resolve or slow down the negative affects that we havent already discussed . The policies. Getting back to the housing supply issue, one thing you can look at his zoning regulations and are they working in your favor to provide housing neighborhood needs or are there protection land marking protections for example that are keeping too many especially in already gentrified neighborhoods and wealthy neighborhoods, they tend to people there moved there because they like it and want to keep it the same and there is therefore a lot of resistance to knocking down Old Buildings to say nothing about the fact that Old Buildings are valuable and desirable and pleasant. It is one of those conundrums that i struggle with. I remember growing up, my group thought americans were philistines because we had no sense of history and didnt want to preserve anything and the early historic preservations saw themselves as antigentrification people because these developers who want to come in and build 6story buildings where the gentrified who wanted to profit off of them so it is a puzzle you have to deal with casebycase, bit by bit. Maybe you dont allow whole neighborhoods to be landmarked and preserved, only buildings to be preserved etc. Etc. So those are some things to look at, certainly the production of Affordable Housing is an important one and making sure you probably dont have this problem in chicago but in new york and San Francisco you have a task equity problem which is there are actually caps on how quickly the property taxes for property can rise and that creates a problem in gentrifying neighborhood so that if you can only increase someones property taxes for 2 a year as in San Francisco or 6 a year in new york and it is quickly gentrifying, people like bill diblasio, a 2 million roadhouse in brooklyn, and he paid less on his property on property taxes than a homeowner on Staten Island even though the home on Staten Island is one quarter as valuable as his home. And pushed up Property Values not familiar with any in equity issues in chicago and that often is the case. If you prevent taxes from being collected, you are hamstringing your ability to put public money into Affordable Housing, more accessible transit and improved transit and that kind of thing. Folks here will agree chicago has the opposite problem. We have incredibly quickly rising property taxes and in gentrifying neighborhoods that is hitting us really hard. 28 properties, 198 units of Affordable Housing, each one of those properties because they are separate sites are taxed separately. The develop into 36 units of Affordable Housing. Our second installment tax bill this year was more than we paid the entire previous year. We owe adult larger scale but mom and pop land and donors are suffering this fate. Taxes are an indicator in terms of what is happening. Any other blind spots we should be more aware of . The unintended consequences, we talked about some of the things we have experienced like the 606 been an example of unintended consequences. At one point, logan square had the second least amount of green spaces in chicago. I dont know where numbers are now but that was one of the reasons the 606 trails happened but we have experienced a 47 increase in property taxes around the 606. We had moments of unintended consequences. What else should we think about . Your organization but property in advance of 606, having foresight to know this is a driver of gentrification to increase Property Values and lock in our buy price before that happened. It is important to think about things early, anticipate a particular neighborhood or a particular area will rise in value, to buy property there and set it aside for Affordable Housing. That is a really important one. The project is 45 units Affordable Housing along the 606, the project we were working on before, the 606 opened and became that much more crucial and intersection now he is important. And that participate in climate resiliency. It is functionally a single coat on the building that preserves the inside climate at an even temperature with very little airconditioning or heat, keeps utilities down and makes our Carbon Footprint way smaller and that is a huge part of it. Make sure our tenants can afford to live in Affordable Housing and also keeping in mind what costs are. All right. Is there anything else . I would add as well as that, anything similar to buying up properties early, we dont think far enough ahead in terms of the city when it devises section a which is a type of Affordable Housing. They make deals with developers to build New Buildings and this happened a lot during the transformation. Developers to build middle Income Housing and then but only for 20 years. So once we had this big crisis ten years ago or so all those contrasts began to expire at the same time, and meanwhile they were the desirable neighborhoods, Property Values had gone up and a number of developers decided to get another of that program. So, in that case, recognize any Affordable Housing you build, de blasio has taken this on, try to make sure try to make sure its permanently affordable. Absolutely. So, ill ask you the hardest, most impossible question to answer. Can gentrification be stopped . I dont think it can. I dont think it needs to be. As long as we learn how to work with it, i guess. I do think at some point it probably will die out. There will be some other sort of urban pattern of living we dope know what its like. In looking back on the past 60 years, time and time again we thought things were really great ideas. We thought that urban renewal was a great idea to get rid of old houses in cities and bulldoze he them and build expressways and modern buildings. Sandberg village is an example of Something Like that. Then gentrification came along and we thought that was a really great idea, too. We loosely. Because here were private individuals investing their own money to rennovate apartment buildings or homes. And so who knows what the next wave will be. I think thats going to be very hard. One thing on my radar i wonder about is, like, the extent to which well, two things. The extent to which if inequality does succeed, if way really do succeed in reducing inequality, race based inequality, i think that will make a tremendous difference how gentrification plays out. That is to say that people of color have the same chance as getting a wellpaying job, getting a mortgage, which of course didnt happen for a long time. And living where they want to live. Once you have Home Ownership, that is a huge bulwark against gentrification. And then the other thing that comes to mind is actually intermarriage, because people wonder why isnt there little italy in new york anymore . Its very small. Or a germantown, very small. And part of what happened is theth anything identities became ethnic identities became less important to people, and so well see. I know that smooth be a controversial idea to lose ones ethnic identity but that might be one thing in the future that will really impact the path of gentrification. I think definitely historically have seen that play out in really different ways, and i think currently or sir lit at acknowledge age or time where our ethnic identity is important and what does that look like and how to solve inequality without losing the things you hold dear will be part of that challenge. So, how about we take some questions. Theres one hand here. We have a microphone coming over. Im robert miller. I wanted to just comment that maybe we shouldnt be talking so much but gentrification. What were reeling tacking about is the natural life cycle of neighborhoods and cities. This has gone going on for hundreds and thousands of years. And when you talk about crabini green theres still a lot of Public Housing and Affordable Housing in that neighborhood and the people who are living in that have a much better neighborhood environment than they had before. They have actually benefited not only from new housing but from new neighborhood, whereas people in poorer neighborhoods around the city, where we keep building affordable house, still live in a crappy neighborhood. So there are some benefits to gentrification and i think er right in terms of saying that Early Intervention inaires where you think gentrification might be happening is probably the solid answer. But its also just moving trying to create more Affordable Housing in areas where that are affluent, where if you you have to figure out a way to overcome the nimb yism. Wart of what we need to do is put affordabling in more affluent areas. The bid about crabini green issue think the people who are able to move back into mixed Income Housing are do face a number of advantages, but it is a very small number who actually get to do that. Its less than 20 have actually moved former Public Housing residents have actually moved back. The problem is that if you arent one of those who are lucky enough to do that, you are looking you are given a section 8 voucher and if youre lucky you might get an apartment in an affluent neighborhood but generally speaking you just cannot because the section 8, even though the cha has boosted the allowable rents in order to encourage that, overwhelmingly people are moving to other poor neighborhoods. Not i should admit, places like crabini reports, a 0 poverty rate there, 70re of the people were below the poverty line. So, some of these people when they move out now with voucher, theyre ending up in places that are 40 or 50 poverty rates. So its slightly better but still november achieving i actually having grown up here its actually an accomplishment and maybe in future generations you wont have the same difficulties that previous generations had. I dont know certainly neighborhood change has been going on for great deal of time. Im not familiar, though, with any aristocratic neighborhoods Like Washington square in new york or the gold coast, in chicago. They i dont think they took the took up farmland from what i understand before. Wasnt like an urban neighborhood decayed and then taken over by aristocratic people, and maybe incorrect about that. One example that comes to mine is actually paris and vienna to some extent, where you actually why is paris and vienna look so nice . The government in the 19th 19th century century subsidized more a form of urban renewal than gentrification. They bulldozed buildings and subsidized builders to but up nice buildings. I also just wonder how much has changed because again you mentioned income inequality. Something that is more present and prevalent now. The changing face of the country. Of the cities. We have the population looks different, more immigrants than there used to be, and people of color i think, and that dynamic, and that power dynamic has certainly changed the way that some of that happens if think particularly with the cha, also often snuck its own hamster wheel. I think you talk about in the book and the stories of crabini green, the tearing down of Public Housingdowns that are not replaced and we have seen that at lake forward homes in the last decade where 525 units of puck housing were lost. That will be part of the some of the unit is will bell rye placed there but thats still not all 525 units, and so theres still a lot of loss. But certainly i think that Affordable Housing in neighborhoods where the amenities are there, where the thing that are necessary to having good and thriving life are really important. There was a question in the back. Ill come back up here and then back one more time. So all the way in the back the standing gentleman. Very good. So, im looking forward to reading the book. I havent seen it yet. As an architect who spent a lot of time working on the hope 6 projects around the city, three of the large ones in particular, i just like to offer an observation that to my mind, generation from now, the big hope 6 projects that were executing today to reinvent cha will look every bit as much like projects as the ones we just tor tore down and a big reason for that is theyre sort of fixed in this kind of bureaucracy that doesnt allow change or spontaneity, and the virtue that gentrification has is that it can be instantly responsive to the marketplace and the economy in a way that no institutional or Bureaucratic Agency can. And theres no better proof of that than the degree to which the hope 6 projects all got froze ten years ago when the economy went poof and all of a sudden, because they were so tightly linked between the for sale units and the market rate units and what you could sell in the marketplace before you could build new affordable units, because of this idea of building mixed income projects, you couldnt respond to what the marketplace was willing to 20 years from now is what we have just pulled out. Thats depressing to hear. [inaudible question] one i might have two bits of reporting to add to that along those lines. One is, really mayor daily who insisted that these mixed income communities include a Home Ownership program, part of it, and that apparently, i was told, really caused huge numbers of delays once the mortgage crisis hit in 20082007. So, if it werent for that, the rental market was fine, would have recovered quickly and able to build rentals. Where they could have built rentals if thats what it was. So, well see. Daley is not here so i dont know if theres quite as much of a mandate for that. The other observation, i was talking to a former high ranking city official, who said, i dont think we need to build anymore of these mixed income communities, actually. We dont need them. We solved the problem. Were not not going to guild on Robert Taylor homes land, and because we have everybody in section 8, chicago has more section 8 vouchers than it ever had before. I dont know how theyre able to get high school of all this federal money but ahold of all this federal money bud have been success. He. We dont have a problem with substandard housing, he said. We have building inspectors to do that. The original Public Housing was in part built because tenement housing was so poor, the quality and first Public Housing was supposed to be better quality. So, it may well be that the city just sits on that land that is currently vacant, and aside from crabini which because of its location will do well and maybe henry horner too, will not develop much more until, late say, really long time when the economy really does change and lets say the neighborhoods become viable for market rates portions. Its fascinating if for no other reason because you hear things like, from this official, and also aware that the cha has a lock waiting list, the city of chicago will tell you theres shortage of 120,000s Affordable Housing units in the city of chicago. Theres so much that still needs to be done, and how do we get it all done . I guess is the question. The next book. How do we do this. A gentleman here and then one there. My name is charles smith. Im an architect. I worked on just about every crabini, everything in ive been there for 75 years. I think the one thing youre doing is doing a disservice to Public Housing by calling it a neighborhood. All Public Housing is located in neighborhoods. Theyre not a neighborhood. And i think when you say that, you do Robert Taylor, all the Public Housing, as if youre talking but a community. Youre talking about a group of house that exhibit in a Community Called near north in hyde park. They dont have the Public Housing that hyde park, which i visited, im over 75 years of age, been in this city. Ive seen it all. Ive lived it. I went to the schools here. Im a former landmarks commissioner and commissioner of human relations, ive seen all of that, heard all the conversation. But when you talk about gentrification, generally, most of the people who are in gentrified homes are reining from people who created those gentrified homes. A lot of young people live on the buildings, on mow how street a lot of people it in but one person owns them and they convert them to condominiums so they can sell it at the 25,000, 3,500 a month with two or three millenials living in. Its they to game thats being played. When you talk but Public Housing, nobody in Public Housing owns nick thats the misnomer, like they own property. No they dont. The government owns every building, everything they live in. Im in a mixed unit building, that has a public house, for aable and a market rate person. The problem is, gentrified people if you want to call them that, dont respect the low income people, the low income people dont respect the gentrified people because they bring different values into the city and they expect their values we call it privilege. People feel privileged. They feel as if we deserve to have what we want no mart what the community was before you got there. Theres no working together. Im also Vice President of seward Park Advisory Council on the near north side. Work with those kinds of things, trying to bring people together but you can see the standoffs that people have. When you walk down the street, near north gets used to be 99 africanamerican. From chicago avenue to armitage, from royal street to hallston. Used to be 59 . What happened was socalled rehabilitation that whoever the president was, nixon or one of those people, said to the owners, if you fix up the apartments, and allow the people to come back in, well give you the money to rehab the units, which they did, but the didnt tell the owners if you rates the rent pass a certain amount we will not give you the money and they raised the rent two and three times people were paying when they lived there so they could not move back. Thats caused what you called gentrification to me. Carl sandberg, been there forever in a highrise. Lee talked put high royces andmer adopted the philosophy of putting families in highrises. Sandberg has families in highrises but became negative. Go back to we were taught in the 50s, of 0s and 7s so. He will knew about population explosion and what would happen 20 and 30 years ago because they told us. If you read books and studied, well have this problem in 2000, all of these issues were discussing now will be there. But i didnt see the scholars looking into that. Trying to deal with those issues, trying to address to the issues. All we did, the haves, made sure they kept having, and the havenotes made sure they dont have. And thats to me what the problem is. We as a country have never tried to reach back and solve the problems of the poor. All we want to do is gang, gang, gang. Make the money i want to stop. Make the money. And here we are. Think the scholars who report, write books, need to address what caused the problem, how do we solve the problem, not that it exists. We all know it exists. Im black, youre white, thats one of the problems right there you talk about like crabini greens for your information wasnt built for black people. Built for the italians in that in 1942, was not built for the people who occupied crabini green became an issue when the highrises got built. Throughout the city. Thats what caused the gangs and all that other issue. When they were lowrises, like the various projects on the west side, really wasnt problems. There were families and interracialness among the people and they all get along. When the highrise came up the focused one race, folks, young people, in the buildings, and no matter where you go in the city you have that issue i just want to express that because i think we get caught up in terms and words rather than get caught up in people. How we relate to each as people and stop all that other crap we call racism. Thats americas worst problem. Racism. And not one person in america i pure anything. They wont admit it that theyre not. Thats all i want to say. Very good. You said a lot. I cant respond to all of it. I do go into the history of crabini and the change from three there was a quote at the at the beginning. Thats what i was built for italians, only a certain number of blacks were allowed in, and go into as other historians have before me that the change in Public Housing came about in part to become the housing of last resort as they say. And the various shortcuts taken and why highrises became the only thing that federal government was willing to fund. But theres one thing in i wanted to bring out because i think you bring a really good point which is on the mixed income communities that have been built in these on these former Public Housing footprints, there is a great it is one over the saddest parts of the book in some ways is that the one of the developers des there at crabini, peter holesten, went to Great Lengths to make it so that the as you say, the low income former actually three categories, former cha, low income and market rate people, would the rental areas would all be living next to each other, on top of each other, in the same stairwells no segregation by income or source of income, lets say. Very important to him, everything looked the same, no stigma. They intentionally Public Housing when it was first built was intentionally built to look different, believe it or not. But unfortunately even with up a that attempt to integration, peep kept the baggage, the previous identities, and unfortunately even though people have tried tried to have communication conversations, like Community Conversations, they havent really my impression is havent really succeeded in integrating people and thats sort of reflects back to earlier my comment but Community Conversations, dont know if they really work but if people can come together and find common goals to fight for, maybe that would be more successful. [inaudible] we have time for one more question. And i want to go ahead and give it to the gentleman in the back. Yes. Its been my understanding for the last 25 to 26 years since ive been in chicago that artists eave always been the thin end of the wedge of for the pointy part of the knife of gentrification because we would move into neighborhoods where the rent was cheap and that was our only concern. Space also helped. I know because i have now apanderly gentrified three different neighborhoods in chicago. You look back from the 60s it was old down and the 7s and and 8s wick are park and now its here, and when teaching in the school as a substitute i would ask where the students would we moving and the pivots to pillson and moving south and living further away from the school. This is also been true in obviously in brooklyn where people are artists until they realize they cant be artists team and then the open a coffee shop. Is it still true i mean, chicago this neighborhood of chicago is becoming a culture of vape stores and single alcohol bars. This only serves rye. But, like, the artists were here first. And the Tipping Point seems to be where the mayonnaise store. Are the artists still the pointy part . I think thats probably right still there are different pointy parts as you put it in different neighborhoods but artists often are the ones, exactly, yes, because of various reasons that you mentioned. Again, gets back the idea of gentrification not good or bad. Maybe artists the thin edge of gentrification because theyre looking for Affordable Housing and cant fine it elsewhere and this is an inevitable process. Its what you theres a petition going around San Francisco that they will people signed vowing not to take basically displace anybody. So vowing not to take over an apartment that was occupied by someone who was evicted and i guess that might be something in terms of solutions, might be something to look for so we dont encourage displacement, again, gentrification is probably pretty inevitable and has its good and bad qualities to it, but i think we have to minimize displacement as much as possible. Absolutely. I also think in a mace place like chicago, i recognize what you seek of in here and logan square and pillson and other places and just a good reminder that the city is not monolithic either. Different solutions will be important in different neighborhoods. And the end of the day, and one of the question i didnt ask you but i think its the question for al of us, at some point it becomes a question of values and a question of the moral imperative. Dont think its a coincidence that there were clergy people involved in the fights in brook lib heights in 50s or clergy people involved now. Its a question of values and what we want to see, and blonder gentrification is inevitable, what will we allow to happen. What what bill be collective live agreed in our neighborhoods and communities so we dont displace and are still a place for everyone. This has been a great conversation. Thank you very much. Thank you. [applause] i. Thank you for the Great Questions and conversations. A couple topic wiz talk about. Upwards depth, the racial wealth gap, affordable house, we have been pilots most cause preserving affordability doubt which we are trying to actually pilot to see if theres a way way we can get ahead of gentrification plan and proactively plan with the community. So, many thinks to teresa and the book store for being our gracious host and to mag to for the time in dressing this vexing issue. Please give them another round of applause. [applause] is is part of the equity in action which him a aims to make the region better and bolder. The equity in action series was made possible by the generous support of the Fields Foundation and thank you for the food and beverage sponsors, and marz brewing, i also wanted give a shoutout to the npc staff who helped make this event possible. The recording is going to be live on cspan. We dont know when but it will be so you can check our website and facebook page. You can also join the conversation online and on twitter, tagging us, metro planners and using our of equityin action. Have a gravity time tonight and have a same time going back home. Please stay connected to us. Well continue to have thought provoking but fun events in 2020. There will be a book signing right after this, which is in the front will be in the front. Please have another glass of wine, mingle with some folks in this room and also meet our local heroes. Thank you so much. [applause] heres some features programs this weekend on booktv. Sunday night at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on after words, Financial Times columnist and cfn analyst talks about her book dont be evil and on monday, Martin Luther king jr. Day at 10 00 a. M. Eastern, Jackie Gingrich talks about her book our broken america then at 8 30m, this book the speech and, a 9 55 cornell west on this book the radical king. Watch booktv this weekend and every weekend on cspan2. Good afternoon, welcome to todays seminar book talk and conversation. I am alexander cooley, the director othe institute for russian eurasian studies and it is a great pleasure to welcome back our getzs coauthors irreina boringan and, talk both the history of russian embrays and agentsbr