For decades, Chicago’s large public housing developments were an overwhelming impediment to their surrounding neighborhoods. The Plan for Transformation presents an opportunity to revitalize some of the Chicago’s poorest communities. As public housing developments are replaced with mixed income communities, the potential exists to not only integrate public housing with affordable and market rate structures, but also for the new development to be a stimulus to revitalize the surrounding community. It is encouraging that residential, retail and commercial development is occurring — to varying degrees — in and around every Transformation Plan site.
REVITALIZING SURROUNDING COMMUNITIES
Government agencies, the civic community, and Chicago’s business and philanthropic organizations have begun to invest in neighborhood planning for economic development in and around the Transformation Plan communities. City planners are working on strategies for developing nearby commercial corridors, promoting private residential development, and providing new public facilities such as schools, libraries, parks, as well as police and fire stations. Strengthening neighborhoods can be an important positive outcome of the Plan for Transformation. Efforts to do so, however, must not overlook the needs of public housing residents and other low income residents. For example, a number of sites still do not have retail establishments serving basic needs, such as grocery stores. If successful, neighborhood revitalization efforts will integrate returning CHA residents into the economic and social fabric of their new neighborhoods, and will help to overcome the historic isolation of these neighborhoods from the economic life of the rest of the City and the Chicago region.
COMMUNITY BUILDING WITHIN DEVELOPMENTS
Building bridges within the new mixed income developments will be essential to long term success. Creating shared community standards, the opportunity for positive, informal social interactions, and effective resident governance organizations are all part of the challenge. Development of shared community space, including indoor space, is equally important. Each new mixed income development has taken its own approach to these opportunities, from block clubs to cooking classes, from leadership training to development-wide town hall meetings. Some new communities have been able to create new community centers with extensive programming for all age groups. Still undecided is how public housing residents will participate in community governance when their Local Advisory Councils (the current public housing resident governing councils) are no longer in place.
SCHOOLS
Schools are being affected in multiple ways by the Transformation Plan. Many public schools in the transformation communities were among the city’s worst, populated largely with children from the now-demolished public housing developments. The families who relocated offsite as a result of demolition often moved their children to new schools in their new neighborhoods, so many schools saw enrollments plummet. Some schools closed and eventually reopened as new schools. Unfortunately, many are either selective enrollment or lottery schools, not available to most public housing residents. Some bright spots nevertheless exist. At one development, a new charter public school, with a priority for residents in the nearby portion of the new development, has opened under the auspices of the University of Chicago. At another site, a neighborhood magnet school with advanced academic programming is up and running and open to children from the mixed-income development.
More information on Chicago's Public Housing Transformation:
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