Larry Bennett

Harold Washington and the Black Urban Regime

Although commentators on the mayoral administration of Chicagos Harold Washington have typically described either a progressive-city government or a black machine, a third approach to characterizing Washingtons political coalition and administrative program is offered by the black-urban-regime metaphor. By examining the Washington administration as a black urban regime, one can specify how local factors constrained the policymaking of Chicagos first African-American mayor and can identify lessons from the Washington experience applicable to minority municipal administrations in other U.S. cities.

Beyond Urban Renewal: Chicago's North Loop Redevelopment Project

Chicagos North Loop project is one of the largest downtown redevelopment proposals initiated in the period since the termination of the federal urban renewal program. North Loop planning in advance of substantial project implementation has taken more than a decade, and the political controversies associated with the project reveal important insights in regard to post-urban renewal downtown redevelopment, the momentum of large-scale redevelopment projects, and the new shape of politics in Chicago.

The political and civic implications of Chicago's unsuccessful bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games.

Between 2006 and 2009, Chicago’s political and civic leadership developed a bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) ultimately selected Rio de Janeiro to host the 2016 Games, with Chicago finishing fourth among the finalist cities in the October, 2009, IOC voting. This article is based on 20 key informant interviews with members and staff of the Chicago 2016 Committee, neighborhood activists and organizational staff in projected Olympic “venue” neighborhoods, and three “unaffiliated” civic leaders. The aim of the interviews was to determine—in light of the failed 2016 Olympic bid—if Chicago’s leadership had effected a process of what urban regime theorists term “social learning,” collective retrospection that can lead to the pursuit of more successful future civic ventures. The evidence provided by these interviews suggests that not only has there been little civic retrospection by Chicago’s leadership, but also that processes put in place to promote the Chicago bid to international and local constituencies actually inhibited the ability of local elites to learn from past action.

The Legacy of Adolph Reed, Jr.’s “Black Urban Regime”

Adolph Reed’s extended essay, “The Black Urban Regime: Structural Origins and Constraints,” was a provocative and insightful examination of the first generation of African-American municipal officials in major American cities. The criteria articulated by Reed in assessing the policy record of that group of black mayors, council-members, and leading administrators have retained their applicability in the face of contemporary efforts to shape and execute progressive local policy.

Revamped Stadium…New Neighborhood?

In 1988, one of Major League Baseball’s oldest stadiums, Wrigley Field, was substantially modernized through the addition of field lighting. This modernization of Wrigley Field, in turn, has contributed to a complicated transformation of the adjoining Lake View neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side. This article examines the corporate maneuvering that led to the upgrading of Wrigley Field, as well as the roles played by local government and neighborhood activists in achieving a compromise plan to bring evening baseball to Lake View. The article further describes the neighborhood impacts of this sports development project, which have yielded several unanticipated stresses on the local social and physical environment.

A Neighborhood That Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and the Search for Authenticity, by Japonica Brown-Saracino

Japonica Brown-Saracino’s A Neighborhood That Never Changes is, in fact, not a study of a neighborhood that has resisted or otherwise deflected social change. Brown-Saracino’s focus instead is 160 residents of four communities that have experienced substantial property value appreciation and an influx of new residents. I have used the term community to further specify a particularity of Brown-Saracino’s study. Her research sites are two gentrifying neighborhoods (Argyle, Andersonville) on Chicago’s North Side, Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the tip of Cape Cod, and a near-coastal farming hamlet, Dresden, Maine. In short, Brown-Saracino defines gentrification broadly, as a process occurring both in highly urbanized and less urbanized places. Brown-Saracino’s deeper claim, and the heart of her analysis, is that the process of gentrification is more complicated than many observers have realized, in large part because the attitudes and behaviors of gentrifiers are more diverse than most researchers have reported. Brown-Saracino’s gentrifier-subjects (her interviewees also include community “oldtimers”) fall into three categories: pioneers, social homesteaders, and social preservationists. The former are the exchange-valueand neighborhood-change-oriented newcomers who populate much of the scholarly and popular literature on gentrification. The latter are indeed gentrifiers, but gentrifiers with a conscience who appreciate local old-timers and the communities they have forged. Social preservationists often adopt a low profile in their new communities and to the degree that they do participate in public affairs, they regularly support initiatives such as affordable housing production aimed at stabilizing local residential populations. Social homesteaders are an intermediate group, appreciative of the physical heritage visible in their communities, not so concerned with preserving a place for long-time residents. For affordable housing activists, Brown-Saracino’s research offers a reassuring prospect: that even in neighborhoods experiencing substantial property value appreciation, many of the newly arrived, more prosperous residents will be inclined to support property tax relief for longstanding homeowners, residential development targeting senior citizens, and the like. The only problem for the activists might be the following: Brown-Saracino’s social preservationists can be so concerned about not imposing themselves on the local milieu that, at least part of the time, they may be difficult to mobilize in support of progressive, socially inclusive community development action.