Learning social justice lessons through block-by-block research in Pilsen
February 2, 2009
Besieged by development threatening its historic character, Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood has been an undergraduate grassroots laboratory for DePaul students who have painstakingly charted the gentrification roiling the working-class, predominantly Latino enclave.
A building-by-building, block-by-block inventory of the community of some 44,000 residents three miles southwest of the Loop by students of geography professors Euan Hague and Winifred Curran has been much more than an academic exercise. The research has been an invaluable tool for the neighborhood in its struggle against city hall and the developers that often buy quaint, century-old cottages and raze them in favor of multistory luxury condominiums.
Geography 133: Urban Geography is conducted in collaboration with DePaul's Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning (CbSL) and carries Junior Year Experiential Learning credit. Curran believes what sets the class apart from other service learning classes is the level of trust and understanding that has been established over the course of four years with the Pilsen Alliance, a community organization that approached the Steans Center in its quest to preserve the neighborhood. The deep and longstanding partnership between DePaul and the Pilsen Alliance underlies the sophisticated, high-quality research being produced by the students, a hallmark of a DePaul undergraduate education.
"We've been an almost-constant presence in Pilsen since 2004, and we plan to continue our work there," says Curran, noting that she and Hague are not simply dipping their toes in the CbSL waters with an occasional class. "Although we teach the class separately, we are always communicating with each other and comparing notes on how we can do it more effectively." A key learning goal of the class is for students to connect their field work to the theories of urban geography.
Hague, an associate professor, and Curran, an assistant professor, have documented the neighborhood's transformation from 2004 to 2008 in a 53-page booklet in English and Spanish titled: "Contested Chicago: Pilsen and Gentrification." (Lulu.com 2008). Gentrification in Pilsen is illustrated with several photos of newly built four-story condos towering over the existing housing stock.
Students, Curran says, learn important lessons about social justice and the difference their work can make. "Gentrification in Pilsen is not something that can't be stopped, although there are very few cases where communities have successfully resisted gentrification," Curran says. "But a well-organized community can influence the way changes do take place." Unfortunately for the established residents of Pilsen, the city's policies are pro-growth, pro-development and are based on the belief that wealthier residents living in more expensive housing raise the city's tax base. Soaring assessments and higher property taxes can make a neighborhood unaffordable for the working class.
Curran also wants her students to understand why the residents long to stay. "Some of them have been in the neighborhood or even in the same homes for 50 years, but if they lose that neighborhood to development what becomes of the residents?"
Hague says the Pilsen Alliance "wanted quantitative data about what was going on in the neighborhood. There was a lot of anecdotal evidence about the gentrification there." Each student is assigned a block with 35 to 50 properties, which serves as the basis of his or her field work. Students also develop archival skills by collecting information about properties from the electronic databases of the Cook County Assessor's and Treasurer's offices as well as the city of Chicago's zoning records.
"Students visit every property to determine its condition; they look for for-sale signs and get to know the neighborhood. Their data is collected in a spreadsheet, and they write an evaluation of their assigned block," Hague says. The spreadsheets are amalgamated by geography majors, who have already taken the class, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software that produces maps to reveal patterns and trends. Funding for the geography majors' GIS work is provided through Steans, the geography department or through the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences' Undergraduate Research Assistant Program.
Among the findings is that one-third of the property owners have failed to claim the homeowner's exemption that reduces property taxes. The research has also informed a strategy to "down-zone" the neighborhood to maintain the scale of the existing buildings and reduce the height of the condos. Pilsen residents passed a down-zoning referendum in 2006 with 75 percent of the vote, but Alderman Danny Solis of the 25th Ward announced that he would not enact the measure.
Hague, along with a Spanish translator, has conducted workshops in the neighborhood to raise awareness of the homeowner's exemption. The Pilsen Alliance staff has helped the homeowners fill out the exemption forms. The class's handiwork, featuring enormous GIS-generated maps, has been displayed at cultural centers and at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago.
"Through their experiential learning, the students became familiar with the mapping, research and urban planning techniques used by both social activists and real estate developers," says Hague.