Chicago Redux

As I stand staring through my home’s front window, I can’t help but wish there were a better view.  Something more aesthetically pleasing.  There’s an elementary school across the street.  A small colorful jumbo gym visible through a chain-link fence both earmarking and protecting its borderline.  This small play station sits squarely in the middle of the school lot, adjacent to the parking area, kitty-corner to two dull, medium-sized buildings that house a coterie of students and staff.

This school is also a beacon to nonresidents, home to disruptive activity that plague, and diminish the quality of life for an otherwise quiet street.

Since I work from my residence, I’m here most of the business day.  Which is why I can’t help but wonder when I break for errands, meetings and the like, why adults – without students in tow, hang around an elementary school before, during and after school hours?

I’ve had that question and more on the mind when I venture outside my block.  Moving through the community, I see it.  The decay, the desperation, the structural decline of something I thought was impenetrable, indestructible.  Neighborhood.  Community.  The sights, sounds and experiences that define a particular point in time.  Though I didn’t grow up on my current street, my rites of passage happened a few miles east.  I remember most of them with a certain degree of fondness, others with varying degrees of chagrin.  But still, I lived in a community.

A place where I knew my neighbors, and they knew me and my immediate family.  I could walk down the street, at any given time of day, and not worry too much about who was there and what they were doing.  These were neighbors who cared enough to report to my parents if my behavior reflected poorly on them and the other residents of that street.  It was a village.  People were out and about, mowing lawns, making minor improvements to their home facades, watering the grass, picking up errant, blowing debris, talking to friends over the fence about garden techniques, kids of all ages playing and riding bikes, watching small toddlers using unsteady legs… it was the Brady Bunch meets The Cosby Show. You could walk to businesses – all kinds of enterprise that catered to a wide range of needs.  Adults went to work, kids went to school and life was simply good.

That was community.

And now that picture has altered.  I look at this landscape and wonder how it could have all changed so drastically in two decades?  How the quality of life could have altered so much that people don’t have the resources to live their lives simply, that people don’t have the skill-set to communicate properly, share a social responsibility in maintaining their homes, their lives, their communities.  It now seems children stare at you openly, brazenly with the intent to intimidate.  Adults approach you asking for food or money.  The only businesses in the area are consumer-driven, barricaded behind thick plexiglass and poor customer service.

There are all kinds of economic reasons why neighborhoods – particularly areas with heavy ethnic concentration have just gone belly up.  The closing of manufacturing businesses, the loss of tax revenue, the mass exodus of what’s left of the middle class to the suburbs, a major influx and relocation of low-income families to the area, the lack of economic reinvestment by the city and state and I think most damaging of all, the lack of faith from the residents who remain, and their determined, though struggling effort to turn things around.

What can be done to restore community?

It starts with jobs.  People have to find decent employment.  Jobs that pay a livable wage where said people can spend, and hopefully save, money.  It would also be nice if those jobs were conveniently located nearby – close to public transportation or some sort of incentive-driven ride-sharing program for those who wish to drive.  And if you prefer a more entrepreneurial approach, start your own company.  But to do that, there have to be incentives to get entrepreneurs motivated.  Big business does it all the time.

Since both municipalities and state government are frantic for funding, they should be throwing incentives toward any individual or collective forward-thinking enough to bring enterprise to depressed areas.  The idea being to engage as many enterprising people together who can barter goods or services, creating new business models that encourage and engage.  Build it and they will come.

There is a talent pool here, an untapped startup ecosystem that isn’t being utilized.  I’m encouraged by the number of schools and colleges in the area and nearby communities.  We have all of the components for success -- a steady inflow of smart students, and a transitioning workforce eager for new opportunities that prefer to stay local.  Once you identify and acknowledge this base, it wouldn’t be that hard to target and engage venture capitalists or business angels, partners or patron companies eager for a toehold into these markets.

The next step is to talk to each other.  Engage.  We have to get our communities back.  I think we all have a pretty good idea by now that it takes a village to do anything.  No man, or woman for that matter, is an island.  Get to know your neighbor.  We all feel better knowing we’re not alone, so why act as if we do?  That ideology has gotten us nowhere.  So now it’s time to regroup and take another step toward rebuilding something that’s right in front of us.

The ingredients are all here.  The south side of Chicago isn’t that bad, and could be the template, and envy of the entrepreneurial community in the state.

The sun’s come out now, and that view out my front window doesn’t look so bad.