Vol. 3 - A Tale of Two Neighborhoods, Part 2: Bronzeville
The Building Blocks Column | Volume 3
An exploration of the role of arts, culture and heritage in economic and community development; past, present and future
This is the second of two blog posts examining the economic and cultural impact of arts investment on two essential Chicago communities. The first post focused on Mayor Richard M. Daley’s strategic investment in cultural infrastructure in The Loop as a response to the rapid decline of the city’s manufacturing sector and its shift toward catalyzing the growth of the service economy.
Map of Chicago Neighborhoods featuring Bronzeville and the Loop. Credit: Research Gate.
Mayor Richard M. Daley's catalytic investment in cultural infrastructure in The Loop during the 1990s and early 2000s stands in stark contrast to the city’s approach to economic development in Bronzeville - the economic, political, cultural, and social center of Black Chicago for over 100 years.
This blog post will explore:
How racist and segregationist economic and housing policy has shaped the present day built environment of Bronzeville.
How local, private-sector community leaders paved the way for the neighborhood’s current boom through decades of collective advocacy for greater economic development and public-sector investment in their communities.
How the city of Chicago - whose policies led to a nearly half century decline of one of our country’s most vibrant communities and whose indifference has, until very, very recently hampered local efforts to revitalize the community - faces a generational opportunity to make catalytic investments in Bronzeville’s booming creative economy.
We should not let this opportunity slide.
The city of Chicago has a generational opportunity to make catalytic investments in Bronzeville’s booming creative economy.
Bronzeville’s Past
During the Great Migration (which lasted from roughly 1910 to 1970), approximately six million Black Americans fled the racial violence and oppression of the Jim Crow South to burgeoning manufacturing cities in the North, Midwest, and West (National Archives). Chicago became the destination for 500,000 of those Black migrants (Encyclopedia of Chicago). At the start of the Great Migration, African Americans made up approximately 2% of the city’s population; by 1970, that number had risen to 33%.
From the beginning of the Great Migration, Black Chicagoans were forced to live in segregated neighborhoods. The city of Chicago, private financial institutions, civic institutions like the University of Chicago, and local White communities implemented a series of racially discriminatory legal, economic, and housing policies and practices that explicitly and implicitly perpetuated segregation (I highly recommend Richard Rothstein’s extraordinary The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America for a history of de jure segregation across the country). The 1906 map of Chicago below shows “The Black Belt”, which, at the time, was the only area in the city where Black migrants were permitted to live. The area later became known as Bronzeville.
1906 Map of Chicago showing the Black Belt (Credit: Blueprint for Bronzeville).
The boundaries of Bronzeville gradually expanded both North and South to its current boundaries of approximately 26th Street to 60th Street. White Chicagoans frequently resorted to racial violence to thwart attempts by Black families’ to expand into new areas of Chicago and its suburbs. Public sector and private sector housing and economic policies, such as red lining and restrictive covenants, also greatly hindered Black Chicagoans’ efforts to expand out beyond Bronzeville.
As more and more Black migrants moved to Chicago, the Bronzeville neighborhood became extremely dense. By 1950, there were nearly 1 million Black people in Bronzeville’s narrow “belt” between Cottage Grove and what is now King Drive. Buildings that had initially been built as six flats were carved up into studios/kitchenettes that housed as many as 30 families.
Life for Black Chicagoans was more expensive than it was for their white counterparts. They were charged significantly more for housing (both as renters and as buyers), and because they were denied access to credit from commercial lenders, they were especially vulnerable to predatory practices. (If you haven’t checked out artist Tonika Lewis Johnson’s Inequity for Sale project, which explores the ongoing impact of the historic practice of contract sales in Englewood, stop what you’re doing and click this link).
Despite these economic conditions, vibrant retail corridors thrived throughout Bronzeville, along both East-West and North-South corridors. Dense groupings of Black owned retail stores, professional services, restaurants, social clubs, and other businesses occupied stretches of 35th Street, 43rd Street, 47th Street, 51st Street, Cottage Grove and King Drive.
A view of the 43rd Street Commercial Corridor adjacent to the Greenline in 1925 (Photo credit: Build Bronzeville).
The 1968 federal Fair Housing Act finally ended restrictive covenants and other legal and illegal efforts to maintain racial segregation nationwide. Black Chicagoans were finally able to move into areas of Chicagoland from which they had previously been excluded. The steep decline of Chicago’s manufacturing base (described in the first blogpost of this series) provided additional incentive for Black Chicagoans to leave the city and the region. From 1950 to 2010 Bronzeville’s population declined 75% (Metropolitan Planning Council, 2012, p. 3). This population loss, combined with decades of disinvestment and urban renewal, led to a corresponding decline in retail businesses.
By 2007, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) had demolished 3 enormous public housing projects in Bronzeville - the Robert Taylor Homes, the Ida B. Wells Homes and Stateway Gardens as part of the 1999 “Plan for Transformation.” CHA promised to replace each demolished unit with a new one, primarily in lower density, mixed income public housing projects. However, the 2008 housing crisis stalled redevelopment plans. The city still has not fulfilled its original targets for affordable housing units or its much publicized promise that displaced families would have “the right to return” to CHA housing. For instance, by 2022, only 350 of the 2,400 units originally planned for the mixed-income Legends South project (intended to replace the demolished Robert Taylor Homes) had been developed, “while more than 25 acres at the Taylor site remain vacant and ‘not prioritized’ for redevelopment, according to a city planning document;” (Propublica, December 16, 2022). The demolitions displaced more than three thousand families, most of whom left Bronzeville. The mass displacement meant the loss of customers for already struggling local businesses, leading to further closures.
By the 1990s (as Mayor Daley was investing heavily in cultural infrastructure in The Loop), Bronzeville’s once bustling commercial corridors had hollowed out and many of its historic commercial buildings had been demolished. That same stretch of the 43rd commercial corridor, adjacent to the Green Line station which we saw in 1924 lined with cafes, restaurants, haberdasheries, and other businesses, now has as many vacant lots as active businesses.
A view of the 43rd Street Commercial Corridor adjacent to the Greenline in 2025 (Google Earth Screenshot captured on 1/20/25).
Bronzeville’s Present
Today, Bronzeville is on the ascendency:
The 2020 census revealed that the four community areas that make up Bronzeville experienced population growth for the first time since 1950 (Hyde Park Herald, August 24, 2021).
Bronzeville’s retail corridors have seen significant growth since 2013, with new developments opening and new businesses launching.
There has been a surge in housing, commercial, and mixed use real estate development across Bronzeville. However, most of the housing development to date has been luxury housing, which has generated legitimate concerns about gentrification and displacement that need to be quickly addressed.
This boom - and it can really only be described as a boom - was sparked by persistent, decades-long advocacy and planning efforts by local community leaders and small business owners. Starting as early as the 1990s, these civic actors joined forces to form private sector coalitions such as the Bronzeville Alliance and the Quad Communities Development Corporation, advocating for local economic development and greater public and private investment in their community. In 2012, the Bronzeville Alliance worked with the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) to create the Developing Vibrant Retail in Bronzeville report. This report laid out a clear vision for business development in Bronzeville and each of its commercial corridors. Today, driving through the neighborhood, one can clearly see the manifestation of many of the strategic priorities and specific recommendations articulated in the report.
It was not until 2019 that the City of Chicago made investing in Bronzeville a top priority in its economic development policy. Mayor Lori Lightfoot launched INVEST South / West as the signature initiative of her economic development strategy. The city committed $750M in public funding for mixed use development along commercial corridors in 10 historically disinvested community areas on the city’s South and Westsides. The city also prioritized projects located within these 10 INVEST S/W community areas for other Department of Planning and Development (DPD) incentives and grants across multiple city departments, including the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE).
INVEST South/West has faced significant criticism for the slow progress of its most prominent projects. Much of the delay can be attributed to the challenges that developers had in securing capital investment from private sector funders. I believe that DPD and the Lightfoot administration overestimated the eagerness of banks and other private sector sources to join their efforts to prioritize investment in historically disinvested South and West side commercial corridors (a future blog post will focus on the need for banks and other commercial lenders to rethink some of the longstanding assumptions that guide their capital investment decisions on the South and West sides).
Despite these challenges, INVEST South/West marked a landmark shift in the city’s economic development strategy on the South and West Sides and led to significant resources flowing into these ten communities. The city’s three year report on the initiative, found that it had directly led to $1B of city investment and $1.2B in committed capital from private and nonprofit investors. The city investment included $280M in streetscape improvements along IS/W commercial corridors. Prioritizing these communities in other city grant and incentive programs led to even more money flowing indirectly as a result of the initiative. The DPD reported that 1500 small businesses in IS/W communities received some form of city funding and/or support.
Sadly, the Johnson administration appears to have shelved the INVEST S/W initiative and has not yet presented a similarly impactful replacement strategy for economic development on the South and West sides.
Bronzeville’s Future
Despite the current boom, the vision of Bronzeville as a vibrant Black neighborhood with economic opportunities for current residents still faces significant challenges. Retail leakage remains a persistent issue. Vacant lots and shuttered retail spaces continue to line its commercial corridors. The boom of luxury housing development is creating property tax pressure and sparking genuine concerns about gentrification and displacement of current residents. The City needs to make strategic, forward thinking plans for how it will ensure that the current boom creates equitable economic opportunities for current residents. One potential solution: invest heavily in Bronzeville’s creative economy and its many locally led cultural infrastructure projects.
Bronzeville’s legacy of cultural vibrancy is its future.
Earlier this month, the Bustling Spaces team embarked on a Southside Creative Economy 2035 Tour. Our idea was to visit all of the sites where Southside artists, arts organizations, community groups, and creative businesses have active plans to develop arts, culture and heritage infrastructure. Collectively, if all of these cultural infrastructure projects came to pass, they would profoundly reshape the map of the Southside within the next ten years. We thought the tour would take an hour. We spent an hour and a half and we never got beyond Bronzeville! We visited over two dozen new, expanding or planned arts, culture and heritage venues and businesses in Bronzeville alone.
The Bustling Spaces team, Evin Marie, Paige Brown, Juevel Hutton and Henry Wishcamper (off camera), on our Southside Creative Economy 2035 Tour. Photo credit: Evin Marie.
Our glimpse of Bronzeville of 2035 showed us a neighborhood packed with new and existing museums, galleries, destination restaurants, artist studios and co-working facilities, creative sector businesses, and performance venues. It includes new multi-use construction projects that combine arts spaces with affordable housing, new retail and social services. It includes restoration of key cultural heritage sites that families and local residents are fighting to preserve. It includes spaces for Southside artists to make their work and venues for them to perform.
I kept thinking… we’re looking at a Second Chicago Renaissance. The momentum behind the Bronzeville creative economy is undeniable:
Bronzeville was one of USA Today’s 10 nominees for the country’s Best Arts District 2025.
The federal government recently designated the Bronzeville Black Metropolis National Heritage Area that could lead to as much as $500,000 in federal matching funds to promote tourism and business development.
In 2023, the Chicago Department of Special Events and Cultural Affairs (DCASE) (still under the leadership of former Commissioner Erin Harkey) invested $5.5M to expand a neighborhood tourism campaign that is being led by Choose Chicago, the city’s primary advertising agency (Choose Chicago).
Bronzeville is framed by two current megadevelopments:
The $3.8 Billion Bronzeville Lakefront on the former site of the Michael Reese Hospital at the 2800 block of South King Drive in Bronzeville.
The $500 Million Obama Presidential Center (OPC) in Jackson Park in nearby South Shore.
These two developments will create tremendous economic growth - although who will benefit and what the impact on longstanding residents will be are pressing questions. The OPC will also radically transform the tourism map of Chicago bringing millions of visitors who previously would not have considered travelling south of the Museum of Science and Industry.
The number of planned cultural infrastructure projects is of a scale that could have an economic impact similar to that created by Mayor Daley’s investment in the cultural life of The Loop had on our central business district in the 90s and early 2000s. These new Bronzeville arts institutions and creative businesses will attract visitors from across Chicagoland and around the world. These patrons will eat at local restaurants, shop at local stores, and utilize local services. This increased economic activity will make it easier for local enterprises to survive, to create new jobs and to continue to provide services for local residents. These projects will bring vacant land back onto the taxroll and make adjacent vacant properties far more attractive to developers. They will begin to restore the density of Bronzeville’s commercial corridors hollowed out by a half century of disinvestment and bad economic policy.
And, crucially, these cultural infrastructure projects are being led by local artists, civic leaders, and entrepreneurs with deep, longstanding ties to the local community. Most of these projects are mission oriented, with a deep commitment to:
Serving longstanding community residents and supporting local artists. They will create opportunities for local residents to engage in cultural activities in their neighborhood.
Employing local residents.
Providing platforms for local artists to showcase and sustain their work.
Celebrating cultural heritage and artistic traditions that have shaped the lives of Bronzeville residents for over a century.
Now - right now - is the time for Chicago to bet big on Bronzeville’s Second Chicago Renaissance.
Do you want to check out the cultural vibrancy of Bronzeville? Check out Choose Chicago’s Bronzeville page for ideas of what to see and where to spend your money to support local creative sector businesses.
Do you have a topic at the intersection of culture and urban planning that you’d like to write about? We welcome you to reach out to us at info@bustlingspaces.com.
We hope you will join us for this conversation. You can sign up for the newsletter here. Reach out to us at info@bustlingspaces.com if you wish to talk about how Bustling Spaces LLC can support you as you manifest your vision for your community.
Just a quick note: Building Blocks is not connected to Bustling Spaces’ Funding Opportunities Newsletter. The Funding Opportunities Newsletter will continue to come out 2x each month. Our hope is to release Building Blocks once each month. Sign up here.
