African-Americans Segregates Themselves Essay, Research Paper

The argument that African-Americans segregates themselves from other

groups is not a valid argument. It is not partly because of history, since

municipal ordinance in the early 1900’s determined where African-Americans

could live, which are now considered ghettos. A reason why this ordinance

was in existence is because Chicago is an older city that grew during a time

when racial struggles were occurring. This history is what gives Chicago a

high index of dissimilarity, which means that there is a high level of

segregation between races. There is a long history of segregation between

whites and African-Americans in Chicago and thus the old ghettos were never

integrated into the city and probably will never be.

There are also illegal practices that occur today that were started when

signs of discrimination became relevant in the early 1900’s. In this era

realtors would not show African-Americans houses in a white neighborhood,

and if blacks were shown houses, the banks would not approve loans for the

houses. Even today, blacks who live in a predominately white neighborhood

are harassed and their houses are vandalized. The long history of

discrimination, especially in Chicago, show that blacks don’t segregate

themselves, but instead other racial groups began segregating against them a

long time ago, and still are today.

2) It would not be a very viable strategy to subsidize two retail stores in

this region. First off in LA there are eleven suburban activity

centers(SAC’s) within 20 km of the CBD, as seen on MAP2. By definition

activity centers contain a high concentration of retail stores. With a

large portion of the area around the CBD being occupied by SAC’s, which have

a high concentration of retail stores, adding more stores would only lower

the threshold population of the other stores and give the new stores a low

threshold population. Adding two stores to this area will probably not

bring in other stores like the city would like to see happen. As we saw

with the Forest Fair mall example, the Cincinnati area already had a surplus

of stores, when the new mall was created, there wasn’t enough households to

support the added stores. The city would like to see more stores come to

the CBD, because this means more taxes and other amenities that go along

with an enhanced image of successful retail stores. But eventually at least

two stores would shut down, because of the deficit of households. The

cities plea to bring these new stores to the area for the purpose of

enhancing the image of the city, fails to recognize that there is already

eleven SAC’s within 20 km of the CBD. Having just one SAC would help the

image of the city, but with the city having eleven SAC’s shows that this

city already has an enhanced image.

3) This strategy to purchase this land has some disadvantages and one

advantage, but in the long run is not viable. This land that would be

obtained from former manufacturing plants will cost a lot of money to clean

up and make usable for new large manufacturing plants. As highlighted on

Map3, the area that is proposed to be rezoned does not have a high density

of large manufacturing plants, and thus plant builders would be reluctant to

purchase land in this region, even at below cost. The one advantage is that

these new plants would be able to support under-employed citizens. This

advantage to citizens does not outweigh the great expense that the city will

spend cleaning and removing past waste from these abandon houses and vacant

plants.

4) This would not be a viable strategy because of the number of households

built prior to 1940 and the number of SAC’s in LA. As can be seen on Map4,

there are few houses built prior to 1940 in LA. This limited amount of

housing built prior to 1940 is directly related to the number of abandoned

houses, only a few. SAC’s cause the land value around them to be high, thus

an enhanced property tax base. By definition, SAC’s contain apartment

complexes, which are occupied office workers that work in the SAC’s. So the

argument to redevelop the housing within 30 km of the CBD is invalid.

Because this area is already enhanced by it’s high land value around the

SAC’s and the number of apartment complexes in these SAC’s.

5) This is an valid argument for both LA and Chicago. In LA and Chicago the

central city has a small amount of single family housing as seen on Maps 5

and 6. Typically single family housing is where middle and upper class

groups live. Thus the home of the poor live in areas with a low amount of

single family housing, in LA this is the central city. Also in LA, the land

outside of the central city has a limited amount of land accessible for

housing and so land values are high, not where the poor usually live. In

Chicago there are no SAC’s in the central city, not an attractive place for

the middle and upper class groups to locate. The SAC’s in Chicago are

outside the central city so this group tends to live near the SAC’s.

Because of the SAC’s location in both cities and the accessibility of land

in LA, home of the poor are more prone to the central city, and middle to

upper class groups are living outside of the central city.