Amid the boundless optimism after World War II, suburbs like Cicero, Harvey and Franklin Park were vast expanses of affordable opportunity.
They were places where young families arrived in waves and put down roots in sturdy bungalows or neat frame houses. Their children played on safe streets and got good educations. And parents lived close to high-paying jobs in Chicago or in their own fledgling communities.
But 50 years after the war, these older suburbs near Chicago’s border are showing signs of age. The generation that was their lifeblood is graying. And in many cases, new families, often different in race or class, are moving in.
As this transformation occurs, public officials, planners and residents in Chicago’s oldest, inner ring of suburbs are asking hard questions that could determine their fate for the next generation.
How do these communities remain vital, as the magnet of sprawl pulls people and jobs away to the metropolitan region’s fringes, to places like Harvard, Naperville, Gurnee and Schaumburg? Is their future similar to that of some downtrodden Chicago neighborhoods, which were remade by the first wave of suburbanization? Or can these towns-many of which now are coping with citylike problems of rising poverty and stagnating home values-attract new families to the area and thrive?
The answers to these questions may not only determine the future of these older suburbs, but may foreshadow what lies ahead for today’s suburban boom towns, places still too young and attractive to imagine coping with the struggles of old age and expanding urban blight.
“Just like people go through phases in their life cycle, cities go through phases,” said Louis Masotti, a former Northwestern University specialist on the suburbs now at the University of California at Irvine. “Some can no longer be what they once were.
“I think the inner-ring suburbs are much more like the central city than the next ring of suburbs. The problems of the city have suburbanized.”
On recent U.S. census maps showing population loss, declining income and growing poverty rates, Chicago’s inner-ring suburbs show up as a band around the city that in places stretches 10 miles or more outward. The Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission calls them “mature communities,” distinct from those farther out.
While hardly homogenous, they share remarkably common traits: Nearly all are losing residents. Both homes and infrastructure are aging. They have no room for growth. Many are undergoing racial change. And most are coping with a broad range of problems once thought confined to the city, such as rising crime, growing poverty and stagnating home values.
In fact, what is happening in the suburban inner ring now bears a remarkable resemblance to what happened in some of Chicago’s neighborhoods decades ago, as residents moved on, seeking jobs and a better life.
Over the last two decades, sprawling growth at the Chicago region’s fringes gobbled up 50 percent more land, while the region’s overall population grew only 4 percent.
During that same period, the 90 communities at the core of Cook County lost 770,000 residents, while the region’s 165 collar-county towns gained 1 million, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. In part, those numbers reflect the growing predominance of elderly one- or two-person households in the inner-rings.
But in many cases they also suggest that for every family living in a new home in Naperville or shopping in a new mall in Vernon Hills, there is probably a boarded-up home somewhere in west suburban Maywood or a vacant storefront waiting for a new tenant in south suburban Dolton.
In nearly all of the oldest towns-except a fortunate few like Wilmette, Evanston and Oak Park, which are blessed with wealth-there also is a growing sense of having been passed by.
“The only people who are staying here are the ones who can’t afford to move,” said Phil Beckham, a city alderman in Harvey, one of the hardest-hit inner-ring suburbs. The poverty rate in the town, which once called itself the “Crown Jewel of the South Suburbs,” is 25 percent, and nearly 2,500 jobs have fled since 1972, according to state figures.
Other inner-ring towns are struggling to repair aging infrastructure just as residents retire and businesses move on, taking with them vital tax dollars. And many communities are beginning to battle the same unemployment, gang and crime problems Chicago has faced for decades.
Some, like Harvey, appear to be losing the battle, despite recent efforts at revitalization. Others, like Oak Park, may well win.
But all of these towns face challenges they never imagined decades ago, when they were the boom towns.
Consider that:
– West suburban Cicero has lost 63 percent of its unemployment insurance-covered jobs since 1972, dropping from 53,420 to 19,743 by 1990, according to state figures.
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– Nearly one out of 10 residents in the North Shore city of Evanston now is living in poverty, the Census Bureau reports, a 43 percent increase since 1980. In Orland Park and Schaumburg, two comparably sized sprawl towns, by comparison, fewer than one in 30 residents live in poverty.
– One out of four people in south suburban Harvey, once a major manufacturing center, now is unemployed, state figures show.
– Home values in west suburban Berwyn fell 3.75 percent from 1980 to 1990 when adjusted for inflation, according to the census. By comparison, values in neighboring Oak Park rose 27 percent over the same period.
– North suburban Skokie’s population dropped by nearly 9,000 residents between 1970 and 1990, a 13 percent decline that has left the town with 59,432 residents.
– The robbery rate quintupled in south suburban Riverdale from 1982 to 1992, one of the largest increases in the region, according to Illinois State Police crime statistics.
Because of continued suburban sprawl, these problems could manifest themselves in years to come in now-thriving places like DuPage County and the booming northwest suburbs.
In fact, in the most recent census, the inner ring expanded to a new frontier: For the first time, two DuPage County towns-Elmhurst and Villa Park-lie within its boundaries, at least in regard to the population loss that is one of the inner ring’s defining characteristics. Both towns lost residents between 1980 and 1990.
That development is forcing outer-edge suburbs once reluctant to believe their sprawling growth was causing problems to face a disturbing fact: Their fate, and that of the inner suburbs and city, is linked. If sprawl is allowed to continue, the inner ring will continue to expand, and one day their own boom may turn bust as jobs and people move on to towns even farther out.
Said Jim Ford, assistant director of the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission: “Some in the northwest suburbs still have a mind-set that this won’t catch up with them. But in some ways, Schaumburg is getting to be a mature community.”
That city, a national symbol of the successes of suburban sprawl, is running out of land for residential growth, planners there say, and already home values have begun to stagnate, according to the Census Bureau.
Suburban sprawl, however, shows no signs of slowing. And people leave for plenty of good reasons.
Some, like the 250 workers at Rust-Oleum Corp. in Evanston, moved to keep their jobs. Facing high Cook County taxes and a lack of space to build a more modern facility, their company abandoned that inner-ring suburb beginning in 1979, first building a new corporate headquarters in Vernon Hills and later moving its factory to Pleasant Prairie, Wis., just a mile over the Illinois border, in 1990.
Eighty-five percent of Rust-Oleum’s employees made the move with the company, many trading in aging inner-ring homes in places like Skokie and Morton Grove for new homes on big lots, thanks to corporate relocation grants and lower land prices.
“I got the house of my dreams for (the same price as) what I already owned,” said Bob Hall, manager of Rust-Oleum’s research and engineering lab, who now lives at the fringes of Kenosha. “I don’t know why more people don’t move.”
Other families left inner-ring towns out of fear-that housing values had peaked, that racial or class change was imminent, that schools were faltering.
Though he still misses his neighbors, John Murray traded in his home in southwest suburban Worth four years ago for a sprawling house in Homer Township. Fed up with screeching tires on his once-quiet street and jacked-up cars in weedy lawns, he decided it was time to move on. And he worried that the value of his home, his biggest investment, was stagnating.
“I figured if we didn’t sell the property, it would decrease, not increase (in value),” said Murray, 56. “With the neighborhood going like it was, your home would not escalate anymore.”
Finally, many former inner-ring residents seem to have fled their hometowns simply because the towns are aging and feel out of date. The suburban dream has changed over the years, and many young families feel the places their parents called home no longer fit their own lifestyle.
That’s especially true in blue-collar towns like Cicero and Riverdale, which grew up to serve manufacturing districts that have largely disappeared.
In the years following World War II, those communities offered everything an average family could want: a new, well-built bungalow just a short walk or train ride from a high-paying factory job and a good school. With any luck, there was also a nice porch in front, to while away the few hours not spent at work.
Today the dream in many ways remains the same: a new home, good schools, a good job, safe streets. But for many families it also has grown to include an acre lot, a three-car garage and a big deck for entertaining. And increasingly families are willing to trade convenience and a short commute for privacy, space and the opportunity to put plenty of room between themselves and urban problems.
This new dream is one difficult for inner-ring suburbs, many with aging homes on small lots, to fulfill. And as fears of crime rise throughout the country, the proximity of the inner-ring towns to Chicago makes them even less attractive.
What these pioneering suburbs are becoming, instead, is places in flux, more diverse than they used to be in age, race and class. Former Chicago residents, attracted by the affordable homes and hoping to escape city problems, are moving in to fill the gaps among longtime, older residents.
Over the years, most of 76-year-old Edward Kubu’s neighbors on Cicero’s west side have left, drawn by opportunities in DuPage County and other sprawl areas. As the aging Bohemian sits on his front porch these days or slowly strolls the sidewalk near his home, he meets fewer and fewer familiar faces, fewer people to listen to his stories of the days when Al Capone and his cronies lived in the neighborhood.
“It’s changing here, and that’s no good,” he said. The new neighbors, many of them Hispanic, don’t stop by to talk, he complains-though he concedes he hasn’t made an effort to talk to them either.
But just across town, a new generation of Cicero residents, former Chicagoans like the Czechs and Bohemians before them, are giving new life to the aging city.
As they do every year, Carlos Garcia and his mother, Isabella, spend the last day before the start of school cleaning and repainting the porch of their brick two-flat on 23rd Street, as Isabella’s favorite piano concertos waft through an open window.
“Plenty of people think Cicero is a hellhole,” says Carlos, 15, a sophomore at Morton East High School.
“But it’s not true,” he says, gesturing with his paintbrush across the neighborhood. “Here, we all get along.”
“We like the tranquility and the people,” agreed his mother, gingerly painting the wrought-iron porch rail. “And we found a good house here.”
Although the immigrants like the Garcias bring new life and new tax dollars to places like Cicero, some of them also bring new problems.
Many of the families are poorer than their predecessors, according to census statistics, leaving them without the means to adequately renovate aging homes. And the scourges of the city-gangs, drugs and crime-sometimes ride out on the coattails of those trying to escape them.
The result, Masotti says, is that the picket-fence and golden-retriever suburban dream these places grew up on is giving way to something more complex.
How these inner-ring towns face those problems will play a huge role in determining whether the towns achieve new successes, simply hang on or suffer decline.
Some communities, like Oak Park, have instituted programs to stave off blight, preserve integration and promote their history and advantages. Others, like Evanston, have the advantage of the lakefront and a world-class university to sustain them.
Less fortunate communities like Riverdale, hard-hit by the decline of manufacturing in the U.S., have had to focus simply on keeping the infrastructure in good repair and beefing up their self-promotion and marketing efforts. Some towns lack the money and expertise even to do that.
As a result, experts like Masotti say, some inner-ring suburbs may simply become abandoned one day, places passed on the way to work in distant places like Marengo in McHenry County and Morris in Grundy County.
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That’s a frightening prospect for the region’s sprawl towns, whose officials have no way of knowing how far growing suburban blight might reach. Have places like Schaumburg and Orland Park developed in a style that will remain attractive and hold off blight for decades to come? Or will they one day watch their residents leave for new homes in Wisconsin and Grundy County?
To help ensure that won’t happen, many of the latest suburbs are experimenting with new ideas, trying to find the right blend of homes, shops and industry that will make a town attractive and self-sufficient into the future.
In the search, some have turned themselves into upscale residential enclaves, with little or no industry. Some have built retirement housing to retain older residents, while others have fought retirement complexes, fearing they could one day become housing projects for the poor.
The inner-ring suburbs, meanwhile, struggle to find ways to take advantage of the few competitive edges they still hold over their far-flung suburban counterparts.
Most, for instance, offer relatively low tax bills, thanks to an oddball Cook County taxing system that favors homeowners at the expense of businesses.
“That’s what I think is going to keep a lot of people from moving further west. You go out to DuPage County and you’ll pay triple the taxes you pay here,” said Glen Tomlinson, village president of Lyons. That inner-ring suburb has seen only a slight decline in population over the last decade.
Many older towns also offer public transit lines far superior to those in the region’s outer towns. And inner-ring homes lie a short commute from both Chicago jobs and those cropping up in suburban job centers, giving residents increased flexibility.
“It’s convenient,” boasts Edward Lesniak, a 40-year resident and longtime fan of Franklin Park. “The Metra train’s five blocks away, the buses stop out front, and the church and stores are close by. You couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Those advantages already are prompting revitalization in Berwyn and some other towns at the inner edge of the inner ring, in the same way that some Chicago neighborhoods hard hit by population loss have rebounded and gentrified.
But whether those advantages will be enough to sustain most inner-ring towns in the long run, however, remains in doubt, particularly while tax and zoning laws in Illinois continue to make sprawl attractive.
“In the United States we’re a people rich in land and resources, so we’ve thrown away communities like Pepsi cans,” notes Kenneth Jackson, a Columbia University history professor and leading national expert on suburbs. “It’s a process seen over the last century and a half in urban areas.
“Now it’s reached to the inner suburbs and is moving beyond them. The only thing that’s new is it’s moving outside the city.”
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NEXT: An aging factory town being remade.