THE PILSEN BUILDING INVENTORY PROJECT

Winifred Curran and Euan Hague
DePaul University, Department of Geography

Introduction to the project

An extensive and systematic community mapping project was undertaken to produce a database of current building conditions and publicly available information on building permits, property taxes, assessed values, property sales, and ownership. This report provides the results of that project, with data collected by DePaul students over two years, from Fall 2004 to Spring 2006. 5002 lots are in the database.

Gentrification

The authors noted that " Its proximity to the Loop, old buildings and historic designation, and
relatively low rents have resulted in Pilsen becoming ripe for gentrification at the start of the 21st century." (p. 4)

Urban planner Peter Marcuse (1999: 790-1) defines gentrification as, “the movement into a previously working-class area by upperincome households, generally professionals, managers, technicians, the new gentry, resulting in the displacement of the former lower-income residents.” (p. 4)

On the eastern side of Pilsen, around one hundred buildings are owned by the Podmajersky family who have been attempting to transform the area into an artists district since the 1950s (Isaacs, 2003). These plans have met with repeated opposition from local residents whose articulation of an anti-gentrification position Wilson et al. (2004: 1173) identify as a “protect-community discourse.” (p. 5)

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Marcuse, Peter. 1999. Comment of Elvin K. Wyly and Daniel J. Hammel’s “Islands of decay in seas of renewal: Housing policy and the resurgence of gentrification” Housing Policy Debate 10 (4): 789-797.

Isaacs, Deanna. 2003. East Pilsen’s makeover. Chicago Reader, 12 December.

Wilson, David; Wouters, Jared and Grammenos, Dennis. 2004. Successful ‘protect-community’ discourse: spatiality and politics in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Environment and Planning A, 36, 1173-1190.