Growth for Whom? Sacrifice of Chicago’s Chinatown Then and Now

Abstract

The utilitarian planning practices that marked the era of Urban Renewal and the beautification efforts of the City Beautiful Movement led to widespread displacement and destruction of many Chinatowns across America, including Chicago’s. The history of Chicago’s Chinatown tells a story of a community that has always been an afterthought in city planning and priority, continually sidelined for the purposes of “broader” city goals. Recent decades, however, have brought upon a shift in planning paradigms, as values of equity and justice have become of increasing priority. This shift comes at a time when Chinatowns across the nation are experiencing change of their own as they face pressures of displacement largely due to downtown expansion. Chicago’s Chinatown, however, is an exception, largely regarded as America’s last growing Chinatown.

Amidst these changing world contexts, this thesis strives to understand how Chicago today has actually evolved in how it values and centers Chinatown in its planning processes, particularly as the largest private development in Chicago history, The 78, is slated to become Chinatown’s neighbor. By examining through the lens of the 78 planning process, this thesis seeks to illuminate whether and how Chicago city planning has evolved from the sacrificial nature with which it has historically treated Chinatown during the periods of City Beautiful and Urban Renewal.

This research relies on historical analysis of documents, maps, photographs, and more to understand the relationship between planning and Chinatown during the eras of City Beautiful and Urban Renewal. I then examined the 78 development process further than what was publicly reported by conducting a number of semi-structured interviews. Ultimately, I found that in many ways, the sacrificial nature of planning has not changed, although the way this sacrifice takes form is different. While economic interests for large-scale planning projects stay the same, social interests have evolved due to changing societal values. Today, the notion of diversity has become viewed as an amenity or asset, and as such, Chinatown’s function as a cultural center is capitalized upon despite ultimately still being subjected to sacrifice for the city’s economic advancement.