This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WBEZ and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization. Sign up for WBEZ newsletters to get local news you can trust.
Christian Diaz hates a boxy, six-story brick building with blue and gray paneling in Logan Square, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood on the northwest side of Chicago.
“It looks boring and uninspired,” said Diaz, the housing director at Palenque LSNA, formerly known as the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. “When people think gentrification, this is the building that comes to mind.”
The building is an example of what urban planners call Transit-Oriented Development, or TOD. The idea is that developing near transit stations leads to interconnected communities and fewer cars emitting carbon dioxide. Developers get incentives and neighbors get a walkable community. But Diaz said buildings like this — dense, tall developments catering to wealthy tenants — are accelerating gentrification in the once working-class, largely Latino n... Read more
