Understanding Neighborhood Displacement & Disinvestment

Case Study: Understanding Neighborhood Displacement & Disinvestment

Continued gentrification, displacement, and disinvestment have been changing the landscape of our neighborhoods for decades and has only grown in significance in recent years. Displacement pressures affect both vulnerable populations as well as institutions that are essential to the cultural fabric and health of a community, such as places of worship, community centers, and health clinics. In Chicago, pressures can come from multiple directions ranging from increased demand for housing to histories of segregation and disinvestment.

Through the City Tech Connect Chicago Innovation Program, the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University (IHS) and MAPSCorps teamed up to create data indicators, sustainable processes, and tools to help organizations access, analyze, and compare neighborhood-level data to equitably preserve and improve communities.

The team leveraged a unique, ongoing neighborhood data collection effort to access otherwise impossible-to-obtain data on neighborhood cultural and commercial assets to develop best practices for data collection and management, basic data indicators, and a web-based platform to engage communities on related Issues. The resulting tools increase users' understanding of the current and changing landscape of neighborhoods; highlight the relationship between these changes and pressures driving gentrification, displacement, and disinvestment; and enable community stakeholders and public officials to develop policies that preserve and Improve neighborhoods while creating a more equitable city.

Analyzing the Pressures Behind Shifting Neighborhoods

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