 |
Home | Search | Browse | About IPO | Staff | Links |
|
Home | Search | Browse | About IPO | Staff | Links |
|
WHO WE ARE
The Chicago metro area stretches ever outward, Analysis by James D. Nowlan Not unlike floods and glaciers, people have for millennia been washing in and eroding out, across the placid plain of Illinois. For the present, two great movements are redefining who and where we are in Illinois: the continuing departure of whites from the state and the relentless push of the metropolitan frontier outward from Chicago. Since 1970, more than a million whites have washed out of Illinois altogether, replaced largely by Hispanics and Asian Americans. Beginning earlier, after World War II, both Chicago and "downstate" residents began flowing into a puffed- out suburban collar that has become the dominant geopolitical region in Illinois. These migration trends are expected to continue, at a somewhat slower pace, according to the Illinois Bureau of the Budget in its 1997 report on population trends. But then not even demographers are really sure because, well, things change. Population projections are no better than the assumptions they are based on, which include employment forecasts and birth — and death — rates. These projections affect policy and budget decisions that need to be made soon within Illinois. For example, the population in the six-county Chicago metropolitan region grew by only 4 percent between 1970 and 1990. Nevertheless, because of strong recent job growth, the budget bureau is forecasting an increase of 20 percent for the region between now and 2020, while the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission is forecasting even more robust growth of 25 percent. Each figure has different implications, of course, for decisions on how many transportation arteries and capillaries need be constructed to accommodate the new residents. Precise projections that go much more than a decade into the future become iffy. For example, in 1987 the bureau was predicting 11.8 million residents for Illinois in 1995, and to its credit that's what we had. For the year 2020, however, that same 1987 report predicts 12.4 million citizens, whereas the more recent 1997 report by the bureau estimates 13.3 million come 2020, or 7 percent more. Nevertheless, elected officials often have to make decisions now rather than later, so demographics, and demographic projections, do matter. Net migration is the difference between the number of people who move into and out of a state during a given period. Steady in-migration propelled Illinois' population from 3.8 million residents in 1890 to 10 million by 1960. Growth based on migration slowed after World War II and turned into a net outflow of people by the 1960s, as home air conditioning and job opportunities made life to our south and west more appealing. Between 1970 and 1990 there was a net out-migration of 1.3 million Illinois residents. The net outflow of whites alone probably exceeded that number because of net inflows of Hispanics and Asians. This outflow was stanched by "natural increase" — more births than deaths within Illinois — the other major component in population change. Population growth, unbroken in Illinois since our founding in 1818, ended in the decade of the 1980s, the only period of no population growth in the state's history. By the mid-1990s, the state's economy had rebounded from industrial restructuring and recession, and slow population growth resumed. Nevertheless, the bureau believes that "continued net out-migration will keep the rate of growth in Illinois low despite the positive crude rate of natural increase." In its 1997 report, the bureau notes that most in-migration to Illinois in recent years has come from Latin America and Asia. In other words, says the budget bureau, "In the early 1990s Illinois was losing people to other states in the country and receiving them on a net basis from other countries." Thus, while change in Illinois' population overall has been modest in recent years, the faces of Illinoisans have been, and will continue, changing rapidly. Between 1995 and 2005, the Hispanic population in the state is expected to grow by 30 percent, to 1.4 million, and the Asian-American population by almost 20 percent, to more than 450,000. In contrast, the population of blacks and white non-Hispanics is expected to grow by only 4 percent and 1 percent, respectively. In 1950, one in 13 Illinois residents belonged to a minority group; in 1990 the proportion was one in four; and by 2020 it's expected to be one in three. Caesar divided Gaul into three provinces, the better to govern it. Illinois Issues May 1998 / 21 Political pundits divide Illinois into three regions, the better to squabble over the governmental goodies. These regions are Chicago, the suburban collar around Chicago, sometimes called the "Golden Crescent," and the remainder of Illinois, or "downstate." Suburban growth has relentlessly been pushing outward since World War II, each decade adding a ring of growth about five miles wide. Meanwhile, the older, inner rings around Chicago have become pithy with age. From 1950 to 2000, the great collar of suburban counties will have grown from 19 percent to 43.5 percent of the state's populace. (The suburban collar here includes DeKalb, Grundy and Kendall counties, which have been added since 1990 by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget to the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area, which also includes Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties.) Chicago's share has shrunk by almost half, from 41 percent to 22 percent, and the remaining 93 counties of downstate have slipped from 41 percent to 34 percent of the population. The three regions are primarily artifices of social scientists, of course. Suburbanites don't think of themselves as coming from the "collar counties," and when traveling abroad even downstaters frequently resort to "near Chicago" to identify their place in the world. Indeed, in an exhaustive survey in the late 1980s, University of Illinois political scientist Peter Nardulli found that Illinoisans across the regions shared similar values and aspirations, and harbored neither deep suspicions nor ill will toward their fellow citizens from the other regions, notwithstanding the protestations of local politicians to the contrary. There are, however, important differences among the regions. Chicago is a majority-minority city; suburbanites overall are whiter than Chicagoans and younger and wealthier on average than downstaters. But change is blurring these distinctions. Chicago's population peaked at 3.6 million at the end of World War II, and is now 2.7 million. Chicago continues as the nation's third largest gateway city for immigrants. In 1990, Since the early 1990s, Illinois has been losing people to other states while receiving them from other countries. there were 1 million foreign-born residents in Illinois, and most lived in Chicago and adjacent "inner ring" suburbs. Thirty percent of the immigrants were of Mexican descent, followed by foreign-born from Poland, the Philippines, India and Germany. This diversity is reflected in Chicago's public schools; in 1995, 43 percent of white ninth-graders spoke a language other than English at home. Chicago is also welcoming an influx of "empty nesters" from the suburbs to condominiums and rehabbed loft apartments close to Chicago's Loop. State Reps. Judy Erwin, whose district incorporates the Chicago Loop and Near North Side, and Lauren Beth Gash of Lake County can identify constituents who, when their children were of school age, migrated from Erwin's district to Gash's territory in the northern suburbs, and then back to the city when the children moved on to college.
Blacks, Hispanics and Asian Americans tend to move for the same reasons as whites —jobs, safety, housing, maybe a sense of personal space — and so they have been moving toward the jobs and space in the "burbs." As whites in the older suburbs near Chicago have been able to afford moves to larger homes farther out on the metro "frontier," their places in the inner suburbs have often been taken by Hispanics and, to a lesser extent, by blacks. In 1990, Stone Park in west Cook County was 58 percent Hispanic; Cicero, abutting Chicago's West Side, was 37 percent Hispanic; while the farther-out cities of Aurora and Elgin had populations that were 23 percent and 19 percent Hispanic, respectively. While Hispanics move west and north, blacks tend to go south. Low-income blacks are concentrated in such communities as Chicago Heights and Ford Heights, while middle-class blacks skirt the poor suburbs for places like Country Club Hills and Matteson, all to the south of the city. Increasing suburban diversity is probably reflected more accurately in the schools than by the formal census counts, which often miss residents who are sinpapeles, that is, in the United States without proper documentation. From 1984 to 1996, the proportion of minorities (Hispanic, black and Asian) in public schools increased from 22 percent to 32 percent in Kane County, 10 percent to 19 percent in DuPage, and 17 percent to 26 percent in Lake. In the older industrial city of Waukegan in Lake County, 52 percent of the school enrollment is Hispanic. Downstate is also a mosaic. Information-savvy communities intersected by interstate highways will grow. Between 1995 and 2020, McLean (Bloomington-Normal) and Champaign counties are each projected to grow by about 20 percent. Small towns within commuting distance of job-rich metro areas are also expected to grow, becoming bedroom communities for 22 / May 1998 Illinois Issues the suburbs. For example, Princeton is an attractive, traditional country market town of 8,000 located on 1-80 and the Amtrak line, a full 115 miles west of Chicago's Loop. Distant though that may seem, Princeton is close enough to the vital metro region to have become a hot relocation spot for telecommuters and early retirees. On the other hand, isolated rural Illinois is expected to continue its population slide. Stark County in west central Illinois has lost population every decade since 1900 and more of the same is projected. And while nonmetro rural Illinois is the most homoge- neous of Illinois areas, with only 3.5 percent black and percent Hispanic residents as of 1996, even here the faces are changing. Beardstown, along the Illinois River in Cass County, is home to a meat packing plant that has been attracting Hispanic workers. In recent years, the number of Hispanic pupils in the small school system has jumped from 10 to 150 in a total enrollment of 1,205. Scarcity of housing and cultural tensions have imposed unfamiliar challenges on this once mostly Scots-English community. Demographic change in Illinois appears to impose its greatest challenges upon the sprawling collar around Chicago. The suburbs are losing their identity — if ever it was fairly depicted — as comfortable, serene, safe settings for the white middle class. During his 1994 campaign, former DuPage County Board President Gayle Franzen held focus group discussions where he was startled to learn that the issue of most concern The three regions of Illinois, drawn to represent the proportion of population as of 1998
Source: James D. Nowlan This article, along with the photographs by Don Manning, is supported by a grant from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Thanks to that support, this magazine will publish a series on regionalism over the next several months. to voters was "gangs. "And simply getting from here to there in crowded suburbs has become a frustrating task. The Chicago Area Transportation Study predicts that time spent traveling to work in the region will increase by about half between now and 2020 if only those transportation improvements already planned are made. The metropolitan region encompasses about 1,000 local governments and school districts. As people bump into one another more frequently on an increasingly crowded suburban landscape, how will officials balance individual desires to do as one pleases with sensible objectives of efficient public services and rational cooperation? Even more important, how will the metropolitan region accommodate and educate a populace that is less white, less like them than their old neighbors? Finally, how will the suburban region wear the mantle of political leadership that has been thrust upon it by the former Chicagoans and downstaters who have picked up their roots in recent decades to pursue the opportunities that they saw in this once-glimmering Golden Crescent? James Nowlan is director of the Journalism Fellows Program at the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs at Urbana- Champaign. A former Illinois House member and state agency director, Nowlan is co-author with Samuel K. Gove of Illinois Politics and Government: The Expanding Metropolitan Frontier (University of Nebraska Press, 1996). Illinois Issues May 1998 / 23 |
|
Sam S. Manivong, Illinois Periodicals Online Coordinator |
