The Strategy

I’ve been arguing for some time that Rahm Emanuel’s strategy for Chicago was to support policies that would attract people with earnings in the upper quintiles while not doing much that would retain people from the lower quintiles. You can see it in his support for various project usually articulated as “making Chicago a world-class city”, closing and consolidating neighborhood schools, particularly in poorer neighborhoods, and opening magnet schools.

In an article at City Journal, Aaron Renn, perhaps without recognizing itt, makes a pretty darned good case that’s been the policy for some time now:

The idea was to portray Chicago as a “global city,” and it was successful, to judge from the responses in the national media. As Millennium Park opened (a few years late) in the mid-2000s, The Economist celebrated Chicago as “a city buzzing with life, humming with prosperity, sparkling with new buildings, new sculptures, new parks, and generally exuding vitality.” The Washington Post dubbed Chicago “the Milan of the Midwest.” Newsweek added, “From a music scene powered by the underground footwork energy of juke to adventurous three-star restaurants, high-stepping fashion, and hot artists, Chicago is not only ‘the city that works,’ in Mayor Daley’s slogan, but also an exciting, excited city in which all these glittery worlds shine.”

going right back to Richie Daley’s tenure as mayor. Key problems with all of these amenities are that they were financed with borrowed money and by and large rich people don’t live here. They live in Hinsdale, Winnetka, Kenilworth, Lake Forest, and points beyond and, since the city depends for revenue on sales taxes and property taxes, they don’t contribute a lot to revenue. That leaves Chicago with a declining population of people with lower incomes paying for a spending spree on things that they don’t really need.

Rahm Emanuel has the additional problem that he grew up in an affluent family, is affluent himself, and in his job as Democratic fund-raiser has spent his life surrounded by the wealthy. It wouldn’t be too surprising if under the circumstances he identifies with the wealthy and has no real sense of the problems facing most Chicagoans.