What’s Emanuel’s Big Picture?

After cataloguing Rahm Emanuel’s woes, this article in Forbes brings up a really interesting point:

Worryingly for Emanuel’s administration, the union seems to be framing the dispute as a tradeoff between education and economic development, with Sharkey noting that, “We need to be asking why we’re spending on things like river walks when our schools aren’t funded.”

He was referring to a $99 million overhaul of the Chicago Riverwalk, a path running along the Chicago River’s south bank in the middle of downtown. The Riverwalk, which Emanuel touts as a prime urban attraction, it is one of the steps his administration has taken to make Chicago more welcoming and economically viable.

The city’s 2012 draft plan to revitalize the local economy, “A Plan for Economic Growth and Jobs,” concluded that the city’s future rests on its ability to compete with other regions around the globe. But it gave the Windy City poor marks compared with other major metropolitan areas.

The report noted that New York and Los Angeles grew four times faster than Chicago over the most recent decade as Chicago lagged behind in creating jobs and boosting income. While entrepreneurship rose, manufacturing—a strong source of middle class jobs for decades—has slowed, the draft plan found.

Riverwalk is an easy target because it is highly visible, has a large price tag, and is financed with a federal loan backed by a local motor fuel tax that, some argue, could be better used for purposes such as municipal schools. At the same time, Emanuel, who avoided raising taxes in his first term, in September asked for a huge property tax increase to cover some of the city’s shortfall—a proposal that is anything but popular as he fights to recover the trust of city residents.

That’s the kind of thing that’s made me wonder from time to time if Rahm Emanuel’s plan for curing the city’s problems weren’t gentrification: driving poor people out of the city and providing amenities to attract the well-to-do into the city. When you look at the long list of regressive taxes and the list of lifestyle-type upgrades he’s supported it’s a really tempting hypothesis.