In the fictional town of Lake Wobegon “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”
Visit Dream Town Realty’s revamped Web site and, on the shores of Lake Michigan you’ll find a fictional town where all the neighborhoods are wonderful places to dine, shop, educate your children, cavort in the parks and bask in the glow of ever-rising property values.
Chicago Magazine’s Dennis Rodkin was impressed by the site and its voluminous neighborhood information which was, according to Dream Town’s Yuval Degani, “researched at travel-magazine quality.”
The goal of a travel magazine is to sell travel to the destinations it features, and the goal of Dreamtown’s site is to sell real estate in Chicago’s neighborhoods. Since most of the buying public aren’t complete fools the most effective sell is one that omits inconvenient truths altogether or, in Winston Churchill’s resonant phrase, attends them with “a bodyguard of lies.”
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Englewood in the course of a dozen visits over the past year. See our video playlist at YouTube, spend some time in Englewood, talk to its residents, and then visit Dreamtown’s Web site to “Imagine Englewood If” there were no drugs, no lead poisoning, no gangs, no random shootings, no soul-killing schools – and no aura of despair.
I want to take this opportunity to tell you how shocked and disappointed I am in regards to the comments you mentioned above. Your opinions of the site in question are yours alone and you are entitled to think what you want, but to accuse them of leaving out “inconvenient truths” then presenting the Englewood neighborhood as some kind of urban slum is not only sickening, but irresponsible.
Looking through the above sites neighborhood description, I saw nothing that would indicate that the area is some sort of heaven on earth as you so imply. What the site DOES say is, “What many considered a blighted community as recently as three years ago has recently become an area with a strong base for future growth.” Where exactly are they suggesting that the area is the Lincoln Park of the South? And what is wrong with suggesting that the area has a bright future?
DT obviously has it’s motives, as do you. But frankly, I find it at least refreshing that a local real estate office would at least BOTHER to write about Englewood, or for that matter, the South Side in general, which is apparently off limits based on what other offices market. I much prefer that then to your, narrow-minded, insulting, and tired image of Englewood as a blight on Chicago, a wasteland in every sense, or as you so dramatically put, as having an “aura of despair” hovering over it.
Perhaps if more citizens invested in the South Side, if they brought property, if they treated it has more than just a slum, then that aura would be lifted. But I see that based on your comments, you would prefer to see things as they are.
BTW, a good place to start for those with a wider world view should support Teamwork Englewood, a local organization I remember from my days in college, and one that is mentioned on DT’s site.
Concerned,
It is refreshing, as you note, to see a real estate office paying attention to the south side – especially refreshing when that office is a nearly all-white one on the north side.
I love your double entendre – that I “would prefer to see things as they are.”
I do prefer to see things clearly since the time my daughter and I spend in Englewood on a volunteer project to improve a home in the area requires us to be alert to the fact that Englewood has the most violent crime of any of the police districts in the city. I think most home buyers would prefer to see things as they are when considering the possibility that Englewood has the highest incidence of childhood lead poisoning in the United States.
A preference for seeing things as they are doesn’t interfere with my fond wish that Englewood and other south side neighborhoods improve. To that end, we’ve devoted quite a bit of coverage to the area and the community groups and people who are working to improve the south side. I don’t see the efforts of most of those groups reflected on Dream Town’s site, and wonder why that is. If you’re truly interested in Englewood and other south side neighborhoods, you might take the time to explore some of that content. Take a look, for example, at our efforts to promote Rebuilding Together, which helped renovate 72 homes in Englewood last year and will focus on Englewood again this year.
The skeptic in me is led to wonder whether Dream Town sells much real estate in Englewood and other south side neighborhoods – or is interested in them primarily for their value in driving search engine results traffic to its Web site. Perhaps you could enlighten us on that subject, since I suspect there’s a reason other than my opinions for your being Concerned.
I think that Joe is right – presenting neighborhoods as they really are is a key requirement for any website.
That said, presenting them as they really are is no easy task. At MoveSmart.org, we’ve been working for nearly a year on exactly how to do just this – and even with all that work are still a little rough around some edges.
The reality is that each and every neighborhood offers its own unique set of opportunities and challenges. The trick is figuring out how to allow visitors to a website – who may have otherwise never seen nor heard of that neighborhood – to get a realistic picture of both. Glossing over either its opportunities or its challenges sets up a family considering that community for failure and ignores the people in that community working to improve it.
“…the goal of Dreamtown’s site is to sell real estate in Chicago’s neighborhoods. Since most of the buying public aren’t complete fools the most effective sell is one that omits inconvenient truths altogether or, in Winston Churchill’s resonant phrase, attends them with “a bodyguard of lies.”
Yeah, I hate when RE based websites paint a rosier picture than is reality.
New site has a ton of info which is great. If only they could get the neigborhood boundaries right. Roscoe Village southern boundary Diversey?
Is there an official neighborhood boundry map put forth by the city of chicago?
There’s a semi-official city neighborhood map (pdf) that you can find at the City of Chicago site.