A recent Comment of the day contended that the Latino and African-American population of Uptown is waning rather than increasing as 2005 Census data suggest.
The source that mass-marketers rely on for targeting demographics and lifestyles around the country is Claritas’ PRIZM NE, a source that I’ve found to be as accurate and up-toi-date (2007 data) as any national database can be. You can look up and research any ZIP code in the US at PRIZM NE’s “You are where you live” page.
PRIZM NE assigns multiple lifestyle clusters to each ZIP. One of the six clusters for Uptown / Edgewater ZIP code 60640 is “Big City Blues,” which is summarized as follows:
Lower-Mid, Middle Age Mix
With a population that’s almost 50 percent Latino, Big City Blues has the highest concentration of Hispanic Americans in the nation. But it’s also the multi-ethnic address for low-income Asian and African-American households occupying older inner-city apartments. Concentrated in a handful of major metros, these middle-age singles and single-parent families face enormous challenges: low incomes, uncertain jobs, and modest educations. Roughly 40 percent haven’t finished high school.
Joe,
Go to the Encyclopedia of Chicago search function, which is affilated with the Chicago History Museum(Historical Society) and look at the bottom of their main entries on Uptown and Edgewater. Look at the demographic info. Both show the hispanic population from 1990-2000. Now if you are claiming that the hispanic population has more than doubled in each hood then Claritas is correct.
Or it could be that Claritas has created nifty little categories to help sell their services to businesses. Blues, digerati, elders……….it seems more marketing schtick than reality.
Make it easy to understand for the “decision makers” at various companies. If Claritas is the most accurate national database out there, and I think it likely is, then the databases need some serious improvement.
I’m telling you flat out that their data is wrong on Uptown and Edgewater. I could look around at the Chicago Public Schools website and see if I could find the racial breakdown for various schools over the last half decade. If it exists you will see the numbers in Uptown changing drastically. There was a recent story about how CPS wants to close schools in Lakeview and Uptown because of rapidly declining student population. That decline is overwhelmingly among hispanics.
The hispanic population is dropping drastically in both neighborhoods. The black population less drastically. That can be largely attributed to more black folks living in some form of government assisted housing than hispanics.
Even touching these topics is fraught with the danger of being accused of bigotry and racism. Race and ethnicity is as one famous European sociologist said “An American Dilemma”.
Go back and look at the relatively recent discussion here of Humboldt Park and Puerto Ricans moving out.
As for who is moving to Uptown your recent videos highlighted some of that. Largely 25-45 year old couples with a good mix of gays, older couples, and singles tossed into the mix. The vast majority of that group is white with a significant number of mixed race couples. I’m guessing the mixed race folks appreciate the diversity here as each partner might feel comfortable. There are also empty nesters which is a relatively new thing around here.
Now you may have access to the Claritas data from 1995. See what they predicted for 2000 and if they were accurate. My memory is that they were wrong, but I may be mistaking their data for the mid decade census.
Saying that 60640 is nearly half Latino is the most laughable thing I’ve read about Uptown in a long time. If you spend any time in Uptown you will see that Latinos are not a large portion of the population. Most of the Latinos in Uptown live further west near Clark, but I’d say there are only a few thousand in the whole Uptown Community Area.
IrishPirate, UptownR,
My sole point here was to present an aditional data tool, one which I carefully characterized as being “as accurate and up-toi-date … as any national database can be ” I wasn’t making any claims about the current demographics of Uptown, because I don’t know them all that well.
I’m skeptical whether the CPS student mix changes that much over short periods of time. The public schools are, and have been for quite some time overwhelmingly black and Latino and are often not representative of their neighborhoods.
If you want some other data check this out.
Chicago Public Schools Data page.
Search for the Uptown grade schools that are not “magnet” and see the changes. I compared 2003 to the year 2008 in various schools and saw changes that were like this in terms of hispanic students. 270 in 2003 and 190 in 2008. My simple math shows that as a 30 percent drop in 5 years. The drop in black students seems to be roughly half that rate which is higher than I expected. It is complicated by the fact that some schools have been consolidating, closing, breaking into schools within schools etc.
I don’t know how to “copy and paste” an Excel spreadsheet, but anyone who is interested can play around and look at the actual numbers and percentages themselves.
This data is problematic as it would be better if the data showed the racial breakdowns by neighborhood the students actually live in. I can’t find that data on the site. Many students don’t attend schools in their immediate hoods.
If you are more computer savvy than me post the numbers for the various schools. To varying degrees the schools I looked at all showed declining numbers of hispanic students.
Perhaps Claritas is correct and Uptown and Edgewater are nearly 1/2 hispanic. Perhaps I have a full head of hair and weigh 170 pounds like I did back in high school. Perhaps not.
Joe,
you are right that CPS schools are not necessarily indicative of the people who live in the neighborhood around the school. If it were Uptown would be roughly 2 percent white. Something similar could be said at the Chicago Agricultural High School in Mount Greenwood. Overwhelmingly black and hispanic in an overwhelmingly white neighborhood.
Again if you look at the CPS numbers for Uptown you will see the number of students dropping and the number of blacks and particularly hispanics dropping. That doesn’t mean there is some rapid influx of white students occurring. It isn’t.
The change that is occurring is simply fewer students overall and since the student body is overwhelmingly black and hispanic the drop is occurring among those groups.
IrishPirate noted that any discussion of this sort runs the risk of being misunderstood. I hope it won’t be.
YoChicagoans have a deep and passionate commitment to fair and equal access to housing, and cherish everyone’s right to live wherever they can afford to.
The 2000 Census had whites being the largest racial group in Uptown (42.2%), followed by Blacks (21.1%), followed by Hispanics (19.9%). My experience of the neighborhood tells me that this isn’t that far from reality, though I really believe the Hispanic population has dropped considerably. I just don’t see many Hispanics around Uptown these days. Most people seem to be either White or Black.
Either way, the Claritas claim that the Hispanic population of Uptown jumped from roughly 20% to “almost 50%” between 2000 and 2008 clearly didn’t happen! That would be obvious to ANY Uptown resident!
The Claritas data is for ZIP code 60640, which includes part of Uptown and part of Edgewater.
What I find interesting, based on strictly empirical observation, is that the Latin-American population in the Uptown/Edgewater area seems to be drifting more towards Ecuadorian-Americans and Guatamalan-Americans, and away from Mexican-Americans and Carribean-Americans. Am I correct?
Since I live in 60613, I should have realized that before posting numbers for the Uptown Community Area. But I still don’t think the Claritas numbers are anywhere close to accurate in this case.
Local Realtor, I’m not sure about the ethnic origins of Uptown’s Hispanic residents.
Hispanics started living in Uptown in significant numbers in the 70’s. Originally Puerto Rican’s and Mexicans mostly. Hell the Puerto Rican terrorist organization “FALN” even had some type of presence on Buena Avenue. DOJ document mentioning FALN and 736 Buena.
The Puerto Ricans were largely gone by 1990. In the 90’s I started noticing Central American immigrants moving in. Mostly I noticed because their flags were different than the Mexican flag I was used to seeing displayed on cars and apartments.
I never noticed any significant number of Caribbean hispanics. Now there is a largeish community of Caribbean blacks and African blacks in parts of north Uptown and Edgewater. Both French influenced speakers from Haiti and former French colonies and some folks from the British Commonwealth. Their kids seem to predominate in the two Catholic schools at 4200 and 4800 Kenmore.
The hispanic population that Uptown has is largely of Mexican origin. As UptownR stated earlier they are largely living near Clark Street. Around 1990 Mexicans clearly were the plurality group in the neighborhood particularly in Buena Park. Between 1990 and 2000 their numbers dropped by half and I suspect the next census will show an even more drastic drop.