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Here is Burgess' classic concentric circle map of Chicago in the industrial age. Not the slums that surround the Loop and are adjacent to the meat packing factories and other industries. Zone III is the zone of Workingman's homes, and Zone IV is where successful immigrant groups moved to as their fortunes improved. Gangs were found in the interstitices between Zones II and III. The Black Belt already didn't really fit the pattern, but Burgess was too good of a sociologist to leave it out. Unfortunately, Burgess and Park didn't really apply Wirth's The Ghetto to the Black Belt. Segregation and racial violence had already marked the Black experience in Chicago. |
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By the mid 1990s, a much different pattern had emerged. The Loop is the scene of a spectacular wave of development, both in the information industries and housing. The speculation for land has extended the middle class areas out to the old "interstitial" gang areas. Mainly Hispanic, but also African American communites were forced to relocate. Even the projects are coming tumbling down. The ghetto has moved southward, but it also has a new dimension. The prison has many of the same functions as the ghetto -confinement andsocial control - and the back and forth between prison and ghetto is a fundamental feature of the African American and gang experience at the turn of the century. |