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Sudhir Venkatesh and Steven Levitt's influential 2000 article transformed the way social scientists study gangs by showing the context in which Chicago gang members built an organization modeled on a corporation. But if this research helped to demonstrate that the underground economy is a logical response to the inner city's isolation from the rest of the country, it also makes it difficult to see that the very same factors that have led to urban decay and 'social isolation' (i.e., escalating unemployment, the loss of manufacturing jobs, and the emergence of gangs to fill bureaucratic voids) serve to connect gangs to wider social worlds. This study expands upon recent gang research by detailing the improvisational economic and social practices, as well as the intricate narratives, and the social practices that allow Chicago gangs and their members to access a variety of people, institutions, and resources, while marking the diverse modes of historical consciousness that gang affiliates develop. A gang that I will here be calling the 'Divine Aces' forms a powerful case in point. Key Words: historical consciousness, gangs, urban youth, war on drugs, style, civil rights DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2010.533531

The emphasis placed on fostering mandated community partnerships in the programme implementation of the Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community Initiative and the effectiveness of these at improving socioeconomic conditions is studied here.

This paper develops an empirical framework to study the direct and indirect impacts of the federal programs in the suburbs. The basic argument is that federal spending, when classified by the spatial impacts, actually benefits the well-to-do more than the poor because of the more substantial positive impact on wealth that occurs from the types of federal assistance received in the former neighborhoods, despite the higher expenditure on consumption in poor neighborhoods. The driving force of the results is the prevalent segregation by income and race in the Chicago suburbs. Housing subsidies go to households based on their incomes and their consumption of housing services and land. Due to segregation by income and race, the lower income suburbs are excluded from the better education opportunities and the amenities financed by the larger tax base in the rich neighborhoods. The concentration of poverty in the black suburbs, on the other hand, lowers the housing prices and limits the level of investments in the housing services. JEL CODES: H5, R51, J15

Like many large cities pursuing preferential procurement programs, the City of Chicago was sued by an association of local contractors and tried in court for discriminating against white males in construction. Unlike many large cities, Chicago prevailed in court: the City defeated the legal challenge. This study examines the Chicago-area construction industry, the expanding role of minorities in that industry, and some of the conditions that allowed the City to triumph in federal court when preferential procurement was challenged. The discriminatory nature of the local industry is documented. Also documented is the extraordinary expansion of minority--particularly Hispanic--presence in Chicago construction. White male dominance appears to be vulnerable to challenge in this traditional bastion of the entrenched old-boy network. JEL CODES: J15, J71, L74

An analysis of the intrametropolitan location of public accounting employment, establishments, and activities in Chicago and the Twin Cities is conducted to describe the suburban expansion of producer services. The results illustrate that the benefits of proximity and spatial clustering are not confined to a particular district or jurisdiction but are broader in scope.

The methods by which working-class immigrants and repaid their home loans in Chicago in 1900 are discussed by examining real estate advertisements and records of Chicago's Building & Loan Associations. Immigrants with home loans allowed boarders into their homes, grew market gardens, opened home-based commercial laundries and sent women and children to work to repay loans since they felt investing in houses was a more secure option than banks.

The facts that the concentration of poverty in the inner city of Chicago declined appreciably during the 1990s are discussed. Exploratory data analysis suggests that the decline in family poverty is strongly associated with an increase in the employment of females who resides in those areas.

This study examines the effect of the new rapid transit line from downtown Chicago to Midway Airport on single-family house prices before and after the opening of the line. The [...]

Chicago's economy changed over the 20th century from one known for its physical prowess to one known for its mental prowess, from a manufacturing center to a service center. It remained the home of multinational corporations, but in many cases, their production was moved elsewhere. The meatpacking industry is representative of the Chicago economy at the start of the 20th century, whereas McDonald's is consistent with what it had become by the end of the century. It is shown that many of the elements of the McDonaldization hypothesis were present a century ago, particularly in the problems faced by the meatpacking industry. Keywords: Chicago; economy; McDonaldization; meatpacking

Introduction and summary On March 5, 2001, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago first released publicly the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI), a single, summary measure of real economic [...]

The City of Chicago and the inner suburbs grew much more slowly than the outer suburbs in recent decades. In the central county of the metropolitan area, commercial and industrial property is 'classified,' in that it is assessed at a higher ratio of market value than residential property. Classification is not used in the surrounding suburban counties. The empirical analysis finds evidence consistent with the notion that property tax classification contributes to differential rates of economic growth. High property tax rates lead to significantly slower growth rates for employment, commercial property, and industrial property.

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and the Fair Housing Act all assign a key role to the formal banking sector, based on the view that [...]

The article investigates the parameters of wealth and income inequality in the Chicago professions between 1870 and 1920. Drawing on the federal census, income tax returns, surviving account books, and biographical information on thousands of Chicago lawyers, physicians, and engineers, the article traces the extent of inter and intraoccupational inequality and stratification. All three professions were marked by a highly uneven distribution of economic resources with a small elite receiving a disproportionate share of the available income while most practitioners earned only moderate incomes. At the same time, the older professionals were clearly better off than salaried employees. The article challenges established theories of professionalization by pointing to the varying levels of success of the monopolization strategies employed by professionals. It advances a refined concept of occupational stratification that revolves around the rising importance of occupational classifications in structuring social inequality and that acknowledges the presence of segments within the professions with sharply divergent resources, interests, and fields of practice. The article addresses issues relevant to historians interested in social inequality and to sociologists who work in the the fields of professionalization theory and the development of occupations., In 1879, the Illinois State Medical Society formed a Special Committee on Medical Education, headed by the prominent Chicago physician Ephraim Ingals, to study the conditions of medical training and […]