It in Chicago speak, the city and park district employees call Grant Park and the downtown lake front, “The front yard.” At many homes, the front facade of the house and the front lawn are the cleanest and most well manicured part of the properties. The same is true of Chicago.
Daley has revitalized the downtown and those sites with heavy tourist traffice. Some formerly habitable residential neighborhoods are being downgraded as the regime shifts former Chicago Housing tenants, if one can call these people tenants, and Section 8 recipients out of the downtown and near North, South and West Sides and into the city’s periphery. Face it, there are virtually no Chicago Public Schools close to downtown.
Many visitors who see nothing more of Chicago than O’Hare and their downtown hotel think that Chicago is positively beautiful, but so is a Potemkin village.
Daley did a good job cleaning up Bridgeport, tearing down the Robert Taylor Homes and cleaning up the area by the United Center. It went from gang land to yuppie land.