My old former neighbor came by last week and we got to talking about the old block and this block. I asked him how he perceived this place as he has spent the little time over here visiting me in the year I've lived here. He said, " Bill this place is a neighborhood where people move to get away from someplace."
Research says Chicagoans move due to perceived disorder in their origin neighborhood, which leads to an outmigration to other neighborhoods or suburbs where they don't find symbols of disorder. Research Seems to indicate that you don't choose your neighborhood, your neighborhood chooses you. Outmigrants tend towards homophily meaning they settle around others like them, others that do not want to be around disorder, which in my opinion, leads to tenuous communities with an underlying cancer festering. It doesn't lead to healthy relations between neighbors or a healthy situation when evidence of others shows up. It leads to places where people are on the defensive and barriers are put up in physical and emotional manefestations, how do we live in healthy communities in Chicago where we are not a lot of people that have moved from some place of perceived dysfunction? How do we get ourselves into a collective good place. How do we push against selfish neighborhoods, our fear of others, and our tendency towards homophily and move towards a zenophily? What would that neighborhood look like?
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