The Gold Coast

This week our reading focused on The Gold Coast and was followed by our tour of the north side.  The Zorbaugh readings offered incite about specific areas in the North Side. The one problem I had with the readings where that this book was written a while ago so when he talks in almost present tense about certain areas you have to remind yourself that some of the areas have changed dramatically since the time the book was written.

 The gold coast is an extremely wealthy area. You can sense this change from the inner city and the loop just by walking around. The stores and shops shift from chain stores and fast food restaurants to high-class exclusive clothing lines like chanelle and high-end restaurants. The housing also changes. With in the loop area there is little housing that is not above retail shops in high rises. In the Gold coast we see more single-family large homes many of which are protected to preserve the architecture history of the city. The gold coast worked its way up to being the wealthiest zip codes in the United States at one time.  What surprised me was the lack of personal relation ships in an area that had so much focus on staying in with the elite. In the readings there was a main focus on what the rules and regulations were to stay or to become an elite or a society person. It surprised me how much work or lack of work it took to stay in with the elite. There were even rules on how your maid should act. Specific social rules were in effect too, like not being able to carry an umbrella or sending your children to the right school and donating to the right charities. With all the social rules that govern the exclusive society of the elite, it is sad to see how many of them do not know their own neighbors even after living with them for many years.

Is it only the elite society that has lost their sense of community? Zoraugh believes no. He also talks about another group of people. The working class and young singles that live in the furnished room of the Chicago area also have the same lack of community as the elites. The world of furnished rooms are not like the traditional boarding houses of the city they are more apartment style single room dwellings that much of the white collar working class secretaries and office clerks dwell within. They choose the furnished rooms because they lack the traditional rules of the boarding house, because its what they can afford and because they are close (within walking distance) to their jobs in the loop. These residents usually move from room to another and people often do not stay long in one place making the sense of community very low. There was one article that caught my attention, when someone went to acquire about someone living in one of the rooms the landlady was unable to confirm or deny wither or not the person even lived there. The lack of community and a moral center was also made clear by the reading about the charity girl. This girl comes to the city with all the hope in the world and is slowly beat down by the daily grind of life and soon looses her faith and her optimism. The world of furnished rooms lacks the same amount if not more community as those on the gold coast. The people in both worlds express their loneliness in a city filled with thousands of people.