The Political Economy of Urban Violence

John M. Hagedorn

Specifically, I intend to work with other Great Cities faculty to begin research in different Chicago communities, looking for variation based on proximity to the information economy and gentrification. This follows up the theoretical direction of a paper written with Great Cities Fellow Paul Goldstein on variation in homicide by city and neighborhood. This paper was presented at Great Cities September 30, 1999 and is presently under review at Criminology. We argue a "drug market/declining cities" hypothesis, that recent shifts in homicide rates are related to an interaction between fluctuations in drug markets and failure of cities to transition to the information economy. The paper sets out both a quantitative and qualitative agenda for further research.

That paper suggests a new, multi-disciplinary urban studies agenda for research in issues of crime and economic development. The extent of the information economy is one crucial variable explaining why some cities advance and others decline. Within Chicago, I would expect to find variation in rates of violence and other social indicators based on proximity to economic development. In other words, areas like Pilsen, which are adjacent to UIC, would be expected to have more formal and informal job opportunities than areas like Englewood or Roseland, which are socially isolated, to use Wilson’s term, or socially excluded, to use Castells’.

In other words, the principle source of variation in quality of life of neighborhoods may be space –the location of a neighborhood next to, or far from, the new economic developments. "Social efficacy," the key social disorganization concept used by the University of Chicago’s Rob Sampson and the Project on Human Development to explain crime rates, would then be more of an intervening, rather than independent variable.

Other factors also are important in understanding quality of life, including the spatial distribution of where incarcerated offenders reside after release. Unless opportunities for the large numbers of previously incarcerated minority males and females are provided, a neighborhood is at serious risk. Also important is the gendered nature of formal and informal job opportunities in a given space. Unless efforts are made to insure job opportunities for both men and women in a given area, the local economy can produce family instability and thus be self-defeating.

This is a new theoretical direction, combining the urban political economy literature with criminology and the ecological orientation of the Chicago School. The research strategy to be pursued at Great Cities will include the gathering of official data, on a neighborhood and city-level. However, it will also initiate empirical investigations of the nature of the informal economy in various neighborhoods through field work and by understanding how residents in the two kinds of neighborhoods perceive their life chances.

I have conducted five studies in Milwaukee for the past fifteen years, four of them related to gangs, drugs, violence, and the informal economy. Since coming to UIC, I have been discussing with students and former gang members the informal economy and social organization in various Chicago neighborhoods. I have written in both criminology and sociology journals on gangs and poor neighborhoods and am the author of two books and co-editor of another. I have directed a $1.5 million National Institute on Drug Abuse study on the patterns of drug use and the structure of drug dealing among Milwaukee gangs.

Through the organizing of the Clark Center, I have been cultivating the best violence researchers and scholars at UIC to collaborate in a study/intervention in Chicago. I am also using my national contacts from my gang research to network with scholars from other cities in organizing the multi-city study. My international contacts through the Eurogang Working Group, partially funded by Great Cities, will allow international investigation through colleagues from Europe, Africa, Japan, and the Pacific. Finally, my ties to Milwaukee and its research community will facilitate collaboration with Chicago and UIC.

This research suggests that the crucial issue facing urban neighborhoods is space, or the physical relationship of a neighborhood to the production services of the new economy. It means that segregation, in the sense of an area’s social isolation from job networks, precisely as Wilson argued, is the crucial variable in determining quality of life. It means that institutions like UIC have a special responsibility in making sure the spill-over from its development goes to area residents as well as UIC professionals.

Gentrification, then, following this argument, is a positive phenomenon, as long as the gentrified area is heterogeneous, preserving local culture and providing job opportunities for long term residents while not forcing them out through rising property taxes. In that sense, the tactic of organizers in Humboldt Park, of arguing for a freeze in property taxes for long term residents, may be an important tool in preserving heterogeneity.

The orientation of this study would argue that public policy must intervene in where economic development takes place, using the new economy as a way to reduce inequalities rather than reinforce them. In Chicago, this has special relevance for the African American community. The research approach I have taken in the past also stresses organizing economic development in poor neighborhoods. As part of my Milwaukee studies, Homeboyz Interactive, which provides training in web design for former gang members, was set up. I hope to induce them, or a similar venture, to locate in our Chicago research sites.

A concept paper is currently being circulated to several area foundations on an ethnographic overview of the informal economy in Pilsen, Englewood, and Roseland. The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation has tentatively funded similar research in Milwaukee and an application at Robert Wood Johnson is pending. The Milwaukee research is explicitly billed as a pilot study toward a multi-city replication.

Discussions have been held with Jeff Fagan and Sudhir Venkatesh at Columbia University as principals with Great Cities to set up a multi-city study to test our "drug market/declining cities" thesis. One main goal of my Great Cities Scholar year would be the development of a major multi-city proposal investigating the issues of space, crime, and the new economy.

A related $10 million proposal to the National Science Foundation will be completed by mid-summer 2000. If funded, it will influence the way field research is conducted in Chicago and around the country.

Because of its mission as a Chicago, university- based, urban research and public policy institute, Great Cities is ideally situated to investigate the issues of the relationship of space, crime, and the new economy. The multi-disciplinary nature of Great Cities, as well as the previous work of scholars such as Paul Goldstein and Darnell Hawkins, has potentially placed Great Cities at the center of a theoretical reevaluation of issues of urban development, with sweeping policy implications.

I intend to build the Clark Center as a research institute linked to Great Cities and its urban mission. I hope for the Clark Center to spark intellectual debate at Great Cities, through informal discussions of our research and ideas, Brown Bags, Seminars, and Conferences.

Also important is Great Cities’ relationship to a network of Midwest research and policy institutions. I expect to work to strengthen those networks, and to work to include the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Urban Initiatives and Research. I also will utilize the proposed multi-city study to build links to Columbia University in New York and with other research institutions. Through my Eurogang contacts, I have offered to host an international conference in Chicago on the comparative study of gangs.

Finally, the study of space, crime, and the new economy implies a pedagogical focus as well as a research agenda. The attempt to organize a multi-disciplinary urban studies core within existing Ph.D. programs will be a component of my stay at Great Cities. I have already made contact with representatives of several social science Ph.D. programs at UIC to explore the development of joint classes and an "urban core" within each program. Great Cities is the natural home for this effort.

In its most ambitious aspect, this research agenda is intended to build Great Cities as the heir of the Chicago School in the information age.