Embedded Files
In spring of 2021, I contributed this paper to the Macalester archives as part of a class project for US City & Metro Politics. For the class, I was tracking local news stories in Chicago in relation to political issues in the city and how they related to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Two issues that stood out to me were perceptions of how the city's mayor, Lori Lightfoot, had handled the George Floyd uprisings alongside the Covid-19 pandemic, and a couple of controversial, TIF- or tax-increment-financing-funded megadevelopments springing up in the context of these aforementioned tumultuous events. The paper shows how city leaders and governments play a large hand in the machine-like qualities of cities.
In this case, the mayor, conducting the machine, does everything in her power to keep the machine running. Money, the petroleum that fuels the machine, is directed toward globally-oriented developments that aim to attract those from outside the city rather than improve the lives of those currently struggling within it. Lightfoot's focus on order and security, and Chicago's insistence on developing these massive, fancy projects, each epitomize two major aspects of the mallification and Disneyfication of cities, and these aspects also serve as potent examples of entrepreneurialism.
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