University insulated from wealth discrepancies

You can tell a lot about Hyde Park just by looking at the sidewalks. In and around the University of Chicago, they’re pristine — neat squares of fresh cement march around every block, often shaded by lush trees during the day and lit by Victorian street lights at night. Walk a few blocks away from the university, however, and neglected litter and black spots of gum become more and more frequent, and scraggly weeds will poke through the cracks starting to show in the surface that seemed perfect just a few streets ago. 

Chicago, especially the South Side, is seen as one of the most violent places in the United States. Many neighborhoods in the South Side do have a significantly higher rate of violent crime compared to other U.S. cities, but, while it’s close to many of these neighborhoods, Hyde Park itself is mostly an exception. Senior Nathan Greeley, who lives in Little Village, is surprised by how sealed off Hyde Park is from the rest of the South Side.

“Where we are right now, it’s almost as if we are in ‘University City,’ than the greater Hyde Park area,” Nathan Greeley said. “You look at a map of food deserts, housing prices, crime… In all of those, you are going to see a little ‘oasis’ around the university. There is a bubble. There is absolutely a bubble.” 

Part of this isolation is due to the significant security measures the University of Chicago has taken since the ’60s to keep crime out of its home neighborhood. This goes beyond the university’s large private police force, whose jurisdiction extends well beyond the Hyde Park campus and into Woodlawn and Kenwood. The university pressured state legislature into tearing down older buildings at the fringes of the neighborhood, often home to Black and low-income residents, replacing them with commercial zones and much more expensive housing. Alleyways were made private and dozens of streets were converted to one-way traffic, making the neighborhood difficult to navigate for an outsider. The city worked with the university to seal Hyde Park off from the communities around it. 

Geographically, Hyde Park might be in the southern part of Chicago, but its access to resources, culture and community are starkly different from its neighbors. 

“I definitely feel safe around Hyde Park, despite where it is,” said senior Kajus Nakas, who lives in the Bridgeport neighborhood. “I think there are a few different definitions of the South Side — you can talk about the part of Chicago that is geographically in the south, but some people are talking about a very specific set of neighborhoods when they talk about the South Side.”