Regional effect of Chicago Gentrification

I don't believe we've ever examined on this board the regional effect on gentrification taking place in the city of Chicago. For decades, the history of the Chicago area was the story of concentric rings, a city pushing out from its core, adding land, and eventually spreading into suburbs that kept going in all directions save east. The promised land was always the one furthest out and often decay occurred in the areas closer to the core where people were moving to the periphery.This is the city that urbanologist Pierre de Visse and others described in decay, being drained by its edges. That certainly is not the Chicago of today. So what will be the result of gentrifcation. My sense is that the critical mass of North Side gentrification has put that entire region of the city in risk of squeezing out many people who cannot afford to live there. You can see this even in far north side neighborhoods, removed from the core and the buzz of the downtown area, but close enough to be geographically desirable. You can see this in close in suburbs like Evanston, Skokie, Niles, Morton Grove, where proximity to the city have made them more, not less, desirable in relationship to suburbs on the outer edge. North Side-style gentrification has already had a massive effect on the West Side (from downtown to the UC, from UIC's circle campus to the its med center) and on the South Side (with development going south from McCPl to fill in the area between it and Hyde Park), redevelopment in Bridgeport, explosive growth in Chinatown, etc. Meanwhile, western suburbs like Oak Park are experiencing the same dynamics that I described in the north. What is this city growth going to be...and how will it impact all of Chicagoland? Are we arriving at the time when Chicago will be like a European city, wealthier in the core than the suburbs? Has city real estate become so valued and important that only the wealthy can afford it? Are we heading, if not to a 180 degree, a pretty massive one that replaces wealth becoming greater going outward with wealth becoming greater going inward? Will all of Chicago real estate be subject to an increase in value or will areas on the far south and southwest side be too far removed to being effected by it (keeping in mind that South Works redevelopment will spark s.e. construction around it) And ultimately, what effect will this economic (as opposed to racial or ethnic) segregation that we are creating have on the poor and even the middle class in the Chicago area? How will gentrification eventually play out in Chicago....and what problems with that process have on the health of the region. My guess: the problems will no doubt be considerable. The way we divide people by income cannot be condusive to producing a healthy metropolitan area.>