The Reverse Donut finally arrives....what does it spell for our fair city?

Found this article interesting espececially given some predictions of the reverse domut effect several years ago here is link : http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...l=chi-news-hed Change hits many inner suburbs More poor move to towns near city By David Mendell and Darnell Little Tribune staff reporters Published February 16, 2006 Positioned between thriving sprawl communities and evolving city neighborhoods, inner-ring suburbs in the Chicago region and across the country are facing major challenges to their stability, including an influx of poor people, sagging infrastructure and overall neglect, national studies and a Tribune analysis show. A report by the Brookings Institution, released Wednesday, identified 64 counties nationwide that represent suburbs closest to cities and found that, as poverty declines nationally, the counties are seeing an increase in poor residents and declining household incomes. Suburbs in close proximity to Chicago have been experiencing rapid increases in the number of people living below the poverty line over the last decade, according to other studies and a Tribune analysis of U.S. Census data. That's attributable to various factors: immigration from Mexico, gentrification that displaces the poor from city neighborhoods, the dispersal of Chicago Housing Authority residents outside the city. Despite the well-worn path of this migrant pattern, many of these suburbs are ill equipped to handle the poor coming their way. Inner-ring suburbs such as Blue Island, Stone Park, East Hazel Crest, Rosemont, Robbins and Dixmoor all placed in the top 10 of area communities with the biggest increase in residents living in poverty during the 1990s, the Tribune analysis showed. Meanwhile, outer suburbs such as Mokena, New Lenox, Romeoville and Bannockburn all experienced the most significant decrease in poverty during the decade. Poverty in Chicago fell 2 percentage points, from 21.6 percent to 19.6 percent. Throughout the country, demographers and sociologists studying census data found poverty increases in inner suburban areas while seeing less poverty in outer sprawl areas. Paul Jargowsky, an associate professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas, described this flow as a "bull's-eye pattern." "You'd see decreasing poverty rates in the central part of the city, increasing poverty rates in the inner suburbs and then decreasing poverty in the outer suburbs," said Jargowsky, who wrote a paper on his findings titled "The Decline of Concentrated Poverty." "So it was very striking," he added, "when you see Chicago looking like Philadelphia, looking like Cleveland, looking like Memphis, looking like a lot of other places." In Blue Island, the economic shift also has brought significant racial change, since most of the new residents are minorities. From 1990 to 2000, Blue Island lost nearly 4,400 white residents while adding more than 3,600 Latinos and nearly 2,700 blacks, according to the census. Increasing poverty Its number of poor residents skyrocketed over that decade too. In 1990, 1,785 people were in poverty. By 2000, that number had risen to 3,088. And during a decade when poverty fell overall in the six-county region, the number of poor families in Blue Island jumped from 371 to 671, the census showed. Amparo Arreola and her husband, Antonio, settled in Blue Island in May 2004. They, along with three young children, subsist far below the poverty threshold of $22,831 annually for a family of five. The family rents a tidy, modest house for $650 per month using Antonio's roughly $300 per week salary ($15,600 per year) from a job at a gyro restaurant in Tinley Park. In search of work, Antonio Arreola had been shuttling back and forth from Guajanato, Mexico, for several years until Amparo Arreola decided she wanted the family to live in one place and immigrated here with her children. They moved to Blue Island because Antonio's landlord in Crestwood said he had an inexpensive rental home available in the suburb off Interstate Highway 57 just south of the city. Amparo said her husband had come here to earn money to send back to his family in Mexico. Working 50 hours per week in a restaurant is an easier and more lucrative life than hard labor on ranches and farms in Mexico, Amparo said.>