Causal Relationships in 21st Century Chicago Gentrification

Since the mid-1990s, gentrification has been a popular area of sociological study, typically in discussion of the immediate and delayed effects of gentrification. There is a general consensus among professionals that gentrification is a natural economic occurrence motivated by low property value in desirable areas and a surplus of capital from investors. However, independent of governmental subsidies and tax incentives, we wanted to find how developers specifically pick from the variety of neighborhoods available to them. Entering into our analyses, we hypothesized that developers in Chicago prefer low property value, closer proximity to the loop (Chicago city center), lower crime rates, and buildings built before 1940. Thus, we have measured the causes of gentrification in Chicago over an eight-year period on a census tract level defining gentrification as an increase in median percent income attributed to housing and weighing the hypothesized factors