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Spreading Out: Illinois' Fastest Growing Areas Are the 'Ring Around the Collar'

Twenty years ago, almost no one would have thought to call the Fox River village of Oswego a “suburb.” Located 50 miles from Chicago’s Loop, Oswego was incorporated before the Civil War. By 1990, it still had fewer than 4,000 residents. But Oswego’s fortunes changed dramatically in the two decades that followed.

Cheap land and easy commutes attracted newcomers, chiefly from other suburbs. By the time the new millennium arrived, the village population had climbed to more than 13,000. The building boom only accelerated in the last decade. According to U.S. census data released earlier this year, Oswego now has more than 30,000 residents — a nearly eight-fold increase since 1990.

All around Oswego, too, the population is growing. The opportunities for brand-new development in Cook County and even west suburban DuPage County are fewer and farther between. Some of the biggest growth in Illinois is no longer in the traditional “collar counties” that border Cook County. Instead, the fastest growing areas now are in the “ring around the collar.” Kendall County, which includes Oswego, is the fastest-growing of them all, not just in Illinois but also in the entire United States. Since 2000, it more than doubled in population.

The population details — laid out in this year’s once-in-a-decade release of U.S. census numbers — show how Illinoisans are changing as a people. As the moving vans are dropping people off in Illinois’ suburbs, they are loading up families moving out of Chicago and rural areas downstate. We are becoming not only more suburban, but more diverse. Hispanic Illinoisans outnumber blacks for the first time; if not for the surge in Hispanic population, Illinois would hardly be growing at all.

The decennial snapshot from the census is perhaps the best portrait we have of the state as a whole. It illustrates how we are changing and what challenges we are soon likely to face. The growth of the outer suburbs puts stress on local infrastructure, such as roads, sewer pipes and school buildings, and affects regional and state resources, too. Likewise, the movement of African-Americans out of Chicago, the emptying of rural areas and the growth of Latinos in nearly every corner of the state will have lasting effects on Illinois politics and policy.

Most of the national trends highlighted by the new batch of census data are not new, especially the concentration of Americans in metropolitan areas, the surge of the suburbs and the growth of the Latino population. 

The size of the flight of black families from Chicago, though, took almost everyone by surprise. Of the 30 cities with the largest African-American populations, 19 saw decreases in the number of blacks, says William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. But that trend was especially pronounced in Chicago. In fact, Frey notes, Chicago lost more blacks than any city but Detroit.

The departing African-American inhabitants account for almost all of Chicago’s population drop in the last decade. The city’s numbers dropped by roughly 200,000 people; blacks accounted for 180,000 of them.

Demographers are still waiting for more data from the census Bureau to determine where exactly those blacks moved to, but Frey says evidence suggests they headed both to the Chicago suburbs and to the Sun Belt. In essence, they are following the same pattern of “white flight” that white city dwellers took half a century ago. Now, he says, it is a younger generation of black middle-class families leaving cities to find better jobs, schools and neighborhoods in the suburbs and in the sunshine.

The decline in Chicago’s population is especially jarring because Chicago showed a slight rebound in population during the last census, says Richard Greene, a geography professor at Northern Illinois University. An influx of young professionals and empty-nesters in the 1990s boosted the city’s numbers for the first time since the 1950s, but the activity in gentrifying neighborhoods masked the simultaneous movement away from the city’s south and west sides, Greene says. That trend of leaving the city’s poorer neighborhoods only accelerated during the housing boom of the 2000s, when new housing was plentiful outside the city and interest rates for mortgages were low.

Of course, the housing boom affected the entire Chicago region. The cities that did the best during the decade, Greene says, were the ones that had space around their borders to expand and incorporate new subdivisions. That is why, he explains, Aurora grew so much faster than its hemmed-in neighbor, Naperville. In the previous decade, both west suburbs gobbled up territory and chalked up population gains. But over the past 10 years, Aurora added more than 55,000 people and became Illinois’ second-largest city, while Naperville’s growth trajectory leveled out. 

By and large, DuPage County, where most of Naperville is located, is built-out. Developers and home buyers have had to venture farther from the city to get good deals on land. They are spreading out from the city — and established suburbs — in almost every direction. The “ring around the collar” starts in the north around Racine, Wis. Once in Illinois, it arcs into Boone County just outside Rockford, sweeps through the Fox River Valley and moves south through Grundy and Will counties. It is even pushing growth in the northwestern corner of Indiana. 

Besides room to expand, other factors that determined which localities grew the most included their ability to attract Hispanic families, access to transportation and housing affordability, Greene says.

The growth among Latinos is especially noteworthy. Throughout the United States, new immigrants are no longer going directly to traditional gateway cities, such as Chicago and New York. Instead, they are joining family and friends in places where jobs are available.

The numbers of Hispanics are swelling, not just because of immigration, but because they tend to have more children than the general population. In Illinois, the growth is especially pronounced in such communities as Elgin and Aurora. While Hispanics make up 15 percent of the U.S. population as a whole, Greene points out, Kane County’s residents are 31 percent Latino.

In Chicago, where the population is shrinking, House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie says she was “very surprised” by the numbers that showed her district, which stretches south along the lakefront from Hyde Park, has the second-largest population decline in the state.

The impact of the migration is already showing up in Chicago schools. Over the past decade, the number of school-age children in the city has dropped by 10 percent. But the number of school-age children living in poverty actually has increased. Both the drop in enrollment and the increase in poor students affect the funding Chicago’s public schools receive. At a more basic level, though, it means teachers and administrators are dealing with poorer students every day.

Meanwhile, Chicago schools, like many throughout the state, also have a higher percentage of students who need help learning the English language. Data from the state indicates that the number of English language learners in Chicago Public Schools jumped 10 percent in the past two years. All told, some 61,000 students of roughly 409,000 in the district are acquiring English.

It is a challenge familiar to school administrators throughout the region. Kankakee’s schools saw their number of English language learners more than double in the past two years. Schools from Park Ridge, Berwyn, Glendale Heights, North Chicago and, yes, Oswego have seen large increases in recent years, too, pushing up demand for new bilingual teachers and prompting some districts to look abroad for instructors at the same time they are struggling just to meet their payrolls. 

Of course, where subdivisions are built, new schools are sure to follow. Even though the economic downturn put a damper on the number of people buying new houses in Kendall County, schools there still face higher enrollments because the families that already moved in are having more kids, House Republican Leader Tom Cross of Oswego points out.

In fact, new development demands new infrastructure of all kinds, not just more classrooms. It is one reason capital construction bills are popular among suburban lawmakers.

One of the key drivers of the growth, after all, is easy access to transportation, especially interstate highways. But as more people move in, the roads get crowded. One of the top priorities for elected officials in the suburbs is to alleviate that congestion. In an interview, Cross easily ticks off a number of road widenings the state has recently completed in and around his fast-growing district — and several more he wants to see. State Sen. Linda Holmes, an Aurora Democrat, stresses what a “huge” issue bringing Metra commuter rail service to Oswego has been. State Rep. Mike Fortner, a Republican who once served as West Chicago’s mayor, says lawmakers are even pushing for Amtrak service to Rockford and passenger rail to LaSalle.

For the time being, though, policymakers ought to concentrate on maintaining existing infrastructure, argues Josh Ellis, a project manager for the Metropolitan Planning Council in Chicago. The most likely improvements for commuter rail, he says, would be more frequent service or more stops on existing routes. Another option for relieving congestion would be using Interstate 55 as a transit corridor, where express buses would run down the median or on the shoulder. “As a function of the federal, state and local economies,” he explains, “the idea of new highways and new train lines is not at the forefront of people’s minds.”

One of the most significant but least visible changes is the settling of suburbanites in areas outside the Lake Michigan watershed. In fact, of the 20 Chicago-area municipalities that grew the fastest last decade, 15 do not get their water from Lake Michigan, according to the Metropolitan Planning Council. 

That is significant because federal law caps how much water Illinois can draw from the Great Lakes. In practice, that means new areas must rely on river water and underground aquifers to water their lawns and cook their food. Those sources, though, are more susceptible to seasonal droughts and to contamination of radium, barium and arsenic than Lake Michigan water. 

Mary Sue Barrett, the council’s president, says the expanding footprint of the suburbs is a problem even for communities that already draw their water from Lake Michigan. Towns that depend on the Fox River or Kankakee River care deeply about what is happening upstream from them, particularly how much water other towns are returning to the river and how polluted that water is.

Local leaders in the distant suburbs also may develop contingency plans for using Lake Michigan water in cases of extreme shortages. But the only way there would be enough Great Lakes water available under the federal cap, Barrett explains, is if the communities that now use it conserve more of it or return more of it to Lake Michigan.

Holmes wrestled with the issue when she sat on the Kane County Board before becoming a state senator. The county conducted a three-year study on drinking water and concluded the area will face a “serious crisis” in the next 20 years, she recalls.

But it is just one of the issues highlighted by the census that she grapples with every day. Her booming district makes the task of going door-to-door for votes more difficult, she jokes, but the more serious concerns involve relieving traffic congestion, finding English teachers and making sure that new hospitals are built in the area.

The growth that boosted the local economy is a boon to her district, she says, but she worries that, as the census indicated, it is a mixed blessing for the state.

“If you’re in a growing community, you’re creating jobs. That is such a huge plus, especially with where the economy is,” Holmes says. “But … you really don’t want population fleeing out of your cities. The more you have houses that are not being lived in and businesses that are no longer occupied and empty storefronts, it’s an economic drain.” 

 

Census data crunching shows growth favors Republicans

Perhaps the most immediate consequence of the new census numbers comes with this year’s task of drawing new legislative and congressional districts for the next decade. Democrats control the process this year, because they’re in charge of both chambers of the General Assembly and hold the governor’s office.

But overall, the census numbers are bad news for Democrats. Over the decade, state House districts now held by Democrats lost a combined total of 87,000 people. Republican-controlled districts, on the other hand, gained nearly half a million people. Dozens of districts reflect that pattern. The clear trend is that Republican-held areas are growing, while Democratic districts are losing people.

The biggest gainer over the decade is the district of House Minority Leader Tom Cross, a Republican from Oswego. It has grown so much that it has nearly enough residents for two separate House districts. And, since there are two House districts nested in each Senate district, it could have its own senator, too. Still, there is no guarantee that Democrats will simply divide Cross’ current territory in two, especially if it means doubling the number of Republicans from that area in the Illinois House.

“The Democrats will do all they can to diminish the logical thought process … that [the suburban growth] will benefit Republicans,” Cross says. 

Representative Mike Fortner, a West Chicago Republican heavily involved with his caucus’ redistricting efforts, says Kendall and Kane counties ought to get one new House seat apiece, while Will County should get two. 

Fortner, though, worries that Democrats will divide up GOP territory to dilute new gains by Republicans. Gov. Pat Quinn recently signed a law designed to protect ethnic and language minorities from being split up, a reaction to the division of Chicago’s Chinatown under last decade’s Democratic-drawn map. Fortner says the same consideration should be applied to other communities, too. For example, he says, the city of Wheaton is now divided among four House seats.

But as Cross’ district shows, another alternative for Democrats is simply to compete in the growing areas. After all, the people Cross represents in the House are represented by Democrat Linda Holmes in the Illinois Senate. 

“It is possible that the people moving into those areas are not necessarily Republicans,” notes House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, a Chicago Democrat. The influx of Hispanics could help Democrats counter growth in Republican districts, especially in areas such as Elgin and Aurora, where Democrats have already made inroads. For example, Democratic Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia represents an Aurora-based district that is paired with Cross’ to make up Holmes’ Senate district. 

But for all the tricks and strategies that inevitably come as part of the redistricting process, the state and federal constitutions require that legislative districts represent roughly equal populations, and there is no getting around the fact that the population is moving away from the Democratic power base.

If that were not enough to keep Democratic map drawers awake at night, the erosion of population in Chicago also makes it more difficult for incumbent Democrats to hold on to their current territory. Chicago, for example, lost enough population that it reasonably could expect to lose at least one House seat and probably two. One way to protect city incumbents, of course, is to expand their districts into the suburbs. That, too, is an imperfect solution. It forces Democratic incumbents to reach out to new constituents, and often the territory they would expand into already belongs to suburban Democratic legislators.

“Demographically and in terms of mapmaking, it is a real, real challenge just to hold on to what [Democrats] have,” says Rob Paral, a Chicago-area demographer who works with various nonprofits and government agencies. For political and legal reasons, Democrats probably want to keep the same number of black-majority districts, but that, too, becomes more difficult with fewer blacks in the city, he adds.

Daniel?C. Vock is a Washington, D.C.-based writer for Stateline.org.

Illinois census data

Total population 12.8 million, 3.3 percent increase

  • White 71.5 percent, .6 percent increase
  • Hispanic* 15.8 percent, 32.5 percent increase
  • Black 14.5 percent, -.6 percent decrease
  • American Indian and Alaska native .3 percent, 41.8 percent increase
  • Asian 4.6 percent, 38.6 percent increase
  • Some other race 6.7 percent, 19.2 percent increase
  • Two or more races 2.3 percent, 23.4 percent increase

* not considered a raceSource: U.S. Census Bureau

 

Illinois Issues, May 2011

 

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