Urban planning enthusiasts in Chicago will enjoy the ongoing observations and commentary at West North. Recently thought provoking is this post about a community group's response to a proposed development in Wicker Park. We've seen similar development-related activity in my neighborhood--some good, some not so good--and the community response. There are lots of opinions to have about this issue, but it's also instructive to watch who's doing the talking. This sentence in particular sounded familiar to me:

I find it profoundly undemocratic that thirty four self selected individuals, almost uniformly white and middle aged, can claim to have definitively spoken on behalf of a neighborhood with 15,000 residents.

During a local meeting about gentrification last year, I noticed a similar dynamic and found it troubling. A very limited group was making decisions that were going to affect a large number of people who weren't being represented. But how to get the immigrant shopkeepers, the hipster kids, and the stroller-pushing set involved in these groups, much less to participate in such discussions? Or are they all killing time before they exeunt to the suburbs? It's certainly an uphill battle and while such community groups are certainly well intentioned, I am not deluded that that their voices are representative. They're just louder than anyone else.