TRL Mapping AP Employment on the South Side

Employment in Chicago’s South Side


Oskar Landise





For this semester I was in a class called thin red lines. We didn't really learn about geography it was more like demographics of certain things being mapped like people being affected by gun violence of hunger in a certain area.





Past


For my first map about the 1910 to 1950 employment I printed out a map of the south side and included things from the past. Some of these things I added where the stockyards of chicago which employed 40,000 people. Another thing I included was the steel mills which employed 10,000 men. The number on the maps are the different wards. I choose red because I thought it draw more attention to the viewer and shows where the main focus of the map really is. The red area mean areas of high Black employment. Notice how number 41 is not colored in at all meaning this area was low on employment compared to the others. This map stretches from navy pier to 138th street in the south side so it cover quite a lot of space. I had to draw the stockyards out of the map because it was right on the edge of it and isn't included on the printed one. one, it was the source of a lot of jobs back then.





The steel mills were also a large job source but the unions kept a lot of Black people out.





Present


The second map I made was a map of the present. This map is cut off at 79th street because there was no need to include the stockyard and the steels mills because they are no longer operational. This map shows the percentages of current joblessness in the south side the orange areas are the areas with the most joblessness. It is recorded that these areas have 60 percent to 80 percent joblessness. The yellow shaded areas show only 50 percent of 60 percent. I choose these colors because I felt like orange draws more attention than yellow and again that brings people's attention to the main areas than the other ones. It is interesting to see how the job amount went down over the years in some certain areas such as 41. This was originally not a great spot for a job now it is a lot better than some of these other nearby areas that were originally a lot better. This is a growing problem but I think it will improve over time.





Future


The final map I made was of a predicted future for the south side which could really change it for the better. The major changes needed are to create jobs by getting businesses to open and to train the local people to be able to work there.The red dots are employment training center which already exist so that could play a major role in helping people find jobs.If they started training people.





The orange strip is an enterprise zone that would be on 63rd street and would have beat cops walking around to make people feel a lot safer so businesses would move in there. This would make people life a lot easier knowing that they can shop or go to the bank or any type of daily business without having to fear the possibility of getting robbed or anything like that. I think that is what is going to make people go there for the needs have police stationed on that strip to patrol it. Also we can give the business a tax cut if they higher from that area.





The green dot is the Obama center which is going to need people to work there. Also we need people to build it so there is more jobs.The Obama center should also have internships to train young people how to work.


The blue on the map is a light industry zone right now it is just cement and fields but we could put a steel mill there and increase the amount of jobs for people in that area. The reason I choose the red sharpie for the Job training center is because I think that is the first step to completing all of this. Because if you have a good enough training center these people can pretty much get any job that is on that enterprise strip or in the steel mill.