The No. 1 most violent Chicago neighborhood is Austin

[VIDEO] We've reached No. 1 which is the west side's Austin neighborhood or community area. As Vic Maggio writes in the description for this vid posted March 17, 2018:

The Austin Neighborhood has the largest land area and population out of all the other top ten neighborhoods.

Austin's far Northwestern edge is Galewood, it was once a large Italian neighborhood. North Austin and South Austin Is the largest neighborhood in Austin, North Austin is a smaller area. North Austin and South Austin are very violent areas these two areas account for 90% of all the shootings and crime in Austin.

The Island a square mile in the extreme southwest corner of Austin, which is isolated by the Eisenhower Expressway and Columbus Park.

The racial makeup of the community is 84% Black, 10% Hispanic, and 4% White, the population was at its height in the 1980s at around 140.000, by 2015 the population seen a dramatic decrease to 97.000. Due to poverty, crime and gang violence this neighborhood lost over 40.000 residents over the past 35-years.

This year in the Austin Neighborhood, 461 people have been shot and, 83, have been killed and 384 have been wounded. These stats rank Austin at number 1, on the 2017 list of the most Violent neighborhoods in Chicago

And here's a map of Austin

No. 3 Most violent neighborhood North Lawndale

[VIDEO] The third most violent of Chicago's 77 neighorhoods err community areas is North Lawndale on Chicago's west side. Here's what Maggio writes about North Lawndale in this video posted to YouTube on February 24, 2018.

The North Lawndale Neighborhood was one of the oldest Jewish communities in Chicago. the neighborhood was home to mega businesses like: International Harvester, Sears, Zenith, Sunbeam, Western Electric. The area was also home to Martin Luther King, Jrs., base for the northern civil rights movement.

  The neighborhood has fallen into hard economic times since its heyday of the 1950s. Gangs, guns and drugs have turned this community on its head and has become a very dangerous neighborhood to live in today. The area is full of leveled blocks where businesses and homes once stood, these blocks are reminders of a once economically prosperous neighborhood. Neighborhoods like North Lawndale are under siege and are presently in a struggle for the hearts and souls of the residents.

This is a very sad struggle to witness on a regular basis, it is truly damaging to the heart and soul. I still hold out hope for all of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods, but in the end, it is up to the residents to make final decision on the future direction of their neighborhood.

UPDATE: This year [2017?] in the North Lawndale neighborhood, 253, people have been shot and, 41, have been killed and 212, have been wounded. These stats rank North Lawndale at number 3 on the 2017 list of the most Violent neighborhoods in Chicago.

Here's a map of North Lawndale

Capitol Fax: Austin is no longer the city’s largest neighborhood

I'm sharing a direct tweet to an article about Austin losing its designation as Chicago's most populous neighborhood - though remaining the largest community area geographically.

Austin's population has dropped dramatically as retaliatory gang violence persists https://t.co/fPIxIjoMeJ pic.twitter.com/b6bOfrT6uQ

— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) July 17, 2017

According to the Tribune article shared over at the Capitol Fax it loses this designation to the north side Lakeview neighborhood:

Home to nearly 118,000 people in 2000, Austin has seen its population drop to 97,600, according to an average of census data collected between 2011 and 2015. It has been overtaken by the North Side's Lakeview neighborhood, whose population has remained steady since the 1980s and currently has about 98,200 residents.

Now the reasons Austin is losing population is not much different than a number of neighborhoods on the south side or even the west side. Better yet not much different than why many are leaving Chicago, period.

In a neighborhood as large as Austin, each block can be its own world.

The tree-lined ones, with restored Victorian homes or brick two-flats and kids playing in polished gardens, are what residents call good blocks. They're free of the shootings and drug deals that plague others. But those other blocks, dotted with boarded-up houses and vacant lots with overgrown weeds, are often down the street or around the corner.

Austin is the city's largest community area geographically, and was the most populated for 45 years. But as the West Side neighborhood's gun violence has increased, so too has families' realization that at any moment the shootings can creep into their blocks — even the good blocks. Austin's residents are leaving, with some saying goodbye to the place they've called home their entire lives.
...
Chicago's violence is at its highest since the drug wars of the 1990s, and Austin is center stage to many of the shootings and homicides: As of July 13, there were 258 shootings in the area in 2017 and 44 homicides, according to Tribune data. More than 1,900 people have been shot in Chicago so far this year.

The city as a whole is losing residents, and Chicago last year was the only city of the country's 10 largest to lose population. Residents who've packed up and left Chicago have cited a variety of reasons — high taxes, the state budget stalemate and the weather.

Those in Austin have a different list of concerns. More than 30 percent live in poverty. Storefronts are shuttered, and grocery stores are few and far between. The neighborhood high schools that remain open are under-resourced.

But in a neighborhood where retaliatory shootings mean unending violence, many residents say safety is the biggest issue.

Of course there is more to this story so I suggest you give this a read. And check out the video with the Trib article. If only many of us has signs like this to rep our neighborhoods. For example I <3 Chatham or I <3 Roseland or I <3 Englewood.

The decline of Black Chicago

Chicago Mag illustration Richard Mia

 Another piece courtesy of Chicago Magazine on the decline of Black Chicago:

Since the early ’80s, blacks in South and West Side neighborhoods have been steadily leaving the city, resettling at first largely in the Cook County suburbs. But over the past 15 years, more and more have been leaving the area entirely for northwest Indiana, Iowa’s Quad Cities, and Sun Belt states, says Alden Loury, the director of research and evaluation at the Metropolitan Planning Council. Today there are roughly 850,000 blacks in Chicago, down from 1.2 million in 1980.

The reasons for this are varied: The foreclosure crisis saw blacks evicted disproportionately from their rental apartments and houses; the Chicago Housing Authority leveled high-rises like the Robert Taylor Homes, scattering public housing residents; the lack of stable employment in South and West Side neighborhoods continues to force residents to look elsewhere for jobs; and school closures further disenfranchise communities. “There are not a lot of messages that Chicago cares about its black residents,” says Mary Pattillo, a sociology and African American studies professor at Northwestern University and author of the book Black Picket Fences. “When you lose the institutions that cultivate attachment, it makes it a lot easier to pick up and leave.”

How does Chicago send the message that the city cares about its Black residents?

BTW, feel free to share the article here's a tweet from @chicagomag

Today’s most-read story: The Real Problem with Chicago's Shrinking Population https://t.co/JEVokZHtIS pic.twitter.com/AXOFYvXdMn

— Chicago magazine (@ChicagoMag) May 9, 2017