Changes

Chicagoans define themselves by neighborhood (or for Catholics, by their parish).  

Chicagoans define themselves by neighborhood (or for Catholics, by their parish).  

====Home ownership====

====Home ownership====

Concentrating the family resources to achieve home ownerships was a common strategy in the ethnic neighborhoods. It meant sacrificing current consumption, and pulling children out of school as soon as they could earn a wage. By 1900 working-class ethnics immigrants owned homes at higher rates than native-born people.  After borrowing from friends and building associations, immigrants kept boarders, grew market gardens, and even opened home-based commercial laundries, eroding home-work distinctions while sending out women and children to work to repay loans. They sought not middle class upward mobility but the security of home ownership. Many social workers wanted them to pursue upward job mobility (which required more education), but realtors asserted that houses were better than a bank for a poor man.  With hindsight, and considering uninsured banks' precariousness, this appears to have been true. Chicago's workers made immense sacrifices for home ownership, contributing to Chicago's sprawling suburban geography and to modern myths about the American dream.  The Jewish community, by contrast, rented apartments and maximized education and upward mobility for the next generation.<ref>Elaine Lewinnek, "Better than a Bank for a Poor Man? Home Financing Strategies in Early Chicago." ''Journal of Urban History'' 2006 32(2): 274-301. Issn: 0096-1442 Fulltext: [[Sage]]; see also Joseph C. Bigott, ''From Cottage to Bungalow: Houses and the Working Classes in Metropolitan Chicago, 1869-1929'' (2001) [http://www.amazon.com/Cottage-Bungalow-Metropolitan-1869-1929-Architecture/dp/0226048756/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198670620&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search] </ref>

Concentrating the family resources to achieve home ownerships was a common strategy in the ethnic neighborhoods. It meant sacrificing current consumption, and pulling children out of school as soon as they could earn a wage. By 1900 working-class ethnics immigrants owned homes at higher rates than native-born people.  After borrowing from friends and building associations, immigrants kept boarders, grew market gardens, and even opened home-based commercial laundries, eroding home-work distinctions while sending out women and children to work to repay loans. They sought not middle class upward mobility but the security of home ownership. Many social workers wanted them to pursue upward job mobility (which required more education), but realtors asserted that houses were better than a bank for a poor man.  With [[hindsight]], and considering uninsured banks' precariousness, this appears to have been true. Chicago's workers made immense sacrifices for home ownership, contributing to Chicago's sprawling suburban geography and to modern myths about the American dream.  The Jewish community, by contrast, rented apartments and maximized education and upward mobility for the next generation.<ref>Elaine Lewinnek, "Better than a Bank for a Poor Man? Home Financing Strategies in Early Chicago." ''Journal of Urban History'' 2006 32(2): 274-301. Issn: 0096-1442 Fulltext: [[Sage]]; see also Joseph C. Bigott, ''From Cottage to Bungalow: Houses and the Working Classes in Metropolitan Chicago, 1869-1929'' (2001) [http://www.amazon.com/Cottage-Bungalow-Metropolitan-1869-1929-Architecture/dp/0226048756/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198670620&sr=1-1 excerpt and text search] </ref>

===Suburbs===

===Suburbs===