9-Aug-18 – The pros and cons of gentrification, and a first-ever youth soapbox, took center stage at this year’s Bughouse Square Debates.

Outside Newberry Library, in Washington Square Park, DePaul University geography professor Winifred Curran duked it out with south side developer Ghian Foreman on whether low-income Chicagoans need to be driven out of their homes to save a neighborhood.

The point of gentrification is to raise property values, said Curran, not the living standards of the people being forced out. To combat this, she called for strategies to save neighborhoods without wholesale displacement of residents.

“Gentrification is a decision we make, it’s not inevitable,” she said. “Gentrification is great for the buildings, but it’s not necessarily good for the people who get displaced.”

Calling himself a gentrifier committed to saving neighborhoods as well as residents, Foreman said gentrification is the only way minority communities can get resources.

“It’s not right,” he said, “but it’s the most efficient way to get needed resources right now.”

The difference between him and other gentrifiers, said Foreman, is his desire to become a part of any neighborhood he redevelops – and do all he can to help people who already live there make the leap into the middle and upper-middle class.

Following other debates on topics such as “casinos for humanity” and an argument for making Cook County a separate state, a soapbox area was set up for younger speakers, for the first time in the open-air forum’s history. Topics included immigration, the environment, gun control, prison reform, and plans for Buffalo Grove’s first Gay Pride parade next year.

(Left) Noor Mryan, a sophomore on her high school debate team, speaks out against bigotry and for minorities embracing their differences. Photo by Sarah Matheson.

The Bughouse Square Debates have been sponsored by Newberry Library since 1986 but Washington Square Park has been a public forum since the 1920s, often attracting fringe viewpoints in its more raucous past.