A Typology of Mansionization in the Inner-Ring Suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, 2000–2015

ABSTRACT

Mansionization—the process in which original single-family houses are demolished and replaced with larger houses—in the older inner-ring suburbs of U.S. cities is a contentious and important driver of physical, social, and economic neighborhood change, yet little is known about how the mansionization process varies across the diverse inner-ring suburban landscape. With a focus on the inner-ring suburbs of Chicago located in Cook County, Illinois, this study presents a typology of mansionization based upon the housing, population, and household characteristics; economic status; and race and ethnicity of the neighborhoods in which mansionization occurs. Principal components analysis followed by cluster analysis are used to identify five distinct types of mansionization in the inner-ring suburbs of Chicago: highly affluent, upper middle class, postwar ethnoburb, white middle class, and diverse working class. Although mansionization is often perceived as a single process, findings reveal that it occurs in a variety of places and manifests in a variety of ways. The regulatory approaches of municipalities with differing types of suburban mansionization are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• mansionization
• inner-ring suburbs
• redevelopment
• single-family housing

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the editor of Housing Policy Debate and three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments as well as the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell University for their generous support of this research project.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The issuance of a Cook County Department of Environmental Control (CCDEC) demolition permit alone is an imprecise indicator of mansionization, since a property owner may obtain a CCDEC demolition permit but then never demolish and rebuild a house. To overcome this issue, mansionization was determined to have occurred if both a whole-house CCDEC demolition permit was issued and an increase in house floor area of at least 100 square feet was recorded with the Cook County Assessor’s Office (CCAO) between 2000 and 2015. The square footage increase threshold was used to ensure that houses for which a CCDEC demolition permit was issued were in fact demolished and subsequently replaced. The CCAO database was missing square footages in 2000 for 1,001 (13.5%) of the 7,403 properties for which a CCDEC demolition permit was issued. These properties were determined to be an instance of mansionization if the age of the house listed in the online CCAO database in 2015 indicated that it was built after 2000.

2. The original house square footage and new to original house square footage ratio was calculated for all houses for which a square footage was reported to the CCAO (i.e., 91% of all observations of postwar ethnoburb mansionization). The average new house square footage reported is calculated using all observations of this type.

3. The original house square footage and new to original house square footage ratio was calculated for all houses for which a square footage was reported to the CCAO (i.e., 75% of all observations of white middle-class mansionization). The average new house square footage reports is calculated using all observations of this type.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute for the Social Sciences, Cornell University [Small Grants Program].

Notes on contributors

Suzanne Lanyi Charles

Suzanne Lanyi Charles is an assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Baker Program in Real Estate at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. She teaches and conducts research in the areas of redevelopment and neighborhood change in U.S. suburbs.