Chicago

“The best U.S. mayor was in Soacha,” certain headlines stated this past week. Richard M. Daley, who was Mayor of Chicago for 22 years, visited Colombia for a conference on city safety. Daley pointed out the significance of technology and emphasized the importance of supervising citizens. “We even put cameras in helicopters to monitor from the air. We also put them in parks and public places where people couldn’t see them,” Daley stated.*

In addition to talking about urban security, the Democratic veteran visited the Ciudad Verde (Green City) project during his visit. Daley only had praise for the immense residential complex, which will generate 32 thousand social housing units by the end of 2016, and which exemplifies the government’s policy of “macroprojects” – the development of major housing programs in city peripherals.

It’s interesting to hear Daley talk about his triumphs in lowering crime rates and beautifying public spaces. No one doubts it, but it might have been more interesting to ask him about his failures, in particular, and taking into account the visit to Ciudad Verde, his failures in social housing. Despite its government, Chicago is still, in many ways, the racially segregated city of his father, Richard J. Daley, who served the city as mayor for 21 years; a city in which the insufficient social housing projects ensure that poor blacks are invisible to whites.

In Bogotá, now that the location of affordable housing is being discussed, it would be fitting to ask Daley about the effects that isolating social housing projects had on Chicago; the interests that block the renovation of certain sectors due to fears that they will “damage” the neighborhood and the social consequences of demolishing old and segregated residential complexes that were considered “criminal hotspots.”

*Editor’s Note: The quote could not be verified.