<p>Sorry, but memake’s post seems very out of date, too, just like most of the information about Hyde Park pollutioncontrol has been spamming the past few weeks. Yes, the areas west of the campus and (to a much lesser extent) south of the campus are not places students walk or bike much. And, guess what?, there isn’t a whole lot there that is worth walking or biking to. The area west of Washington Park to the Dan Ryan is very significantly depopulated – lots of vacant lots and empty houses. That makes it unpleasant and maybe dangerous, but you’re not missing much if you avoid it. And there’s a half-mile-wide park between the U of C campus and that neighborhood, so it doesn’t impinge on anyone’s consciousness much unless they take the bus to Midway or the Red Line. The Woodlawn neighborhood south of the campus is a different story – lots of grad students live in the blocks close to campus, and there are things going on. </p>
<p>To the north of campus, you can walk miles before you see any sign of urban blight, and at this point there has been so much gentrification and redevelopment that there is no monolithic “bad” neighborhood between Hyde Park/Kenwood and the South Loop (as there certainly was in the not-so-distant past). Hyde Park IS isolated from the more vibrant, happening parts of northside Chicago and the Loop, mainly by distance, but it’s not some fortress under siege.</p>
<p>And, contra to memake’s experience, the current generation of University of Chicago students is much more involved with the surrounding community and with Chicago as a whole. Lots of service projects in Kenwood and Woodlawn, and lots of travel to other parts of the city.</p>
<p>I do agree with memake, though, that Yale and Chicago and their urban issues feel completely different from one another. Yale and Downtown New Haven are inseparable from one another, and increasingly New Haven is a company town with Yale as the company. Hyde Park is a backwater in Chicago, a sleepy, green residential neighborhood with very little hustle and bustle. And of course Chicago itself is a world class city, with tons of culture, high and low, many ethnic communities, fabulous architecture, millions of people, while New Haven has . . . not much of that outside of Yale.</p>