But this prosperity isn’t filtering down to people like Brastell Travis, a 21-year-old who lives in the city’s Englewood neighborhood. Many mainstream economists believe that it should: In theory, people who live in booming cities with a highly educated population will have more opportunities than those in rural areas because the successful workers in cities will spend money, creating jobs for less-educated people. For each new job for an educated worker in a city, five additional jobs are created for people like construction workers, waiters, and hairdressers, according to research by Enrico Moretti, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. Someone like Travis, who has lived in Chicago his whole life, just miles from this growth, should be surrounded by good job opportunities.

Travis couldn’t afford college, but he wanted a good, steady job with a solid paycheck, so he decided to become a welder like his grandmother before him. But after taking a 13-week course to get a welding certificate, Travis hasn’t been able to find a full-time job in Chicago. He’s currently piecing together two part-time jobs that both pay minimum wage. Part of the problem, he told me, is that kids that grow up in neighborhoods like his often don’t know how to apply to jobs or where to seek out help. “I think there’s not as many resources as there are in other neighborhoods,” he told me. Meanwhile, because of where he went to high school, he can’t apply for jobs in certain neighborhoods, because he could become a target of violence if he goes to the wrong areas of town, he said.

Why are large swaths of Chicago’s population unable to get ahead? There are two main reasons. The first and most obvious is the legacy of segregation that has made it difficult for poor black families to gain access to the economic activity in other parts of the city. This segregation has meant that African Americans live near worse educational opportunities and fewer jobs than other people in Chicago. City leaders in Chicago have exacerbated this segregation over the years, according to Diamond, channeling money downtown and away from the poor neighborhoods. “Public policies played a huge role in reinforcing the walls around the ghetto,” he told me.

The second factor is the disappearance of industrial jobs in factories, steel plants, and logistics companies. Half a century ago, people with little education could find good jobs in the behemoths that dotted Chicago’s south and west sides. Now, most of those factories have moved overseas or to the suburbs, and there are fewer employment opportunities here for people without much education. Chicago underscores that it’s not just white, rural Americans who have been hard hit by the disappearance of manufacturing jobs.

These two factors have compounded each other, with people stuck in segregated neighborhoods, unable to access the education or job opportunities that could help get them out. Meanwhile, the middle-class black families that once sustained neighborhoods in Chicago continue to leave for even better opportunities—Chicago lost 181,000 black residents between 2000 and 2010, most of them middle-class people who could afford to pick up and move elsewhere—which further widens the gulf between the rich and poor.