As Highland Park sits in the national spotlight, its residents want you to know a few things
CHICAGO — Highland Park, located on the North Shore of Chicago, sits between the suburbs of Highwood and Glencoe.
On the Fourth of July, after a gunman killed and wounded dozens during the holiday parade here, social media was alive with expressions of shock and grief, outpourings of sympathy and surprise at where this happened ― but also reminders that Highland Park is one of the wealthiest suburbs in America. But actually, Glencoe, to its south, is much richer. And Highwood, to its north, has a poverty rate only slightly above Chicago’s.
Comparably, Highland Park is well-off. Pretty wealthy, just not as uniform as some of the suburbs that surround Highland Park. It is a town shouldering some misconceptions — of what a Midwest suburb looks like now, and what sheltered still means.
Despite appearances and that smell of fresh-cut flowers wafting through its neighborhoods, this has never been a monolithic place. Indeed, before national media portrayed it as a gentle Mayberry, international media fixed affluent to its name and front pages somehow imagined a utopia — “Nowhere is safe,” screamed one Washington Post headline — Highland Park had long been lumped in with the rest of the North Shore. It was a nice problem to have. Trace a finger on a map, moving north from Evanston to Lake Bluff, along the Lake Michigan coast, though Winnetka, Kenilworth, Lake Forest, you pass from one manicured bedroom community to the next. Though at Highland Park, differences stand out. As a Lake Forest resident once explained to me:
“We don’t honk here. In Highland Park, they honk.”
First off, with 30,000 residents, this is not a village but a small city,
