so I know this was asked forever ago, and I’m not sure if it’s the full/only reason, but here I go anyways. (sorry in advance for the novel, hahaha)

it’s super interesting that you mention Chicago, because it’s one of the main areas of study for the research I’m about to discuss. in sociology, there is a school of research and theoretical exploration known as the “Chicago School”. they were American sociologists studying criminal deviance and social control, through the perspective of social disorganization theory - rapid social change, social integration, and spacial configuration of new cities - specifically using zones of transition.

basically, in the 1900s, things began to change rapidly in society. rural living and agriculture became less common, with huge pushes towards urbanization, city centres, and an increased urban blue and white collar labour force. not only that, but immigration changed, especially after the wars, with many people fleeing to America in search of better lives. the sociologists in the Chicago School studied how this affected criminal deviance (literally any behaviour considered to be outside “society’s norms”), and the social controls that contributed.

the spacial configuration concentric model basically boils down to this. they theorized that in these newly urbanized cities, there tended to be a trend in their general layouts. the city could essentially be represented by a target-like set of 5 circles, with each layer of the circle representing an area. (like this ).

in the middle is the central business district, followed by a light manufacturing/more blue collar business and work area, then the low quality and least expensive residential area. this area of three inner rings makes up the “inner city”. this inner city is then followed by a middle class residential area, and finally an upper class residential area on the outermost ring - the suburbs. the two zones outside the CBD, but before the middle to upper class residential areas became a “zone of transition”, as they functioned as the shift between the “work” areas and “home” areas of the city. the zones of transition also happen to be where a significant percentage of the reported criminal deviance occurred.

the zones of transition were generally where the poorest of the people lived, and there was also a higher density of people per area, as the residents of this low equality residential area couldn’t afford the land/space to spread out like people in the suburbs could. in addition, it is also the area where the highest number of new immigrants were settling. the Chicago School sociologists believe that this had a large effect on the deviance rates seen. due to language/culture barriers (and tbh, sometimes just straight up racism), often the immigrants had low rates of integration into the idealized American society of the time. if people aren’t integrated, how will they know what is the norm and what behaviours to follow? not only that, but they believed that deviance was often the product of unfulfilled aspirations. many immigrants wanted to pursue “the American dream”, but they had differently blocked opportunities compared to non-immigrants. therefore, they would resort to “criminally deviant” behaviours in their pursuit of this dream (organized crime, as one example). plus, honestly, more people packed into the area = more people available to commit crimes or engage in deviant behaviour, so obviously the rates will be higher in this area.

anyways, I think it goes without saying that the 1900s weren’t exactly the most racially tolerant of times. and since these “inner city” areas had the correlations of high crime coupled with high numbers of immigrants and people of colour living within them, the racial and criminal implications of the term kinda just stuck. it became the term to refer to that “type” of area. it’s also important to note that this was the layout of cities at the START of urbanization that lead to this term. cities now have grown like crazy, and in much different ways than they did when urbanization first began. therefore, an area may not actually be smack in the middle or anything like that, but still be referred to as “inner city” due to the implications of the historical model. like I said before, I don’t know if that’s the full reason for the continued euphemism today, but it’s the most relevant research and reasoning I’ve personally seen so far.

Edit X2: a word.... jk two words.