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Garbage in New York, that was like a controlled substance.

We show you how money influences everything.

Tell me what you like by telling me how you spend your money.

And we dig until we get answers.

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is listen. The Planet Money podcast from NPR. It's Curious City, where we take your questions about

Chicago and the region, and investigate, report, explore from WBEZ.

I'm reporter Robert Lower Zell.

If you drive in the Chicago area, you've probably been stuck in traffic on the Eisenhower Expressway.

Jillian Zarlinga sure has.

She lives in Oak Park, and she used to sit in traffic jams back when she commuted to a job as a chaplain at Elmhurst Hospital.

I had a lot of time sitting on the Eisenhower, examining this huge area of land, thinking there must have been a lot of people that lived here before, and I was just curious where they all went.

To answer Gillian's question, I'll take you through neighborhoods and suburbs

that were transformed or even torn apart by the Eisenhower back when it was constructed between

1949 and 1961. We'll go from east to west along the Ike, which runs almost due west,

from the loop out to Oak Park and beyond. As we dig in, here are things to

keep in mind. First, the scale was massive. Within the city, 13,000 people and more than 400

businesses were forced to move. Interestingly, Chicago's west side was not predominantly African American like it is today.

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