“No, just get a few more, would you? Yeah, that's it – one of my good side, and one of my great side. Perfect.”

I wasn't there, but I can imagine that when Chaz Walters made sweet, sweet love to the camera in the photo shoot that begat his Chicago billboard omnipresence, it probably followed a similar script, only with much more product. To be quite honest, the real estate agent has been unpredictably successful, so much so that he's been able to open his own office, Hot Property. One can only wonder what would have happened he had become a commercial airline pilot, a profession whose ranks he contemplated joining prior to his auspicious beginning in real estate. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. The current temperature is 78 degrees, but it's absolutely on fire in this cockpit.”

It's easy to pick on Walters, though the ease of doing so doesn't lessen the enjoyment of the activity. By making his dreamy eyes the center of a massive billboard campaign, though, he's taken on other responsibilities. Inherent to the success of his quest to make his face synonymous with real estate in Chicago are certain responsibilities. One of these is that he'll immediately be the poster boy for all the criticism of his industry.

While some have pointed to the revitalization of many existing Chicago neighborhoods as a sign of economic strength and vitality, there exists a strong counter-argument to such an opinion. To make expensive homes into economically sound investments, the neighborhood has to support such prices by changing. When an expensive building is built in a traditionally less expensive neighborhood, it is often followed by neighborhood destabilization. Rent prices rise, more expensive buildings are built, and slowly but surely, what once was an affordable neighborhood is transformed into another Lincoln Park or Lakeview.

So, what happens to those who are moved by the new influx of capital? It seems easy to say that they can simply move to another part of the city, or even another city. But, as the “neighborhood revitalization” process continues, the choices grow fewer and less attractive. It's been suggested that this process will stop only when the city is fully and completely gentrified, a word that often carries with it an unfair connotation. Here, though, such a connotation seems just. Though it may not be the goal of developers and the city officials who subsidize their involvement to move those of lower economic classes to areas outside the city, where they can be forgotten about, that is the result. The rich move in, the businesses that cater to the rich move in, and the poor are moved out. It's a far less pretty picture than any ever taken of Walters, I'm sure.

It may not seem fair to criticize Hot Property (I get tingly every time I type it) for catering to the wealthy. But speaking from an admittedly biased perspective, it seems obvious that those who contribute to the decimation of the character of Chicago deserve the vitriol. Chicago , at one time, was a city that defied the typical structure of cities of great size in how individual neighborhoods, indistinguishable except to those who lived there, each possessed their own character, with distinct merits and faults. As the landscape of the city changes, it seems only fair to blame all those who hasten the “revitalization” of neighborhoods in such a way that the process weakens the character of the city, even if the target of such criticism happens to be able to melt hearts with a simple glance.

Yes, it's obnoxious, self-aggrandizing, and occasionally nauseating. But, there's one thing about Chaz Walters' ad campaign that cannot be denied: It's incredibly successful. So successful, in fact, that he can hardly hear you laughing at him from all the way under his immense piles of money. With average annual gross sales of around $250 million, Walters can afford to ignore the criticism, even if it may be justified.

The real estate business in Chicago is remarkably cutthroat, and the staggering number of agents that are available to sellers and buyers of home make the prospects of succeeding in the business grim. In order to be noticed, in order to stand out, an agent needs to make himself known to his prospective clients, and make sure that when the time comes that they might need his service, they remember. Years after starting his billboard campaign, Walters is remembered.

On the issue of gentrification, it not only seems unfair to pin the “problem” on Walters, it is just simply unfair. To infer that he is either somehow responsible for moving people out of their homes or is the figurehead of neighborhood revitalization is patently unjust. It's obvious that Walters tends to represent wealthier clients, and the prices of the properties he's selling reflect his clients, not his preferences.

It also doesn't seem fair to characterize neighborhood revitalization in such a negative light. There are a great deal of benefits to rehabbing older homes and building new ones. Neighborhoods mutate over time, and to bemoan this fact is both counter-productive and ignorant to the intricacies of progress. When groups of people decide to move in to a neighborhood, they hope to engage in a relationship with that neighborhood that will benefit both parties. The people will begin to take on some of the characteristics of the neighborhood, and the neighborhood will do the same. If the people prefer Borders and Whole Foods, those companies will open stores in the neighborhood. No one moves into a neighborhood with the expressed intention of slowly weeding out the long-time residents.

The aims of revitalization are far less dismal than they are often portrayed, which is to take a neighborhood in decline and make subtle changes that reverse this trend without removing the character of the neighborhood or the people who've given the neighborhood its character. It's true that this scenario doesn't always play out in the form just described, but to simply focus on the negative without even glimpsing at the positive is myopic. Neighborhoods can change, without such change being destructive, and real estate agents can make money without being referenced as the evil, beautiful genius behind the curtain.