Chicago zoning, housing, and transit policy
Update July 15, 2026: Mayor Johnson introduced the Protecting Renters Ordinance as number O2026-0026554 on June 29, 2026. Today, City That Works wrote about the pros and cons and potential positive and negative impacts of the proposed legislation. I’ve written twice about why Chicago should have a rental registry — first proposing a kludge using […]
BUILD fact of the day: The plan includes a middle housing component that would allow cottage clusters, courtyard buildings, and pocket neighborhoods across the state. A pocket neighborhood with 12 homes broke ground in Evanston this year. The rest of Illinois has most likely never seen one built in decades. The BUILD plan would change […]
Today the Illinois House executive committee is having a subject matter hearing about Gov. Pritzker’s BUILD plan, which was introduced to the House by Rep. Kam Buckner as HB5626. Because the oral testimony list for today’s meeting was getting too long I was asked to submit my testimony in writing instead. Thank you for inviting […]
Half of all the electricity consumed at one of the largest wastewater treatment facilities in the Midwest goes to running air blowers and pumps. That was the detail that stuck with me most from Saturday’s open house at the Terrence J. O’Brien Water Reclamation Plant at the corner of Howard Street and McCormick Boulevard in […]
This is adapted from a piece I originally wrote for the MAP Strategies blog in January 2019, when I was consulting for them. The original is gone from their site but lives on in the Wayback Machine. I’m republishing it here because the inventory is a useful snapshot of where Chicago’s co-living market stood at […]