Frequently Asked Questions
Curious about things like “What’s an ADU?”, “What ward am I in?”, or even “What is Strong Towns Chicago?”
This page answers common questions and explains the key terms you’ll come across in our work. We’ve organized everything by topic so you can easily find what you’re looking for.
Common Questions
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Strong Towns is a national nonprofit that seeks “to replace America’s postwar pattern of development, the Suburban Experiment, with a pattern of development that is financially strong and resilient.” Strong Towns focuses on locally-driven, bottom-up change to make our places strong, more livable, and more prosperous.
Strong Towns advocates for a simple 4-step process to improving our cities:
Humbly observe where people in the community struggle.
Ask the question: What is the next smallest thing we can do right now to address that struggle?
Do that thing. Do it right now.
Repeat.
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Strong Towns Chicago is an independent Illinois-based nonprofit organization and Local Conversation affiliated with the national Strong Towns movement. Strong Towns Chicago works to promote abundant housing, safe streets, and effective transportation in Chicago through incremental, grassroots action.
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Strong Towns Chicago advocates for policy reforms (like the successful July 2025 removal of parking mandates and September 2025 ADU ordinance), runs initiatives (like the "Level Up Chicago" campaign to re-legalize 2-4 flats citywide), and organizes regular events in neighborhoods throughout Chicago. Members testify at City Council hearings, organize walking tours, host educational workshops, and build coalitions with organizations like Abundant Housing Illinois and Better Streets Chicago.
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Join our Slack, get our newsletter, follow us on social media, read recent news, or attend an event.
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Find your ward and alderperson and sign up for your ward’s newsletter (as alders will often comment on issues in their newsletter). You can also directly reach out to the ward office to ask staff on the alderperson’s positions.
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Strong Towns Local Conversations are local chapters of Strong Towns. They are “completely initiated and managed by people who want to talk Strong Towns in their community”. Local Conversations are rooted in their place and are focused on making their cities better, more livable places. They are not controlled or directed by the national Strong Towns movement.
Chicago Government & Politics Terms
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An alderperson is an elected representative for one of Chicago's 50 wards, serving a four-year term. Alderpersons collectively form the Chicago City Council and each represents approximately 55,000 residents. They vote on ordinances, approve the city budget, oversee city operations, and maintain ward offices that provide city services to their constituents. Alderpersons wield significant power over development, zoning, permits, and licenses in their ward. Because of those powers, alders play an outsized role in housing development and walkability in their wards. Alders are often more accessible than you might expect. Most hold regular community meetings, respond to emails, send out weekly newsletters, and maintain an active social media presence. Strong Towns Chicago encourages members to advocate for specific projects by attending ward meetings and contacting their alderperson's office directly.
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Aldermanic prerogative is an unwritten practice that gives alderpersons extraordinary control over ward-level decisions. Other alders traditionally defer to the local alderperson on matters affecting their ward. This means your alderperson has effective veto power over zoning changes, development projects, and permits in your neighborhood.
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The Aldermanic Menu program is a city program through which each Chicago alderperson gets $1.5 million annually to spend on infrastructure projects in their wards. This spending is done at the discretion of the local alder and can be utilized to influence the walkability and street safety of a neighborhood.
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The Chicago City Council is Chicago's legislative body that consists of all 50 alderpersons plus the Mayor (who chairs meetings and votes only to break ties). The entire City Council generally meets once a month at City Hall (121 N. LaSalle St.), while Council committees tend to meet more frequently.
Track legislation and follow City Council events at chicago.councilmatic.org, a searchable database of all Council activity.
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Chicago is divided geographically into 50 wards, each represented by one alderperson. Ward boundaries often don't align with neighborhood boundaries. Many neighborhoods span multiple wards, and some wards contain parts of several neighborhoods.
Housing, Zoning, and Regulatory Terms
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A 2-4 flat is a building containing two, three, or four separate apartments, typically arranged vertically with one unit per floor. These are a classic Chicago building type that define many residential neighborhoods across the city. Built primarily from 1900 to 1920, 2-4 flats make up one-fourth of Chicago's total housing stock and one-third of all units renting below $900/month. 2- to 4-unit properties are the most likely to have lower rents and family-sized units. These properties were once the backbone of accessible, affordable housing in Chicago, but zoning changes in 1923, 1944, 1957, and 2004 effectively banned new construction of these buildings in much of Chicago. Strong Towns Chicago's "Level Up Chicago" initiative advocates for re-legalizing 2-4 flats citywide to restore the traditional development pattern that made Chicago affordable.
Sign the 4-Flats by Right petition to express your support for re-legalizing this core Chicago housing type.
Download the 4-Flats by Right packet
See our article Chicago Banned Its Traditional Affordable Housing—Let’s Fix That for more information on the history of 2-4 flats in Chicago.
Watch the Stewart Hicks video on “Why Can’t American Cities Build 3-Flats Anymore?”
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An Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) is a secondary unit of housing on a property with a primary residence. ADUs can be a detached coach house in the backyard or an attached unit within the existing building. What is now termed an ADU was a core part of the traditional development pattern and historically had formed a significant portion of Chicago’s accessible, affordable housing stock. Zoning changes in 1957 effectively made ADUs illegal, but in 2021, the City launched a pilot program allowing ADU construction in 5 areas. On September 25, 2025, the Chicago City Council passed an ADU ordinance that allowed ADU construction in additional parts of the city (with some caveats). Strong Towns Chicago advises residents to contact their alderperson and encourage them to allow ADU construction in their ward with the fewest restrictions possible.
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By-right development refers to development that “is permitted on a particular piece of land under the existing local regulations” “without having to go through an arduous or contentious rezoning process”. Strong Towns Chicago advocates for changing Chicago zoning laws to allow incremental development by-right and to allow the construction of 2-4 flats by-right across Chicago.
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A coach house is a secondary building located in the backyard behind the main house, historically used to store horses, carriages, and equipment in the pre-automobile era. After cars replaced horses, many coach houses were converted to garages with apartments above. Chicago has nearly 2,000 miles of alleys and coach houses were built to face these alleys. In 1957, Chicago banned new coach house construction as residential units due to overcrowding fears, though about 2,400 existing coach houses remain. The 2025 ADU ordinance re-legalized coach houses, but added onerous labor requirements that will make them more expensive to build.
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Non-conforming use is a term indicating that an existing building would not be legal to build within current zoning rules. In Chicago, most surviving 2-to-4-flats today are deemed legal non-conforming based on the downzoned lots they sit on. They cannot be rebuilt or substantially renovated as anything other than a single-family home.
See Chicago’s Certificate of Zoning Compliance page that explains what non-conforming use is
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Parking minimums are government mandated requirements that force businesses and residences to be built with a mandatory number of parking spaces. These requirements are often arbitrary and disconnected from the needs and wants of residents and local businesses. Parking minimums hurt local businesses, lead to less housing being built, and rob cities of the tax funds they’d get from more productive use of the land that mandatory parking occupies. Eliminating parking minimums would allow local businesses to build the amount of parking that their business actually needs. Strong Towns Chicago has advocated for the removal of parking minimums in Chicago and in July 2025, the Chicago City Council unanimously voted to enact major parking reforms.
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Upzoning refers to a locality changing the zoning rules for an area to allow for building more densely and for building more housing. Strong Towns Chicago has advocated for several upzoning projects, with a notable win in Edgewater & Uptown in 2025.