February Updates
Lots of updates and ways to get involved in the upcoming days. Links in the descriptions below!
Upcoming Events
February Planning Commission (2/20 at 10am at City Hall)
The plan to upzone Broadway is facing fierce resistance from local neighbors, but these views don’t represent the majority opinion. Attend the February plan commission tomorrow to give public comment in support of the upzoning! Your testimony is especially important if you live in the affected 46th, 47th, and 48th wards. Read the letter of support we co-signed with Abundant Housing Illinois (AHI) here.
Loneliness Epidemic Watch Party (2/25 at 5:30pm in Pilsen)
Eventbrite here! Join us for a watch party to discuss ways our neighborhoods are making us lonely </3
Transit Task Force Meeting (2/26 at 6pm CST, held Virtually)
This will be a virtual meeting led by transit-task-force lead, Cori Dahl. This will be an opportunity for members to brainstorm ways to improve transit efficacy and fiscal solvency for 2025. This is especially topical with the federal government evaluating federal building projects. No eventbrite link for this one.
(Side note: We also encourage members to virtually attend Chicago Transit Board meetings! The next one is 3/12/25 at 10am. The last one was very informative on the various funding sources of Chicago’s transit).
Panel On Building Missing 2-4 Flats In The City (3/11 at 6pm In The Loop)
Eventbrite here! Join us for a panel on building and design challenges in Chicago. Panelists include Nick Serra of Fulton Grace Realty and Katherine Darnstadt of Latent Design Architecture. It will be moderated by Strong Towns’ Chicago and AHI member Steven Vance!
Book Club (3/8 at 11am, Location TBD)
This month’s book is Fire on the Prairie by Gary Rivlin. It’s a bit longer, so no worries if you don’t finish the entire thing on time. Join the #books slack to confirm the location, which is TBD.
Strong Towns Chairperson Alex Montero hosted Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi On The Strong Towns Chicago Podcast.
Updates
We hosted our first members happy hour at Graystone Tavern in Wrigleyville! After navigating some potential awkwardness with the original event space being too small, the event was a great success! Keep your eyes peeled for the next one
We released another Strong Towns Chicago podcast. This episode’s guest was Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi. It’s a very informative listen on how property taxes work in the county and the actions Kaegi’s office has taken to reduce regressivity in tax assessments. Listen here!
Aldermen Matt Martin and Andre Vasquez were featured on the Strong Towns National podcast, Upzoned. This was made possible by local members putting the alders in touch with the national organization! In this episode, Matt and Andre discuss the community process that went into the upzoning and the unique challenges of broad upzoning initiatives in Chicago.
We launched a new slack channel, #vacancy-taxes, to assess the feasibility of implementing vacancy taxes in high-demand Chicago neighborhoods. If you’re interested in advocating for this, join us in the slack!
Strong Towns National published Chloe Groome’s essay on how Chicago can best develop the land around the United Center to support walkability, transit, and increase our tax base.
Around 50 people attended the inaugural Strong Towns Happy Hour!
In The News
Alderman Hopkins announced his support for 349 (70 affordable) new homes in Old Town! While this was a reduction from the original 500 proposed homes, this is still a win that wouldn’t have been possible without advocates showing up in person to show their support.
We lost an urban planning visionary in Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking. His analysis of how cities manage - or mismanage - parking allotment demonstrated how communities had rendered themselves overly reliant on driving. He gave us the ability to see what was so fundamentally broken about our communities but previously did not have the language to articulate.
Dorval Carter announced his retirement in January. Carter was praised for his fundraising ability, (recently securing $1.9 billion in federal funding for the Red Line Extension project), but criticized for day-to-day management including hiring and transit reliability. In choosing a successor, Strong Towns Chicago advocates that the city selects a CTA chief that will prioritize transit efficacy, transparency, and accountability. More details here.
Hot off the press! City hall just today rejected a proposal to lower the speed limit from 30 to 25. Strong Towns is disappointed in this decision and urges members to email alders that voted “No”. A slower speed limit would make our streets safer for all residents.
Voting records on today’s speed limit ordinance. The voting software failed to capture the votes of aldermen 03-Dowell (No), 04-Robinson (Yes), 05-Yancy (No), 42-Reilly (Absent)
As always, be sure to join us on our email list, Slack, Instagram, and BlueSky if you’re not already!
-Aaron Feldman, Strong Towns Chicago Secretary
