Every six months or so it seems that there is a round of discourse on the discourse sites (Twitter/X is how I am exposed to it most of the time) about why Chicago isn't...better, or something. Or not better, almost the reverse: Why is Chicago so
Last fall, I wrote a piece I had been rolling around in my head for quite some time, about the rise and fall and rise of moderate-density apartment buildings in Chicago. It essentially made the case that a middle-ground of density—between three-flats and high-rises—had
The pantheon of Chicago architecture tends to cluster at either end of the density spectrum. In one corner you have the trophy commercial skyscrapers; in the other you have icons of domesticity, the bungalow and Chicago's answer to the East Coast rowhome, the stacked flat. But Chicago does
There's a saying about bureaucracies that you should never attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence. This is typically the axis along which explanations for dissatisfaction with local government live: Are they evil or stupid? As a recently ex-bureaucrat, one thing I tried to convey
Against Advice | The Point MagazineOne of the paradoxes of advice seems to be that those most likely to be asked for it are least likely to have taken anyone else’s: their projects of “becoming” are the most particularized of all.The Point MagazineAgnes Callard I am at a point
In a previous post, I wrote about how it's worth separating the way we fund affordable housing into two buckets: Capital subsidy, which helps the government or a mission-oriented third party buy or build a building; and rental subsidy, which makes the homes in a building extra
Moderate versus deep affordability While we (advocates, elected officials, public agency staff, and media) often speak in a binary shorthand in which all housing is either "market rate" or "affordable," anyone who has actually paid rent knows that what is "affordable" entirely depends on
For at least a year, in certain very particular corners of LinkedIn, Substack, X, and Bluesky (along with the Crain's and Tribune editorial pages), affordable housing construction costs have been a hot topic in Chicago. It's easy enough to see why: The headline numbers are pretty