Special Topics

Students from the University of New Mexico (UNM) Community and Regional Planning Capstone Studio visited the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) to host a discussion on the history, development, and community impacts of Historic Route 66—the U.S.’s first paved highway stretching from Chicago to Santa Monica, California. Led by Professor Moises Gonzales, the studio shared their examination of Route 66’s legacy and presented a vision plan outlining strategies for preservation, revitalization, and future development along this iconic corridor.

This video introduces the Reempresa model from Catalonia, Spain, a public-private partnership that connects retiring small business owners with aspiring entrepreneurs to ensure business continuity and preserve local jobs. Through a streamlined, supported transfer process, Reempresa has helped save thousands of businesses and over 30,000 jobs. This session, hosted by Manufacturing Renaissance and UIC’s Great Cities Institute, explores how the model works and what it could mean for succession planning and inclusive economic development in the U.S. Topics covered include: 1) Business succession as an economic crisis and opportunity; 2) How Reempresa supports both sellers and buyers; and 3) Lessons for adapting the model in places like Chicago

In this powerful and deeply personal lecture, Dr. Stephen Small (University of California, Berkeley) explores the complex racial history of Liverpool—Britain’s “Second City of Empire”—and the ways in which its unique political, economic, and imperial past have shaped Black identity, inequality, and resistance. Dr. Small draws from his forthcoming book Black Liverpool to examine how the city’s legacy of slavery, imperial trade with West Africa, and long-standing Black population gave rise to multigenerational communities, interracial families, and deeply rooted forms of racial oppression and how those conditions sparked equally enduring forms of resistance and cultural expression. Dr. Small makes a compelling case for why understanding Liverpool is essential to understanding Black Britain.

This powerful talk by renowned scholar and activist Dr. Jane Caputi, Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University, explores the deep connections between environmental justice, ecofeminism, and the symbolic and material treatment of Mother Earth in the Anthropocene—the so-called “Age of Man.” With insight, urgency, and a spirit of resistance, Dr. Caputi critiques the patriarchal, racialized, and extractive ideologies that frame dominant narratives of human mastery over nature. Drawing from indigenous knowledge systems, feminist theory, pop culture, and environmental justice movements, she reclaims the figure of Mother Earth not as folklore, but as a living, sacred force that demands respect, reciprocity, and recognition.

This special event examines Chicago’s 2023 mayoral race through the legacy of Harold Washington’s historic multiracial coalition. Moderated by journalist and author Juan González, the panel brings together scholars Jakobi Williams, Lilia Fernández, and Gordon Mantler to discuss the political movements, racial solidarities, and organizing strategies that shaped Washington’s rise and continue to inform contemporary Chicago politics. The conversation traces connections among the Black Panther Party, Young Lords, Latino electoral organizing, and progressive coalition-building, while asking what lessons these histories offer for current struggles around race, class, political power, voter mobilization, and democratic governance in the city.

This special event features a conversation with John Hagedorn on his book Gangs on Trial, examining how stereotypes, dehumanizing language, and racialized assumptions shape gang-related prosecutions and sentencing. Drawing from decades of ethnographic research and expert witness work, Hagedorn challenges dominant portrayals of gang members as inherently violent or less than human. He argues that courts often rely on fear, stigma, and simplified narratives rather than fuller social context. The discussion highlights the need to humanize justice, confront mass incarceration, and understand gang involvement through structural conditions, lived experience, and community realities rather than demonization.

This special event examines the intersection of global health, climate justice, and COVID-19, highlighting how environmental disruption, racial inequity, and public health crises are deeply connected. Featuring keynote speaker Jonathan Patz and a multidisciplinary panel, the discussion explores how habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, and unequal exposure to environmental harms contribute to disease emergence and health disparities. Panelists connect global patterns to local struggles in Chicago, including environmental injustice in Little Village, fossil fuel pollution, water infrastructure, and community resilience. Together, the event calls for transformative change rooted in equity, sustainability, public health, and community-led solutions.

Graeme Stewart, Associate at ERA Architects, discusses Toronto’s Tower Neighbourhood Renewal initiative and its efforts to reimagine aging high-rise apartment communities as assets for urban regeneration. Focusing on Toronto’s extensive postwar tower landscapes, Stewart explores how these buildings and surrounding open spaces can support more complete, equitable, and sustainable neighborhoods. The presentation examines strategies such as building retrofits, improved public spaces, community services, local food access, mixed-use zoning, and new development models. By reframing tower neighborhoods as places of opportunity rather than decline, the talk highlights design, policy, and community-based approaches to suburban transformation.

CMAP Principal Planner Erin Aleman presents the Fund 2040 proposal, a regional strategy to create dedicated funding for prioritized infrastructure investments across northeastern Illinois. The proposal emphasizes the need for the Chicago region to invest in itself as state and federal resources become increasingly limited. Aleman discusses how targeted investments in transportation, transit, freight, bicycle and pedestrian networks, parks, open space, water, and stormwater infrastructure can advance quality of life, economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, and efficient governance. By using performance-based criteria, Fund 2040 seeks to support projects that address regional needs while leveraging additional public investment for future growth regionally.

Teresa Córdova and Susan Christopherson examine the planning, economic, environmental, and community impacts of gas and oil shale fracking, with attention to the Bakken Formation and other major extraction sites. The discussion explores how rapid hydraulic fracturing has transformed communities through boomtown growth, housing shortages, infrastructure strain, truck and rail traffic, environmental risk, and uneven economic benefits. Córdova highlights local planning challenges in western North Dakota, while Christopherson situates fracking within broader national industrial systems, investment decisions, and transportation networks. Together, they raise critical questions about regulation, public costs, environmental safety, and community authority over development.

Josh Lerner, Executive Director of the Participatory Budgeting Project, explores how games and game design can make public participation more engaging, effective, and democratic. Drawing from his book Making Democracy Fun and examples from North and South America, Lerner shows how game techniques have been used in children’s councils, social service programs, community planning, and participatory budgeting. Through stories from Argentina and beyond, he argues that clear rules, meaningful conflict, measurable outcomes, and well-designed participation can help residents better understand complex decisions, collaborate across differences, and shape public programs in more transparent and empowering ways.

A recent poll conducted by Latino Decisions on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Voces Verdes shows that an overwhelming majority of Latinos (9 out of 10) want the government to take action against the dangers of climate change. In this panel, Manuel Pastor, Professor, University of Southern California, Rachel Morello-Frosch, Professor, University of California, Berkeley, Adrianna Quintero, Founder and Director, NRDC Latino Advocacy Program, and Rafael Hurtado Jr., Community Organizer, LVEJO discuss how we can design and implement programs to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Yue Zhang, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, presents the central arguments of her recent book, “The Fragmented City: Politics of Urban Preservation in Beijing, Paris, and Chicago.” Based on comprehensive archival research and more than 200 in-depth interviews in the three cities, Zhang finds that urban preservation provides a tool for diverse political and social actors to frame their propositions and to advance their favored coursed of action.

Susan Christopherson, Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University, examines whether advanced manufacturing can regain strength in post-industrial economies such as the United States and Britain. She argues that while changing location factors, including lower relative labor costs, transportation concerns, and intellectual property protections, create new opportunities for domestic manufacturing, deeper structural barriers remain. The central challenge is financialization: an economic system that rewards short-term profits, shareholder value, speculative investment, and market bubbles over long-term investment in facilities, supply chains, workforce training, and product and process innovation. Christopherson calls for policies that support durable, high-road manufacturing growth.

Troy Duster, Chancellor’s Professor at the Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at UC Berkeley, examines how the moral arc toward justice depends on struggle, civic engagement, and institutional responsibility. Drawing on histories of abolition, labor reform, public health, social movements, and community organizing, he argues that justice does not advance automatically but requires sustained mobilization against entrenched power. Duster calls on universities to use engaged learning to connect academic knowledge with civic action and community-based social change.