South Chicago Set To Get Raised Bike Lanes, Markers Honoring History To Make Streets ‘Vibrant And Accessible,’ Leaders Say

Great Cities is featured in another Block Club Chicago article!

The project has its roots in a community revitalization plan led by Special Service Area No. 5 and the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Great Cities Institute, Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th) said.

Neighbors identified a need for “a more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly Commercial Avenue, with improved lighting and a more aesthetically pleasing streetscape,” Sadlowski Garza said.

Special Service Area No. 5 also brought permanent public art, vendor stalls and other upgrades to Commercial Avenue through the Chicago Alfresco program last year.

See the Full Article Here.

 

Participatory budgeting allows community members who can’t legally vote to still have a voice

Associate Director Thea Crum is interviewed by ABC 7 on Great Cities Institute’s work on participatory budgeting.

Through participatory budgeting, community members get a voice. They can propose neighborhood infrastructure projects in their wards, such as road or park improvements, and those projects then go up for a vote in the community.

“So, you’re seeing this beautiful co-creative process between residents and local government where they’re really working together to actualize real community needs on the ground,” said Thea Crum, associate director at Great Cities Institute at UIC.

The institute has taken the lead on spreading the word about participatory budgeting in Chicago, and that includes targeting populations who can’t legally vote.

Read the Full Story on ABC 7

 

City/Cité Chicago x Paris Symposium

Designed in 2015 and first implemented in Chicago and San Francisco, CITY CITÉ is a transatlantic cooperation and exchange program on urban issues and city making, initiated by Villa Albertine. The 3rd Chicago edition entitled ” Re/Inventing City Planning to Address Contemporary Issues ” will be a two days of professional conference and visits on the renewal of the urban fabric and territorial planning in both cities.

Thursday, October 13 – 8.30 am – 5 pm @ Studio Gang – Conferences

9.00 am | Introduction

9.15 am – 10.45 am | Session 1: Panorama and Perspectives from Paris and Chicago: New Scales and Approaches for Planning

Moderation: Teresa Córdova (UIC- Great Cities Institute)

We Will Chicago Plan

  • Erin Aleman (Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning)

ON TO 2050 Strategy

  • Science Po Paris students – master of urban planning

City Planning in Paris (PLU, SCOT, SDRIF…)

New Methods and Approaches to Planning with We Will Chicago

The New Flexible Models of Planning: Call for Projects and Temporary Urbanism

  • Marcus ZEPF (Université Paris Est-Créteil, Paris School of Urban Planning and Lab’Urba)

Temporalities and Uncertainties in Urban Planning: towards “permanent autopoetic processes”

11.00 am – 12.30 am | Session 2: Planning for Social and Spatial Justice

Moderation: Monica Chadha (Civic Projects Architecture)

Invest South-West

  • Frédéric Chartier (Chartier / Dalix agency) and 2023 resident at Villa Albertine in Chicago

Thinking Communal Space : A Vehicle for Social Equity

Planning for Equity with Stakeholders and Communities

GROWSS in sync, Quality of Life Plan for North Lawndale

Neighborhood Activation, A Process to Improve Public Safety Through Community-Led Design

2 pm – 3.30 pm | Session 3: Planning for Transitions

Moderation: Odile Compagnon (Odile Compagnon Architect)

The Natural History of Chicago — and its Implications

Ecological Transition and the Place of Life / Wildlife in Planning

  • Nadine Roudil (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris Val de Seine)

Institutional Narratives of Energy and Youth Awareness of Climate Issues

Advancing Equity by Investing in Urban Green Infrastructure

Towards Pluralist Engagement in Cultural Infrastructure Design

3.45 pm – 5.15 pm | Session 4: Future of Housing & Offices

Moderation: Kathleen Day (Preservation of Affordable Housing)

What kind of Housing will be Built in Chicago in the 2020s? Effects of Recent Reforms

  • Ingrid Nappi (École des Ponts Paris Tech – Observatory of the Economy of Architecture / Ministry of Culture)

Which Future for Business Districts in an Area of Environmental and Social Transformation?

How Cities Support Urban Manufacturing? Old and New Forms of Production Spaces

  • Francesca Artioli (Université Paris Est-Créteil, Paris School of Urban Planning and Lab’Urba )

Short-Term Rental Platforms and the Transformation of Housing: the Challenges of Regulation

Aspirational Housing – What is Architect and Developer’s Responsibility? How can we Create Better Places to Live for Everyone?

Friday, October 14 | On-site visits

9.00 am – 10.20 am: Woodlawn Resource Center 

10.35 am – 11.40 am: Stony Island Arts Bank 

12.10 am – 2.00 pm: Fulton East

2.15 pm – 3.25 pm: North Lawndale Love Blooms Here Plaza 

3.40 pm – 5.00 pm: Humboldt Park 

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Organizing Knowledge to Challenge Inequality

Join us for a talk by Professor Ananya Roy!

Professor Ananya Roy is a scholar of global racial capitalism and postcolonial development whose research is concerned with the political economy and politics of dispossession and displacement. At the very heart of her work is an insistence on the transformation of the public university – through teaching, public scholarship, and community engagement – so that it can be a force for social justice.

She is the author of numerous books, including: City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty; Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World, and Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development. Dr. Roy currently leads a National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network on Housing Justice in Unequal Cities.
Talk sponsored by Social Justice Initiative, Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, The Great Cities Institute and Center for Urban Economic Development

RSVP online:
https://OrganizingKnowledge.eventbrite.com

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Chicago’s Decades of Segregation Feed South and West Side Hardships

Authors Shruti Singh and Isis Almeida discuss issues caused by historical segregation in their Bloomberg article. Great Cities Institute’s Matt Wilson is interviewed and highlights the economic inequalities in Chicago.

Many of these same neighborhoods continue to face the highest levels of joblessness, poverty and inadequate housing, according to a study by the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago.

“These places of concentrated disadvantages are where unemployment is most concentrated and crime is most concentrated, and there is an interplay,” said Matthew Wilson, associate director for economic and workforce development at the institute. “They play off each other to create the inequities we see in the city.”

Read the Full Story at Bloomberg

 

Report Release: 2023 Chicago Budget Community Engagement Report

On October 3, 2022 Mayor Lori Lightfoot delivered her $16.4 billion budget for the City of Chicago to City Council. In July, the City conducted a community engagement process and partnered with UIC’s Neighborhoods Initiative (UICNI) at the Great Cities Institute to design and engagement activities around the City’s 2023 budget. The “2023 Chicago Budget Community Engagement Report” documents the 2023 Budget Engagement process and provides key results from the engagement activities.

2023 budget engagement activities were built upon community-identified investment needs derived from the 2022 budget engagement process and findings that the City of Chicago refers to as “Responsive Initiatives.” To create meaningful engagement, the 2023 budget engagement process focused on establishing and reinforcing a feedback loop between City leaders and residents that:

  • Provided residents with progress updates on the implementation of the City’s 2022 Responsive Initiatives and related programs and services.
  • Created space for dialogue and discussions between department leaders and residents to share information and priorities, and to ask and answer any questions.
  • Gathered feedback and input from residents on their priorities for programs and services, their definitions of success and progress for programs and services, and other comments and suggestions.

Data was collected across all engagement activities, from conversations with City leaders and from tabletop notes during roundtable discussions, written comment cards, surveys, filled-out forms about Responsive Initiatives, and verbal public comment from community members. The UIC team analyzed the data to report findings as reflected by participant responses to the survey, filled-out forms about Responsive Initiatives, written comment cards, and transcribed public comments are provided in the appendix.

This report includes engagement findings as related to the entire budget process, as well as across four budget topic areas: Affordable Housing and Services to People At Risk of or Experiencing Homelessness, Community Safety and Youth, Public Health and Services and Mental Health, and Neighborhood/Community Development and Arts and Culture. In terms of overall feedback, participants throughout the community engagement process and across all City programs and services raised the issue of needing:

  • Better communication and marketing of existing programs and services to help make more residents aware of what is available and to connect residents to the services they need.
  • Improved access, specifically language access and access for those with disabilities across all digital and in-person programs and services so that all City programs and services can be truly available to all residents.
  • Increased transparency on decision-making processes, explanations about program and service delivery (e.g., why a program has a backlog, why implementation is delayed), and publicly shared progress on the performance of programs and services.

For topic area–specific feedback, participants were asked to prioritize programs and services that they thought were most important to their community. Participant responses in areas of success and progress corresponded generally to three themes:

  • Investments, participant feedback involved statements and ideas on how to expand, improve, and/or enhance programs or services.
  • Specific changes that represent success/progress (performance metrics), participant feedback involved ideas about specific changes or impacts that demonstrated success or progress.
  • Policy recommendations, participant recommendations include requests for implementation of a specific policy or a change to existing policy.

The Office of Budget and Management (OBM) used participant feedback and the analysis of participant feedback provided in the 2023 Chicago Budget Community Engagement Report to create the 2023 Responsive Initiatives as part of the budget decision making process. The Responsive Initiatives are tied to specific departments and programs and services proposed for funding. As mentioned above, as part of the engagement activities participants identified performance metrics (specific changes that represent success or progress) against which the City’s progress and performance on the 2023 Responsive Initiatives can be measured. OBM has selected 16 of these performance metrics that are measurable and align well with one or several specific 2023 Responsive Initiatives to track progress. The City released the 2023 Budget Engagement Responsive Initiatives Report that includes both the 2023 Responsive Initiatives and corresponding engagement performance metrics on the 2023 Budget Engagement microsite.

View the Full Report Here.

 

Climates of Inequity

Join the UIC Latino Cultural Center for a series of online conversations with environmental and climate justice leaders from across the country this fall. Their work reveals frameworks and strategies to address the disproportionate impacts of climate change and environmental pollution on communities of color, indigenous, and low-income earners. Students in the Environmental & Climate Justice course* will facilitate the conversations.

RSVP: go.uic.edu/COI22

ClimatesOfInequlity_Fall2022

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During Second Consecutive Year of Significant Gap Reduction, City of Chicago Projects $127.9 Million Shortfall In 2023 Fiscal Year Budget

The City of Chicago Mayor’s Press Office discussed the 2023 Budget Forecast in its recent press release. The article highlights a budget gap and how the city’s Office of Budget and Management is working to find savings and efficiencies to reduce this gap. The budget, along with the 2023 Responsive Initiatives, will be published this fall.

Input received from residents and community stakeholders during the City’s three Budget Engagement Forums last month is vital to the annual budget planning process. Feedback from the forums will be incorporated into the 2023 Responsive Initiatives, developed from the public report published by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC) Great Cities Institute detailing the data collected from public input. Once finalized, these inputs will be presented with the 2023 Budget Recommendations. This sequence ensures a clear and transparent process for how the City plans to incorporate the community engagement feedback into the budget and City operations.

Read the Full Story at Chicago.Gov

 

100th Street Calumet River Project would create new recreational trail on Southeast Side

In a Streetsblog Chicago article, Ruth Rosas interviews Jack Rocha (GCI) and Alex Perez (Active Transportation Alliance) on the history, opportunities, and next steps for this project. To stay up to date on the project, please visit this page or if you have any questions, please contact Jack Rocha at jrocha3@uic.edu.

Residents identified the site as an opportunity for restoration of the natural riverbank habitat, a trail, and a public viewing area for river activity. If completed, the site would become a part of the greater network of transportation and recreation infrastructure on the Southeast Side. Currently the project team, headed by Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is conducting outreach to develop a community stewardship and governance plan for the site. 

Read the Full Article at Streetsblog Chicago

 

Residents share priorities, needs at city budget forum in Austin

Image Source: AustinTalks

In an AustinTalks article, author Francia Garcia Hernandez discusses topics residents requested be focused on in the 2023 city spending plan. Great Cities Institute will be compiling results and comments from this forum and two others to create a public report that will be released in August.

“We want you to be our thought partner,” said Tina Hone, the city’s chief engagement officer.

Residents were asked to participate in four 15-minute roundtable discussions with city officials to share their recommendations for investments in four areas: affordable housing; community safety and youth programming; public health services and mental health; and community development and arts and culture.

After the discussions, city officials heard from residents and provided additional information about this year’s budget as well as city programs.

Full Story from AustinTalks »