WHAT MAYOR JOHNSON'S BLUEPRINT MEANS FOR OUR BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Earlier this month, Mayor Brandon Johnson released his eagerly awaited transition report, “Building Bridges and Growing the Soul of Chicago: A Blueprint for Creating a more Just and Vibrant City for All.” Authored by the mayor’s Transition Committee, comprised of hundreds of diverse leaders volunteering their time, its 223 pages make near- and long-term policy recommendations across all areas of municipal governance. These proposals seek to actualize the mayor’s progressive vision for Chicago, articulated during the campaign. For the sake of this short summary, we’ll focus on the actions that most impact public space, the local environment, transportation, and housing. Any way you slice it, this is one ambitious—even audacious—plan to make Chicago the “city that works” for everyone. Can the Johnson Administration deliver?

[A note on funding: Many of this report’s recommendations are unfunded at this time. Their success hinges on the always contentious annual budget process and new and expanded revenue sources.]

With an entire unit devoted to environmental justice, the transition report sends a clear signal that for environmental policies to bring about more than incremental change, a reckoning with racial and socioeconomic injustices is due. Chief among the stated goals are a fully resourced Department of the Environment, a Green New Deal for schools and for water, and a transition to an equitable decarbonized Chicago. Some action steps to get us there include: planting a lot more trees; acquiring new park space, particularly in majority Black and Brown communities; repairing our shoreline and deploying green infrastructure in neighborhoods to defend against flooding; decarbonizing all Chicago Public School buildings as healthy places for learning; and incorporating bird-friendly design into the City’s Sustainable Development Policy.

A comprehensive plan for housing is another pillar of the mayor’s blueprint. Here, the emphasis is on rapidly supplying safe, quality affordable housing for the unhoused; building and preserving a diverse affordable housing portfolio across Chicago; improving Chicago Housing Authority properties; and increasing opportunities for homeownership and wealth-building. One creative intervention would see shuttered buildings returned to occupancy as safe havens for survivors of violence. And equitable transit-oriented development (ETOD) gets top billing as a proven way to re-densify and strengthen neighborhoods by matching mixed-income multifamily housing with transit hubs and commercial corridors. A “well-funded” Office of ETOD would be established to “grow the mayor’s capacity to coordinate” between the Planning, Housing, and Transportation Departments and the Chicago Transit Authority, with the goal of delivering more of these projects where the opportunity is greatest.

The report’s vision for transportation represents a major overhaul to urban mobility to make car-free living more attractive by upending the hierarchy of street users that has long favored drivers. The path to this would include developing a citywide network of bus rapid transit (BRT) and dedicated bus lanes; making multimodal street design the default; designating slow streets and pedestrian zones on residential blocks throughout Chicago; implementing a citywide network of connected, protected bike lanes; fixing unsafe bike and pedestrian access points to parks and the Lakefront Trail; and making Divvy bikeshare more affordable and better integrated with mass transit for “last mile” trips.

Some other eye-catching proposals include empowering the Public Building Commission to go “beyond libraries and firehouses” to develop such spaces as municipal food markets in historically under-resourced communities, and permanently removing public monuments like the Christopher Columbus statues that “reinforce white supremacy and stereotypes of Native Americans.”

Reading between the lines on many of these measures, it is apparent that designers and architects can be of great service to this administration’s quality-of-life aims. The Lightfoot Administration was able to foster a culture of collaboration between the local design community and City agencies through programs like Invest South/West and the Come Home Initiative—a precedent to embrace going forward (there is no promise of expanding these specific programs, but nor is there any indication that they will go away). Everything needs good design—parks, transit, housing, streets, schools, libraries—and everyone deserves it.

By Ian Spula
Ian Spula is CAC's Content Manager; he can be reached at ispula@architecture.org