Chicago upzoned in 2013, and property values went up — the housing? Still waiting on it. Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today — a peer-reviewed paper that complicates the whole build-more pitch, where the old aldermanic veto quietly went to hide, and a school board caught half-elected, half-appointed. Follow the show and the next briefing lands in your feed on its own. Urban Affairs Review, with Yonah Slifkin Freemark:
What are the local-level impacts of zoning change? I study recent Chicago upzonings that increased allowed densities and reduced parking requirements in a manner exogenous of development plans and neighborhood characteristics. To evaluate outcomes, I use difference-in-differences tests on property transaction prices and housing-unit construction permits. I detect significant, robust increases in values for transactions on parcels that received a boost in allowed building size.
So all week, the housing conversation's been running on assertion — Powell's deregulation pitch in the Contrarian yesterday, with no hard numbers behind it. Yonah Freemark's paper in Urban Affairs Review is the first peer-reviewed Chicago data point we've actually got. And the finding's pretty pointed: the 2013 upzonings raised property values on the affected parcels — significantly — but he doesn't detect the new construction the upzoning was supposed to unlock. You loosen density, land gets more valuable, and the units just... don't show up. That's the receipt! That's exactly the West Loop tower at twenty percent and the Avondale forty-seven units getting cut — I've been watching land prices eat the supply argument live, and now there's a study with page numbers behind it. And the design's clean — Freemark picked upzonings that had nothing to do with where development was already headed. So nobody gets to wave it off as, oh, those neighborhoods were gonna pop anyway. Nah. The policy did the price bump. The policy didn't do the housing. Which pokes a Chicago-specific hole in the BUILD Act fight too. Suburban mayors arguing a state override won't produce units now have a peer-reviewed local case where upzoning produced values and not much else. Okay, so every few years, a Chicago mayor says they're going to rein in aldermanic prerogative — but is that ever actually true beyond the big zoning headlines, or does the power just go underground? It mostly goes underground, and licensing is probably the clearest place to see it right now. Just last month, a key City Council committee rejected ordinances that would have banned video gambling machines in bars and restaurants in six specific wards. That made news because the committee actually crossed the local alderpeople, per WTTW. That's genuinely rare. Usually, if an alderperson wants to ban or allow something in the ward — a liquor license, a gaming terminal, a specific business type — committee signs off without much of a fight. Then there's 311 and city services, which barely get attention. The outgoing Inspector General, after a citywide survey and conversations with aldermanic staffers in five wards, found that 311 requests are effectively routed through aldermanic offices. The Sun-Times called it a 'black hole,' where service speed depends on your relationship with your alderperson instead of a neutral queue. On development, when the Zoning Committee chair seat sat vacant, more than 138 projects stalled — not because of a formal veto, but because the informal political machinery stopped, per the Sun-Times. And a federal fair housing probe even accused Chicago of violating residents' civil rights by letting aldermanic veto power block low-income housing, though that investigation ultimately fizzled, according to the Sun-Times. So if the mayor issues an executive order saying 'alderpeople no longer control X,' how would a resident actually verify that anything changed on the ground? The City Clerk publishes every mayoral executive order in a public document library, so you can find the paper trail. But an order telling city agencies to change a process doesn't mean the process changed. Watch 311. If service requests are still getting funneled through ward offices instead of handled on a neutral timeline, the informal power survived the order. The numbers matter here — how many permits or licenses got approved over an alderperson's objection, how long 311 requests take ward by ward — because that's how you see whether the reform is real. This one's from Chicago Public Schools:
The Chicago Board of Education ("Board") is a hybrid governing body with 11 members appointed by the mayor and 10 elected members. The Board is responsible for the oversight of Chicago Public Schools (CPS).
CPS put its own governance language out plainly: 11 members appointed by Mayor Johnson, 10 elected. A hybrid board, in writing, on the official page. Yeah, and read past the headcount — every appointed name has a 'significant and direct connection to CPS.' Those are the mayor's people, framed as your people. And this is live because of the timing — a superintendent-CEO search is running right now, on this half-transitioned board. Who actually picks the next CEO is still a fight, and it's happening in present tense. Right — eleven appointed, ten elected, and the biggest hire of the decade lands while the board's stuck mid-transition. Tell me again where the public's leverage is in that math. Got a tip, a correction, or a story idea about Chicago politics or urban life? Send it our way at chicagodailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We really do read what you send.
You'll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can take a closer look there. That's Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.