It's time.  After 12 years of writing about cities with a Rust Belt perspective on this platform, I'm closing it down. And no, this is not an April Fool's joke.  I'm moving on to a new platform with a new name: petesaunders.substack.com. It's got my name for now but that may change. It also has the more than 800 articles I've written since 2012 archived and available for viewing.  As you might guess the Substack platform offers a lot of features that would allow me to expand the scope of what I've been doing, and I hope all my followers and readers come with me to the new ..read more

Source: istockphoto.com (Note: Last week I was fortunate enough to have an opinion piece written by Ed Zotti and myself published in Crain's Chicago Business. It's on the continuing loss of Chicago's Black middle class, at least as defined by its ability to attract Black college graduates. The article is behind a paywall, but as a co-author I took the liberty of posting it here. It's a theme I've written extensively about, and Chicago's not the only city or metro to experience this. However, I think Chicago's (and other Rust Belt cities) particular brand of segregation is an under-recognized ..read more

Typical 2-4 unit housing stock in Chicago, built prior to World War II. Source: housingstudies.org Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Most zoning reform proponents – YIMBYs – argue that housing costs have ballooned because local governments haven’t allowed enough housing to be built. This might surprise some readers, but I actually agree with this point. The putative reason given by YIMBYs is that the kind of housing people want, housing units with walkable amenities and transit access, has been zoned out of existence. We’ve created a built environment based on specialized zoning districts served by ..read more

Homes in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Source: The City of Neighborhoods Project Part 1  Part 2 Back in 2018, I attended and participated in an event called  “Tools Toward Market Restoration”, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The event was held in Detroit. At the event I got a chance to meet Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, a fantastic book about government-sponsored segregation in America. The book garnered quite a bit of attention at the time for reintroduci ..read more

  Source: belonging.berkeley.edu Part 1 Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate with the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, is someone I had the occasion of meeting a couple times in my career. A little more than ten years ago he worked for Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council, an independent nonprofit organization created in 1934. MPC’s mission then, and since, has been to challenge inequity and create stronger Chicago neighborhoods and communities. Freemark’s time there overlapped with my time at CMAP, Chicago’s federally recognized regional metropolitan planning organ ..read more

  Source: curbed.com (Janna Morton) Let’s talk about the nation’s housing affordability crisis. I recently downloaded some 2023 third quarter data from the National Association of Realtors. Nationally, NAR reported that the median sales price for existing family homes from July-September 2023 was $406,900, up 2.2% over the previous year. But when you look at the data sorted by metropolitan area, the magnitude – and yet, specificity – of the housing affordability crisis becomes clear. Six west coast metros – San Jose, Anaheim, San Francisco/Oakland, Honolulu, San Diego and Los Angele ..read more

Rendering of a Chicago White Sox ballpark at the proposed South Loop location at Roosevelt Road and the Chicago River. Source: reddit.com Does the Chicago White Sox brass read the Corner Side Yard? Don’t know if they do, but they sure seem to be familiar with my work. It was reported in Wednesday's Chicago Sun-Times that the White Sox are in “serious” negotiations to construct a new stadium in the city’s South Loop. The Sox lease Guaranteed Rate Field from the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, a special district created by statute by the State of Illinois in 1988 with the sole purpose of ..read more

A scene from the game Cities: VR. Source: vrscout.com   (Note: First, Happy New Year. Here's my first post of 2024. It's long, it's introspective, but I think it touches on a lot of things that professional planners are thinking about. Please take a look. -Pete) Frequent readers here may have seen me write about my experience growing up in 1970s Detroit. I’ve often said that seeking ways to improve the city and not abandon it, is what propelled me into a career in urban planning. I wanted to be a change agent for cities. Today, more than thirty years into my career, I’m proud of the ..read more

  Source: zaralawgroup.com Too often, people interpret population numbers at face value and make a determination of a place’s success or failure based on absolute numbers. Population went up? Place is doing great. Population went down? Place is not doing well. Truth is, there is a lot going on with population change that offer few clues as to why growth or decline occurs. Digging a little deeper into data can tell how places are changing. Last week the U.S. Census released its 2023 state population estimates. Nationwide, the Census reports that the nation added 1.6 million people in the ..read more

Downtown Chicago. Source: zaralawgroup.com (Note: I recognize I've been incognito lately. As I've said on occasions like this before, sometimes life gets in the way. And it did. But as 2023 comes to a close I'll post today's piece below and end the year with my annual recap of the most popular essays of the year. I'll have that up Friday. After that, have a great New Year. -Pete) Too often, people interpret population numbers at face value and make a determination of a place’s success or failure based on absolute numbers. Population went up? Place is doing great. Population went down? Place i ..read more