This scorecard is one of my favorite publications you all do. I sincerely appreciate the 40,000 ft view of how Chicago is doing compared to its peers. It's a great tool for cutting through the heavily messaged "updates" on topics like housing, government finance and public safety that we've come to expect from a lot of the media ecosystem here in Chicago. Keep doing the good work!
-- doesn't seem obvious why Phoenix is included in Chicago's peer group here while Philadelphia isn't. Those two cities are very similar in population while in other ways Philly seems like if anything more comparable to Chicago.
-- "But it’s worth noting that we’re still growing more slowly than our peers" - ? Your graphic shows Chicago for 2025 having a population gain of 0.19% while the identified peer group averaged a very slight decline in population.
-- the Chicago new-housing picture painted by these statistics (permits issued) is quite different now from the picture one gets as a daily reader of ChicagoYIMBY's update emails. Those updates cover not only permits issued, but previous levels of approval as projects go through the city process. Both my wife and I are regularly surprised these days, in a good way, by how much activity ChicagoYIMBY has to report on in a given week or month and it goes well beyond the parts of the city that you'd assume. If that subjective impression is accurate then the city could be on the verge of a real surge at the permits-issued/construction-underway end of the process.
-- Certainly agree that Philly *feels* more like Chicago (and has more shared context/history). But part of the reason for taking a simple top-5 cutoff is that we think it's important to look at the rising sunbelt cities in addition to the cities that are more culturally familiar. Cities like Houston and Phoenix have been growing much more rapidly, and there's a lot we should be learning from them. A comparison set that excludes them is also missing something important about Chicago's trajectory relative to the country.
-- Thanks for catching that error-I've corrected. Text was based on the prior year's data (Census just provided updated fresh population data for 2025 after the first draft was written).
-- I actually think this is the most important reason for a comprehensive scoreboard. In a big city, there will always be steady stream of good (and bad) news to share. But the aggregate data we're seeing should I think shade your read the other way - ChicagoYIMBY is sharing positive anecdotes in what is otherwise a very bleak picture.
-- re Philly I wasn't particularly referring to cultural similarities, more economic mix and land-use patterns. But anyway I'll suggest that a less-arbitrary cutoff than "top X cities by one single datum" would be more logically coherent for this multi-faceted scorecard that you've created.
-- ChicagoYIMBY's value is precisely that it is not anecdotal the way a media outlet's coverage inherently is, e.g. I draw no general conclusions from Block Club Chicago or Crain's coverage of this topic for exactly the reason you describe. ChicagoYIMBY reports systematically, every day, regarding active proposals in the city's system (the "permit portal" which is public information and updated in real time). The rather different trend picture now being painted that way compared to the (inherently-lagging) figures on final permits issued, is therefore interesting....my qualifier certainly applies: "_if_ that subjective impression is accurate". I'm quite curious about it, put it that way.
I gotcha - that makes sense. We're going to *try* to do more coverage on the health of the pipeline, and how it's changing in the future. Certainly agreed that the forward-looking metrics are helpful.
On the cutoff stuff, one of the challenges is just that there's always a way to pick a comparison set that makes the city look good or bad. Just doing a top 5 cut by population is easier to defend than explaining why some cities were included and others carved out - but I hear you the limitations of that approach.
In addition to the land use challenges, Philly is also a peer in some ways due to pension issues... they climbed out of a pretty deep fiscal hole as well.
Why are you treating census annual estimates as definitive? They are not good data let alone definitive.
However they are systematically biased against dense cities with lots of students and immigrants so Chicago is almost certainly growing faster than it says.
The 2020 census undercount for Illinois was 250k. Realistically at least half of that was in Chicago so there real population in 2020 was 2.85 million. And Chicago, like NYC, is certainly bigger now than 2020. More housing units exist, vacancy is lower, and household size has inched up thanks to international migration and low vacancies
That's a fair point. I've added a footnote to that effect.
I will note that those challenges also describe most of the cities in our peer set. So the relative comparison is likely still pretty instructive, even if there's more noise and a possible undercount in the point estimate.
And regarding the census annual estimates, will add that they are as of mid-year (e.g. 6/30/25) rather than end of year (e.g. 12/31/25). So for instance right now the most-recent Census Bureau guess is as of 10 months ago not 4 months ago.
The annual Census Bureau estimates are based simply on births/deaths data reported by the local jurisdiction. No actual censusing (counting of people) is involved. That's why the decennial censuses often come to a rather different conclusion than the one implied/predicted by the intervening annual estimates.
This scorecard is one of my favorite publications you all do. I sincerely appreciate the 40,000 ft view of how Chicago is doing compared to its peers. It's a great tool for cutting through the heavily messaged "updates" on topics like housing, government finance and public safety that we've come to expect from a lot of the media ecosystem here in Chicago. Keep doing the good work!
A few comments/questions:
-- doesn't seem obvious why Phoenix is included in Chicago's peer group here while Philadelphia isn't. Those two cities are very similar in population while in other ways Philly seems like if anything more comparable to Chicago.
-- "But it’s worth noting that we’re still growing more slowly than our peers" - ? Your graphic shows Chicago for 2025 having a population gain of 0.19% while the identified peer group averaged a very slight decline in population.
-- the Chicago new-housing picture painted by these statistics (permits issued) is quite different now from the picture one gets as a daily reader of ChicagoYIMBY's update emails. Those updates cover not only permits issued, but previous levels of approval as projects go through the city process. Both my wife and I are regularly surprised these days, in a good way, by how much activity ChicagoYIMBY has to report on in a given week or month and it goes well beyond the parts of the city that you'd assume. If that subjective impression is accurate then the city could be on the verge of a real surge at the permits-issued/construction-underway end of the process.
-- Certainly agree that Philly *feels* more like Chicago (and has more shared context/history). But part of the reason for taking a simple top-5 cutoff is that we think it's important to look at the rising sunbelt cities in addition to the cities that are more culturally familiar. Cities like Houston and Phoenix have been growing much more rapidly, and there's a lot we should be learning from them. A comparison set that excludes them is also missing something important about Chicago's trajectory relative to the country.
-- Thanks for catching that error-I've corrected. Text was based on the prior year's data (Census just provided updated fresh population data for 2025 after the first draft was written).
-- I actually think this is the most important reason for a comprehensive scoreboard. In a big city, there will always be steady stream of good (and bad) news to share. But the aggregate data we're seeing should I think shade your read the other way - ChicagoYIMBY is sharing positive anecdotes in what is otherwise a very bleak picture.
-- re Philly I wasn't particularly referring to cultural similarities, more economic mix and land-use patterns. But anyway I'll suggest that a less-arbitrary cutoff than "top X cities by one single datum" would be more logically coherent for this multi-faceted scorecard that you've created.
-- ChicagoYIMBY's value is precisely that it is not anecdotal the way a media outlet's coverage inherently is, e.g. I draw no general conclusions from Block Club Chicago or Crain's coverage of this topic for exactly the reason you describe. ChicagoYIMBY reports systematically, every day, regarding active proposals in the city's system (the "permit portal" which is public information and updated in real time). The rather different trend picture now being painted that way compared to the (inherently-lagging) figures on final permits issued, is therefore interesting....my qualifier certainly applies: "_if_ that subjective impression is accurate". I'm quite curious about it, put it that way.
I gotcha - that makes sense. We're going to *try* to do more coverage on the health of the pipeline, and how it's changing in the future. Certainly agreed that the forward-looking metrics are helpful.
On the cutoff stuff, one of the challenges is just that there's always a way to pick a comparison set that makes the city look good or bad. Just doing a top 5 cut by population is easier to defend than explaining why some cities were included and others carved out - but I hear you the limitations of that approach.
In addition to the land use challenges, Philly is also a peer in some ways due to pension issues... they climbed out of a pretty deep fiscal hole as well.
Love this scorecard! To make sure I'm reading it right, does this mean that the average Chicagoan took 123.75 CTA rides in 2025?
Yep!
Why are you treating census annual estimates as definitive? They are not good data let alone definitive.
However they are systematically biased against dense cities with lots of students and immigrants so Chicago is almost certainly growing faster than it says.
The 2020 census undercount for Illinois was 250k. Realistically at least half of that was in Chicago so there real population in 2020 was 2.85 million. And Chicago, like NYC, is certainly bigger now than 2020. More housing units exist, vacancy is lower, and household size has inched up thanks to international migration and low vacancies
That's a fair point. I've added a footnote to that effect.
I will note that those challenges also describe most of the cities in our peer set. So the relative comparison is likely still pretty instructive, even if there's more noise and a possible undercount in the point estimate.
Agree with all of those comments.
And regarding the census annual estimates, will add that they are as of mid-year (e.g. 6/30/25) rather than end of year (e.g. 12/31/25). So for instance right now the most-recent Census Bureau guess is as of 10 months ago not 4 months ago.
The annual Census Bureau estimates are based simply on births/deaths data reported by the local jurisdiction. No actual censusing (counting of people) is involved. That's why the decennial censuses often come to a rather different conclusion than the one implied/predicted by the intervening annual estimates.
This is an important snapshot. It quickly highlights some areas of improvement, while cutting through some of the noise.
Hey thank you!