Taste of Chicago: Our favorite local writing
July 2025 edition
Source: Matt Stratton via Flickr
Before we get to our pre-Fourth of July links, two programming notes:
First, we’ll be hosting another meetup for A City That Works readers on July 17th, at Jefferson Tap from 5:30-8:30pm. You can register here (attendance is free). Hope to see you there!
Second, we are always open to running guest posts. We’re particularly interested in important topics that we haven’t spent a lot of time on, including education, childcare, social services, sister agencies (like the Park District), and county or state level government. If you’ve got a good idea, and think you can match the depth and rigor of the pieces you’ve seen to-date, we’d love to see your pitch. Specialized knowledge or expertise is helpful, but by no means a requirement.
Chicago Specific
Chicago's kid carjackers: Inside the SRT Boys' yearslong crime spree Frank Main and Tom Schuba / Chicago Sun-Times. A deeply reported story that follows the exploits of a prolific group of carjackers over the last few years. As the story notes, these are kids who generally didn’t have much support before the pandemic, and stepped into a “culture of lawlessness” that emerged during it. Easy access to guns, the ability to use stolen vehicles to commit other crimes, and a lack of serious consequences in the juvenile court system have all contributed to the problem.
Chicago cop who inadvertently shot and killed his partner has a lengthy disciplinary record in a short career Peter Nickeas, Casey Toner and Tom Schuba / Chicago Sun-Times. We often talk about how officers with poor track records or disciplinary history can be a threat to the public. They can also put their fellow officers at risk, as this story tragically illustrates. We don’t have definitive answers in this case yet, but it’d be easier for CPD to enforce higher standards with probationary officers if the department wasn’t struggling to hire and retain officers.
100 Students in a School Meant for 1,000: Inside Chicago’s Refusal to Deal With Its Nearly Empty Schools Mila Koumpilova and Jennifer Smith Richards / Chalkbeat and ProPublica. “The DuSable schools are emblematic of an unyielding predicament facing the district. Enrollment has shrunk. Three of every 10 of its schools sit at least half-empty, and they are costly to run. More critically, there are 47 schools, including those inside DuSable, operating at less than one-third capacity, by the district’s measure. That’s almost twice as many severely underenrolled buildings as Chicago had in 2013, when it carried out the largest mass school closings in the country’s history, Chalkbeat and ProPublica found. The most extreme example is Frederick Douglass Academy High School, which has 28 students this year and a per-student cost of $93,000.”
The CTA has no choice but to be more efficient Justin Erb / Personal Substack. Unless Springfield resolves the fiscal cliff our public transit agencies are facing, those agencies are going to face some really tough decisions about how to maintain the best system possible given the resources they have. Erb’s post takes a good first crack at this, with some good suggestions for bus transit (and a reality check on fares).
An ‘Abundance’ agenda for Chicago Austin Berg / The Last Ward. One of the critiques I most agree about Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book Abundance is that it’s pretty heavy on vibes/philosophy but much less so about specific proposals on what ‘abundance policy’ should encompass. In the context of Chicago-specific abundance, Berg’s post is a nice start on solving that, with actual policies intended to boost housing, transit, and energy abundance in Chicago (many of which we’ve advocated for as well).
Chicago Banned Its Traditional Affordable Housing - Let’s Fix That Alex Montero / Strong Towns. Re-legalizing the construction of 3- and 4-flats is a drum we’ll continue to beat here at A City That Works. It remains perplexing that Chicago’s traditional form of development - one that makes up one-fourth of the city’s housing stock today - is illegal to build in 80% of the city. Montero’s article provides another strong overview of exactly why we should bring them back across the city.
How Chicago’s alternate realities crushed a dream of homeownership Alden Loury / Sun-Times. Loury does a lot of the data work over at WBEZ, and we find ourselves citing him most weeks. This is different - it’s a personal piece about the experience of home ownership in a Black neighborhood. In addition to being deeply frustrating, the challenges Loury experienced help explain both the causes and consequences of population loss in South and West side neighborhoods. If you like the piece, his longer interview on the Ben Joravsky show is also worth your time.
How to get deeper affordability: Capital versus rental subsidy Daniel Kay Hertz / Ghost This is a really nice explanation of the types of affordability, and the types of subsidies that get used. There’s a big difference between ‘affordable’ units at 80% of Area Median Income, and 30%. And there’s a big difference in the types of subsidies necessary to provide those different levels of affordability.
National
How to Save DC’s Metro Santi Ruiz / Statecraft. A revealing interview with a transit leader who’s been at the forefront of a system rebound. WMATA GM Randy Clarke offers some interesting thoughts on what transit agencies should prioritize, as well as some helpful detail on topics like fare evasion, safety, and the use (and misuse) of consultants.
Why did Lion Electric fail? Democrats, Canada and Lion itself all played a role John Lippert / Chicago Tribune. “Figuring out what went wrong at Lion Electric is crucial not just for former employees, but also for politicians, corporate leaders and environmentalists who want Illinois to build more battery-powered vehicles and protect future generations from increasingly toxic air… In 2021, Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law allocated $5 billion for electric school bus subsidies. But under Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval processes were slow and cumbersome. To this day, the agency has released only $3 billion for specific bus purchases, according to World Resources Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group.”
The magic of through running Benedict Springbett / Works in Progress. Just a few months ago we published Star:Line Chicago’s proposal to build more downtown tunnels to improve Metra’s ability to provide service throughout Chicago and its near suburbs. If you found that interesting, you might really enjoy Springbett’s piece going deep into the weeds of exactly how and why ‘through running’ has such success throughout the world at improving transit systems’ capabilities in a remarkably cost-efficient way.
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