Zak Yudhishthu

I’m very much enjoying it!

Add to the catalogue of “historical perceptions of Logan Square”
bsky.app/profile/zyud...

In this 2003 Chicago novel, which takes place in 1980, Logan Square is depicted as the the place “where street gangs battled over turf”

Chicago has a market for parking reform The city’s new reforms will help build more units

Zak and I coded over 900 upzoning requests introduced in Chicago to analyze how home builders responded to the city’s parking reform (part of the Connected Communities ordinance)

Guess what: they responded by building less car parking 👏

Unique couple of houses here

Chicago has a market for parking reform The city’s new reforms will help build more units

We can be clear-eyed here: parking reform can’t fix the thick web of bad zoning and discretionary control that hurt housing development in Chicago. Nevertheless, this is an unambiguous win for getting more housing built at lower costs in the city. citythatworks.substack.com/p/chicago-ha...

The latest reforms will make it even easier to build below 0.5 spots per unit in areas near transit, removing the previous requirement for an administrative adjustment. The biggest change comes from including over 300,00 parcels in low-density RS and RT zones in the reform.

Also, consider prior work from CNT in 2016, showing that many buildings in Chicago had unused parking, especially if near transit. Or see quasi-experimental evidence showing that residents assigned to affordable housing with low parking ratios had lower car ownership rates.

Will these reforms create a huge neighborhood parking crunch? I don’t think so. For one, most of these low-parking developments are in neighborhoods with the lowest car ownership rates, with great transit access.

If we look at buildings with 10 or more units, the skew is even stronger. Medium and large multifamily housing almost never have 1 parking spot per unit.

Plus, many *renovations* add housing w/o adding parking — showing how parking flexibility supports incremental development.

To answer this question, @stevevance.net and I hand-coded the number of parking spots in over 900 variance requests for new construction or renovations. Most projects have built less than 1 spot per unit. Many have gotten extra approval to build less than 0.5 per unit!

Chicago has a market for parking reform The city’s new reforms will help build more units

Chicago just eliminated parking minimums in most of the city. Does that matter?

In a post for A City That works, I show that Chicago has a strong market for low-parking housing. Developers have already been taking advantage of previous parking reforms.
citythatworks.substack.com/p/chicago-ha...

Eager to look through this paper in depth later though. To be honest I’ve been getting a bit negative demand-shock pilled, given the events of 2020.

Legendary theory

In honor of @taylr.bsky.social's astute observation of a rare setting on the @wcconews.bsky.social Weatherball, let's (re)explore the history of a postwar icon and pre-internet pioneer of modern weather reporting. This ofcourse is not the original "Weatherball." A 🧵!

Damn

What’d they do

What do we think of white paint job on a two-flat

This is a great post from Salim Furth making that exact point
www.metroabundance.org/how-inclusio...

Super curious by what measures things were overbuilt in this era, and how that compares to things today. the WFH shock seems so singularly strong and sudden that IDK if we can take any lessons from that

And Shaw

Ending minimum parking requirements was a policy win for the Twin Cities • Minnesota Reformer Three years ago, anybody constructing a building in most parts of St. Paul or Minneapolis would have had to deal with a long set of parking requirements. These requirements ranged from seemingly reaso...

They already did it minnesotareformer.com/2023/08/31/e...

So much discourse about progressive mayors and abundance lately

Now Brandon Johnson is fullly YIMBY-posting and Chicago just passed a substantially more widespread parking requirement reform than the parking reforms in NYC's City of Yes

I had no idea that your org was formerly BPI! I just finished reading Waiting for Gautreaux.

What’s the story?

Interesting! I respect all local flag-fliers, but it’s not my favorite.

Surely, Chicago is the city that most widely flies its own city flag

I think St. Louis might be the second-most that I’ve ever seen

My first-ever bus in St. Louis was a ghost bus

Cool-looking station tho

St. Louis-bound

Yesterday, I saw this stunning lobby on the back of the Board of Trade, designed by Helmut Jahn. Essentially grafted onto the former rear wall of the original Board of Trade building in 1980

Featuring a 30 foot tall, 95-year old mural of Ceres

What do you think of as the landmark reports or studies on housing in Chicago over the last, say, 20 years