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How Chicago’s Brownfields Became a New Frontier for Urban Land Use

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Chicago’s rise as an industrial powerhouse shaped its landscape in profound ways. From the South Branch of the Chicago River to the steel mills of Southeast Chicago, its urban form was built around factories, rail yards, and clustered heavy industry. When that industrial era waned, the city was left with a patchwork of contaminated or abandoned properties — brownfields — each carrying environmental burdens and development potential. Over the past three decades, Chicago has become a national leader in reclaiming these sites. Through cleanup programs, community activism, and inventive land-use strategies, the city has turned former industrial scars into parks, neighborhoods, retail corridors, and logistics centers. But the work is far from simple. Brownfield redevelopment is a battleground where environmental justice, economic development, and community identity collide. “Brownfields are the physical remnants of our industrial past,” says Hirsh Mohindra , Analyst . “How a city deals with...
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How Rising Taxes and Insurance Costs Are Reshaping Illinois Housing Demand

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Affordability challenges in Illinois stem from a combination of factors — some national, others uniquely local. While interest rates and inflation affect homebuyers across the country, Illinois faces two compounding forces that amplify affordability pressures: rising property taxes and insurance costs. Together, these structural burdens reshape demand, influence migration patterns, and transform investor behavior. For small businesses in the housing ecosystem, understanding these pressures is essential to remaining competitive and advising clients responsibly. Property taxes in Illinois are among the highest in the United States. Municipal pension obligations, school district funding frameworks, and infrastructure demands all contribute to this reality. As a result, homeowners often face annual tax bills that strain long-term affordability, even when home prices remain moderate relative to coastal states. Insurance pressures, while not as extreme as in states facing acute climate risk,...
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Lessons From Illinois’ Slow-Growth Market Cycle: How Small Developers Navigate Long Absorption Times

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  Illinois operates within a slower-growth real estate cycle compared to many coastal or Sun Belt states. While regions like Florida or Texas often experience rapid expansions followed by sharp contractions, Illinois tends to follow a more moderate path—steady but restrained demand, consistent but not explosive price growth, and demographic trends that evolve gradually. For small developers, this presents both advantages and challenges. The slower pace can provide stability, but it also demands financial discipline, careful planning, and a deep understanding of long absorption times. Illinois’ slow-growth cycle is rooted in several structural factors. The state’s population growth has stagnated, with some years even showing net outmigration. Property taxes are among the highest in the nation, adding significant long-term costs to ownership and investor activity. Insurance pressures, though less dramatic than in high-risk coastal states, still contribute to rising costs. And unlik...
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How Accessory Dwelling Units Are Quietly Reshaping Chicago’s Neighborhoods

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Cities rarely change all at once. More often, they evolve quietly, one home at a time, one block at a time, until suddenly the landscape feels different and the future feels possible in ways it didn’t before. Chicago is living through one of those subtle transformations today, and it centers on a housing form that is far from new, yet newly liberated: the Accessory Dwelling Unit , or ADU. Coach houses. Garden apartments. In-law suites. Basement flats. For decades, these small, secondary housing units existed in Chicago’s neighborhoods, sometimes legally, sometimes informally, always filling a need that standard zoning never fully accounted for. They provided affordable housing, extra income for homeowners, multi-generational living options, and quiet density long before planners coined the term “gentle density.” But for more than half a century, Chicago’s zoning code largely prohibited new ADUs. Neighborhoods that once naturally contained them were frozen, legally speaking, in a 1950s ...
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How A Single Train Line Reshaped Land Use in Illinois

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If you want to understand how land really changes — how quiet fields become neighborhoods, how crossroads become commercial corridors, how small towns reimagine themselves — forget the dramatic skyscrapers and megaprojects. Look instead at the slow, powerful influence of infrastructure. Few forces transform land use more reliably than transportation, and in Illinois, one of the clearest examples of this evolution can be found in a place many Chicagoans have never heard of: Elburn . Elburn doesn’t look like the epicenter of a land-use revolution. It’s a small community at the western edge of the Chicago metropolitan area, bordered by cornfields, crossed by county roads, and steeped in rural character. Yet in 2006, when Metra extended the Union Pacific West Line from Geneva to Elburn, the town found itself thrust into a future it hadn’t entirely planned for — but would have no choice but to navigate with intention. Transit can transform land in subtle increments or dramatic strokes. In E...
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From Arsenal to Prairie: The Epic Reinvention of Illinois’ Industrial-Military Landscapes

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Land use in Illinois has always reflected the state’s evolving identity — from prairies to farmland, from industrial corridors to sprawling metropolitan development. But no land-use transformation has been as ambitious, complex, or symbolically powerful as the conversion of a former weapons manufacturing site into one of the largest ecological restoration projects in the United States. The creation of the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie on the former grounds of the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant is not merely a conservation initiative — it is a sweeping reimagining of how deeply damaged land can be healed, repurposed, and reintegrated into community life. “Most states inherit contaminated or decommissioned federal sites and simply try to make them safe,” says Hirsh Mohindra , Analyst . “Illinois took the boldest possible approach: it didn’t just clean up the Joliet Arsenal — it transformed it into something ecologically extraordinary.” This is the story of how thousands of acres scar...
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