After 11 years as CNT’s CEO, I’m stepping down this week. It’s been a remarkable journey. In 1978, I was a recent college graduate looking for a way to reinvent cities. I was fortunate to  discover Scott Bernstein, only a few years older, who was just founding a new organization aimed at promoting neighborhood innovation and empowerment. I came on board. Remarkably, CNT’s core DNA was established at that early date and has continued to drive the organization for 38 years. To pursue... Continue reading »

By Anthoni Cefali, CNT Young Innovators Chicago’s climate resilience has been widely discussed following a number of extreme weather events on the East Coast and devastating drought in California, but its economic resilience may deserve just as much attention. Home to Fortune 500 companies and a vibrant tech scene along with the manufacturing muscle that fueled a population boom in the early 1900s, Chicago’s diverse economy employs 4 million people and produces a gross regional product north... Continue reading »

Equitable transit-oriented development (eTOD) seems like a no-brainer for many Chicagoans. Housing and amenities near transit are, after all, community assets. Residents can get to work faster, with less stress, and they’re able to go about their daily business without having to bear the expenses of auto ownership. However, across Chicago, these benefits are not shared equally. Investment in TOD areas (and beyond, for that matter) is uneven. Some neighborhoods don’t have any new investment... Continue reading »

Update 6/17/16: Last night at the Sustain-a-City Celebration, our panel of judges chose the winners of the 2016 Apps Competition. Congratulations to all of our finalists! The winning teams are: 1st place: Stop Crime App 2nd place: Chi Safe Path 3rd place: Neighbors Creating Neighborhoods People's Choice: Schedule Scout A big thank you as well to our judges: Shelley Stern Grach | Director – Civic Engagement for the Technology and Civic Engagement (TCE) group at Microsoft... Continue reading »

As leaders from around the world converge for the Chicago Forum on Global Cities, it's worth asking about the very nature of “global cities.” Are they simply big, innovative, and connected business centers that generate wealth for a select few? Or are they world-leading places because they create economic opportunity for everyone?   The often-cited A.T. Kearney Global Cities Index doesn’t even factor income inequality into its formula. But Euromoniter International finds that the world'... Continue reading »

In our April newsletter, we offered tips for spring cleaning your gutters. Now that your gutters are clear and able to catch the rainwater from your roof, let’s talk about where this water is flowing. The gutters connect to downspouts that direct rainwater from the roof down the exterior walls of the home to the ground. The downspouts may discharge into pipes that take water to the sewer system or be disconnected, which is a good way to keep water from overwhelming the sewer and backing up... Continue reading »

One of the first times Mary Carvlin’s basement filled with rainwater overnight, a local water manager told her something that has, hauntingly, proven true time and time again. He told her that “the thing that makes flooding so traumatic is that when the flood is over, the nightmare is just beginning.” Mary lives in Blue Island, a suburb south of Chicago that saw its heyday back when the primacy of American manufacturing wasn’t yet a memory. Thanks to funding from Cook County, CNT’s RainReady... Continue reading »

One out of every three spaces. CNT visited the back lots and garages of apartment buildings around Chicago at 4:00 a.m., when tenants are asleep and their cars parked, and found one third of parking spaces empty. This excess parking capacity is a neighborhood affordability issue. Each indoor, underground parking space costs $37,300 to build. Multiply that by all of the spaces in the lot, and the price tag is huge. What if developers applied that money to build more affordable housing instead... Continue reading »

Ten years ago, there was widespread concern about the Digital Divide; people in poor neighborhoods had few PCs and little Internet access and thus couldn’t break into the mainstream economy. Today, smartphones have solved a lot of these problems: residents of low-income communities are more likely than more affluent communities to own and use smart phones as a communications vehicle where there is a lack of broadband access. But that’s just the start of what’s possible: moving from... Continue reading »

In January, the Village of Midlothian, located in Chicago’s southern suburbs, took the groundbreaking step of adopting the nation’s first RainReady Plan. Midlothian residents have faced chronic flooding for decades, even in moderately sized rainstorms. Our RainReady program’s planning process – hailed as “transformative” in the Chicago Tribune – brought together residents, civic leaders, regional agencies and federal partners to identify community-scale solutions that will stem flooding and... Continue reading »