Bolstering Urban Resilience in Chicago

Mark Wessel reports on Resilient Chicago, a plan that focuses on the city’s neighborhoods, infrastructure, and community preparedness. It keeps resilience efforts moving forward after the Rockefeller Foundation announced it would not continue the 100 Resilient Cities initiative.

The Resilient Chicago planning process started in 2016 by seeking public input to identify the city’s most pressing challenges: neighborhood disparities, crime and violence, critical infrastructure, and community preparedness. The plan highlights the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund and equitable transit-oriented development as effective strategies to address disparities, notes Wessel. 

Wessel writes that the initiative’s future is unclear as the city prepares to bring on a new mayor. "But at least for the moment, [Stefan] Schaffer remains focused on what he feels is the most pressing task at hand: addressing the key, underlying disparities that cause challenges to Chicago’s most vulnerable residents, such as poverty rate, housing cost burden, and neighborhood flooding, among others."