Why Chicago's best bet is to lean into walkability

And some good press for the book

The Kennedy “expressway” near my house, moving at about its usual speed

This is a big news week for my adopted home city, Chicago. On Monday, Brandon Johnson took over as mayor, being sworn in and giving an uplifting speech at the Credit Union Arena (I will never get over the hilariously commercial way stadiums are named in this country). And before he even stepped onto the stage, Terry Duffy, the chairman of CME Group, which operates the commodities exchange that underpins Chicago’s high finance sector, fired a shot across the bows, telling Bloomberg that his firm is ready to leave the city “if necessary.” The message is clear: if Mr Johnson really does push for the financial transactions tax he wants, that’s it for Chicago’s financial industry.

I have my own piece about Mr Johnson’s prospects in this week’s issue of The Economist (published before the CME news). I am not as doom-mongering about Chicago as some, but I do think that Johnson is going to have a tricky time. The new mayor wants to transform Chicago. But I suspect, to quote the great poet Nelson Algren, “the best any mayor can do with the city… is just to keep it in repair.” Mr Johnson faces a fiscal reality that I think will restrain him from being able to do the big progressive things he would like to do. He is a better politician than Lori Lightfoot, which is hopeful, but I suspect in policy terms, his mayoralty will be similar.

Yet I do also think that in the long-run, Chicago’s prospects are good. Matt Yglesias wrote a lengthy piece earlier this month about why he thinks the opposite. It basically comes down to: Covid has whacked downtown, and unlike New York or San Francisco, Chicago can’t just upzone its way back to prosperity. I think that misunderstands the past two decades. Chicago actually already has been upzoning its way to prosperity, and that is one of the reasons why housing is still so affordable. Over the past decade, huge increases in the population around the city centre have counteracted decline in neighbourhoods that are struggling, and that have no real New York or San Francisco equivalents. I don’t really see any evidence that is stopping. One of the reasons I am mildly optimistic about the Johnson mayoralty is that Andy Gloor, the CEO of the developer of Lincoln Yards, says that he thinks his project will speed up with Ms Lightfoot out of office. That is a lot of new housing, and with it, new taxpayers.

And yet, you may be asking, what has this got to do with cars? Well, in so far as the city is doing fine, I think it is because this is really the only Midwestern city, and indeed one of a select few cities across America, where you can live a comfortable life without a car. In fact, it is the only affordable city in the country where you can do so. Following that, I think there is one big lever Mr Johnson can pull *practically for free* if he really does want to transform his hometown. That is, he can lean into making Chicago not just a place where you can live without a car, but a place where most people prefer to live without a car. Cars are getting a lot more expensive. The average car payment in America recently passed $700. You can rent a room in a nice apartment for that in Chicago! You might even be able to rent a whole apartment in some places.

The problem at the moment is that most Chicagoans do still feel that they need to have a car. They don’t drive them that far, but they own them. And though I personally get by just fine without one, I get it. The trains are unreliable; the buses even more so; and if you want to cycle, the roads are frightening. Chicago is not right now a genuinely walkable city. I can walk from my house to the lakefront in about 40 minutes, and I have. But I do not do it often, because it involves traversing a bunch of miserable highway bridges and underpasses. Chicago is a city of walkable neighbourhoods separated by expressways. Even the lake is walled off by an awful motorway. A car is quite useful, and the alternatives are not good enough, in part because of how many cars there are everywhere!

But this is an expensive city in which to live a suburban lifestyle. Sure, the rent is a lot cheaper than that of New York. But New Yorkers mostly do not have to also run a car. If you are trying to live a suburban lifestyle, car and parking space and child seats and all, Chicago is not actually that cheap a place to do it. In Columbus or Indianapolis or Houston you will get a bigger house for your money, and pay less tax too. Make it so that families, and not only young people and weird cycling nuts like me, can truly thrive without owning a car (you can still rent them!) and Chicago becomes a lot more competitive.

An announcement

For people who have wanted to buy the book in the UK, I have had to send a lot of apologetic notes, that it is coming soon. Well, it really is. Rather than waiting to see if a British publisher will bite, I have got it legally read, and I am going to publish it myself with Kindle’s direct publishing soon. I will have an exact date soon, and a pre-order button very soon.

The New Yorker treatment

While we are at it, Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker has reviewed it! It is a slightly snarky but very enjoyable review. I am obviously utterly delighted. Obligatory praise pull quote below:

He is a writer for The Economist, and his book reads like a series of Economist pieces: briskly written, well researched, and with a knack for landing the significant statistic right after the crisply summarized argument.

I am going to resist reviewing the review, but I much enjoyed the suggestion that airships were actually a perfectly good form of transatlantic travel unfairly destroyed by bad publicity.

Other bits

Not car related, but a positive Chicago business story. Since moving to America, I have got quite into pinball. It turns out I am not the only one - the pinball industry is booming, and manufacturing of pinball machines, almost all of which happens in the Chicago suburbs, is expanding. Read my latest Economist piece on the boom here.