CITY OPEN WORKSHOP

The 6th workshop of our fall season was kicked off by Kendra Freeman of the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) on the topic of Equitable Development. Growing up in Cottage Grove Heights in the East Side part of Chicago, Kendra developed a passion for advocating for so...

On November 6th, City Open Workshop welcomed Gaylord Minett, urban planner and community organizer who has experience in stakeholder facilitation and human-centered design from his work at the Greater Chatham Initiative and Rebuild Foundation. 

Gaylord pr...

The fourth workshop for our fall season was led by Curtis Florence, a Development Manager at Clayco-CRG. It was during this session that we furthered our research around ADU design, construction and urban development. Curtis lead the discussion by asking the group, “If...

Our third workshop of the season was basically a cracked fire hydrant of knowledge thanks to the generous contributions of not one, but two guest speakers. This was compounded by the POV (point of view) factor -  both of this week’s speakers presented on strategies to...

 The 2nd workshop of this Fall was led by James Young and Mark Pomarico (both from Booth Hansen) who have been active participants in technical studies and advocacy work related to ADUs ordinance during the past year. This workshop focused on their research related to...

We kicked off our Spring season learning from Diane Limas, Maria Elena Sifuentes, Charisma Thapa from Communities United, Mary Rosenberg from Access Living, and Rachel Arfa from Equip for Equality, and discussed aspects of inclusion and disability in rel...

Our end of season tradition includes a social gathering – this time we ventured to Skylark in Pilsen. We took this also as an opportunity to participate in this year's On the Table, this city-wide series of small community meetings organized by the Chicago Community Tr...

At our last workshop we had a double feature – (1) Amanda Scotese, founder of Chicago Detours joined us to share her ideas about Tourism as Placemaking; additionally, we were intrigued by the recent announcement by the Pritzker Traubert Foundation of the (2) Chicago Pr...

As we approach the end of the Spring season of the City Open Workshop, we gathered in the UIC Great Cities Institute on April 24 for a refresher and overview on Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU).

This workshop was led by Steven Vance, Skyler Larrimore and Eli Lechter, who...

At our last workshop on April 10, City Open convened at the UIC Great Cities Institute to learn about what it takes to source revenue to fund community-driven projects, by looking at real estate development budget and project costs. The workshop was led by Navi Sandhu,...