The City of Chicago estimates that more than 30,000 vacant lots exist within its borders—with approximately 10,000 of them owned by the municipal government. Concentrated primarily in the South and West Sides, these city-owned parcels collectively have a similar land mass to Chicago’s famed Loop district.
While it’s impossible to figure out how to use all this space immediately, a wide swath of architects, planners, and city officials have ideas—and plans—for how all this space can be utilized to benefit Chicago.
The vacant lots are the result of decades of systemic disinvestment in those two neighborhoods, as well as a foreclosure crisis and a shrinking population. Comparable empty lots on the North Side, left behind by demolished homes, are often rapidly developed into single-family housing.
Between the creation of community assets, “missing middle housing,” and programs designed to empower neighborhood residents, Chicago has the chance to utilize these lots, and, in turn, become a very different city in the coming decades.
The Large Lots Program
Approximately 80% of city-owned land in Chicago is zoned for residential use, and the city wants to give much of that land back to residents for a very affordable price.
The Large Lots Program, initially offered from 2014 to 2018, oversaw the sale of approximately 1,400 parcels for $1 each. In November 2022, the city’s Department of Planning and Development consolidated its land-sale programs into a single online portal called ChiBlockBuilder.
“We want to make it easier for people in the neighborhoods to buy land on their block for a dollar,” says Kathleen Dickhut, deputy commissioner in Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development.
“When we talked about it with residents, many of whom have been taking care of this land for years, we decided they should have the first crack at it. We don’t want people buying this land for a dollar if they don’t already live in the neighborhood,” she says. “It’s a wealth-building mechanism. It’s not a development program, and the main restriction is zoning. You can build a house on the land; please do, we encourage that.”
Naturally, this program is in high demand. Dickhut’s department uses old-school lottery cages and balls to decide who can purchase the land if there are multiple interested parties.
“If there are two houses next to a vacant lot, often both [sets of residents] want it. We have to do what’s fair and just have a raffle,” says Dickhut, who added that lots are not split.
When it comes to long-term goals for the program, Peter Strazzabosco, another deputy commissioner at the Department of Planning and Development, says the city wants to increase the population of the South and West Sides of the city.
“We’re trying to put the property back into the hands of the community by literally letting the community take ownership of the land within it,” says Strazzabosco. “We’re not in the business of owning land and just letting it sit there; we want the communities to take ownership of the land. The benefits of that potentially include housing development that can, in turn, increase the population and make the areas livable for more people.”
The Available City
David Brown, a designer, researcher, and professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was the artistic director for the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial. The exhibition focused on “the Available City,” “a framework for a collaborative, community-led design approach,” according to biennial literature.
“We were really thinking about the impact we can have on neighborhoods and how city-owned lots can be used as a collective space system across the city,” says Brown.
The Biennial looked at how local community organizations can implement programs on these city-owned lots, and Brown hopes that the city will implement community programming on these lots, too.
“A lot of these communities have seen disinvestment, and these lots are an indicator of that disinvestment, but we can make it so that land can become a resource or a means to provide a space that addresses the interest or need of those communities,” says Brown. “How does a set of these spaces contribute to a larger new city landscape? That’s something I’m interested in exploring.”
It’s important to identify the priorities of the community, says Brown, citing the need for “improvisation.” Within each neighborhood, there are myriad organizations that have different relationships with the community and distinctly understand the needs of the neighborhood.
One of the projects in which the Available City is involved is in Englewood, a South Side neighborhood, where Brown, community organization Grow Greater Englewood, and Tokyo-based architecture firm Atelier Bow Wow collaborated on the Englewood Village Plaza that has become a space with “a range of uses, including a weekly community market, a learning garden, and a site for cultural discussions and film screenings, all rooted in Black culinary and land traditions,” according to the project description.
As the main entry point for the Englewood Nature Trail, the plaza is a “hub for community-drive tactical urbanism and place keeping,” the project description continues, with the design focused on urban farming and community gathering.
Another project includes a collaboration with Brown, the Westside Association for Community Action, Open Architecture Chicago, Freedom House, and Miami-based Studio Barnes called “Block Party” located in North Lawndale. This project was based on Chicago’s rich history of annual block parties that provide resources to vulnerable residents, particularly on the South and West Sides of the city. Play structures were created, and the installation serves as a site for workshops and events for the community.
Ultimately, Brown believes that the number of lots can lead to different types of projects and initiatives across the city.
“Yes, there’s a need for housing, but there’s also a need for other amenities. Instead of saying that housing is the exclusive thing that’s needed, we should be asking how we can provide a whole set of resources for a neighborhood so that it can sustain itself more readily,” he says.
Hem House
While Brown has recognized the potential of these lots for community-wide assets, architects like Craig Reschke, AIA, founding principal of Chicago-based Future Firm have embraced the challenge presented by their small size and the missing middle housing in the city.
Hem House sits in East Garfield Park, about 4 miles from the Loop district, and was listed for $399,000 last year. Built on a standard 25-by-125–foot lot, Hem House is a 1,300-square-foot single-family home. At 16 feet wide, Hem House has “fairly generous,” according to Reschke, side yards by Chicago standards, which allowed Reschke to add more windows and allow in more natural light.
“It’s a house that doesn’t look like a lot of others in Chicago. It has a very contemporary appeal to it and we think there’s a market for great design in Chicago that isn’t being met right now,” Reschke says. “There are certainly very high-end homes that are being custom–designed by really talented architects in the city, but when you’re in that mid-range there aren’t a lot of design options.”
Hem House has the potential to help fill the big demand for missing middle housing, coupled with good design.
“We hope that Hem House has inspired others, whether it’s developers or architects or owners, to think about houses that are more interesting spatially and more beautiful in their appearance than what is currently out there,” he says. “We think there’s a growth opportunity in different [housing] typologies. We hope that will be more attainable for a lot of people.”
A recent Accessory Dwelling Unit ordinance passed in Chicago may also provide new middle-income housing options. The ordinance lets property owners build an ADU above or in place of a garage before building a primary house on the lot. “It may be interesting for someone who wants a small house but a larger lot to maintain or wants something small now with the ability to grow in the future,” Reschke says.
He notes, however, that the key to tackling vacant lots is a community-by-community approach and that single-family homes aren’t the perfect solution for every neighborhood in the city.
“When you look at the city broadly there’s so many people with interesting approaches to the vacant lot issue, and hopefully all of those things can come together and make Chicago a more interesting place,” Reschke says. “We, as architects, like messy and interesting cities.”