The University of Chicago

Urban Policy & Infrastructure

  • Browner Pastures

    Browner Pastures

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    Sam Quinney

    Brownfield makeovers aren’t glamorous for everyone.

  • Flooding the Urban Food Deserts

    Flooding the Urban Food Deserts

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    Abigail Mackenzie Kerl

    A new Chicago start-up hopes to fill up the city’s food deserts with a new approach—and with sound policy.

  • Disparities in Home Are Disparities in Health

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    ashleegabrysch

    A family’s housing reality is often viewed as an index of its economic situation. However, Brian Jacob, Jens Ludwig, and Douglas Miller’s new NBER working paper joins a groundswell of research that demonstrates that housing situations are in fact proxies for much more than one’s socioeconomic status.

  • Where Are Charters the Answer?

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    Jen Cowhy

    Charters are commonly seen as the answer to urban school districts’ troubles. However, it appears that they are not the answer to education issues everywhere, and may not be the answer at all.

  • Greening the Rust Belt

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    Mike Sitkowski

    As the economy struggles to rebound and the foreclosure crisis takes its toll on American cities, vacant land and abandoned buildings continue to abound. For America’s once-great manufacturing cities, the impact has been even greater as metropolitan areas throughout the Midwest struggle to find an identity in a post-industrial world.…

  • Immergluck and the Evolution of the FHA

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    Harry Moroz

    Some might like to blame George Bush’s “ownership society,” with its emphasis on homeownership as a cure-all for social ills of all kinds, for the intrusion of the federal government into the housing and mortgage markets. But as Dan Immergluck explains in his recent article, government agencies – particularly the…