Cityscape’s Top 12 stories in 2021
By: Steven Vance
Tags: Chicago, Building Code, Accessory Dwelling Units, End Of Year Review

Like 2020, 🏘 accessory dwelling units was a dominant story for Chicago Cityscape, but we talked about other trends as well. Last year I wrote, “I’m looking forward to seeing what backyard house designs are built…”

Last year I wrote, “I’m looking forward to seeing what backyard house designs are built…” Unfortunately, no backyard houses were completed but six were permitted and 22 ADUs have been permitted overall.

January 2021

Chicago Cityscape enhanced every relevant feature to identify ADU opportunities for service providers. It’s easy to look up any address to see if ADUs are eligible at that location, and it’s possible to identify every eligible property in an area.

There were no blog posts in February.

March

We featured Carmin’s future backyard house, which was the first commissioned project that a client or architect shared with us.

Building permits tell a lot of stories, including how there’s been an increase in multi-family buildings constructed out of wood, that weren't allowed prior to the adoption of the 2019 Chicago Building Code.

The largest wood frame building under construction in Chicago right now was getting face brick last week.

April

Every year, Cook County publishes a very high-resolution aerial photography dataset, and Cityscape users can look at it right inside any Address Snapshot. Since publishing that tutorial we added the 2020 aerial imagery.

May

The City of Chicago began accepting applications for ADU building permits and at the time we published 110 property owners had expressed intent to build a basement unit or backyard house.

June

Chicago Cityscape announced that it received a grant to create the “Data Equity Cohort”, a group of real estate professionals and industry-adjacent organization leaders to help us understand what kind of data they need to improve their development efforts and how we could best provide it to them.

Chicago Cityscape hosted its first happy hour for DEC members at Jolly Pumpkin in Hyde Park in November.

July

The first three permits for buildings at the Obama Presidential Center were issued (the Forum, parking garage, and Chicago Public Library branch). Land clearing work had begun months earlier.

August

We broke down the newly released demographic data from the 2020 Census, showing a significant decline in Chicago’s black population but a significant increase in population in the south Lakefront community areas.

September

Chicago Cityscape created the only — still true today — map of the new Affordable Requirements Ordinance areas that took effect the following month. These maps are essential for developers and zoning attorneys.

October

We wrote a blog post to celebrate the six ADU permits that had been issued, and talked about the additional “applications of intent” that more property owners had filed since writing about those in May.

November

In collaboration with MAP Strategies, we looked at the new construction hotspots across Chicago, highlighting Portage Park and Jefferson Park, as well as a particularly active street in Bronzeville.

Tres Lotes is a development of three detached houses designed by Via Chicago Architects on Calumet Avenue in Bronzeville. The houses were offered with an optional backyard house.

December

Reaching 21 ADU permits this year was a milestone. While neither Cityscape nor the City of Chicago had a goal for the number of ADU permits issued in the first seven months of re-legalization, I secretly wanted at least 20 by the end of the year.