Lab Report: What Happened When Chicago Tore Down Its Most Notorious Public Housing

Public housing experiment: Politico Magazine looks at the successes and failures of Chicago’s $1.5 billion effort to tear down its worst public housing and rebuild from scratch, in a Q&A with housing expert Susan Popkin:

It was a housing intervention, and people got better housing and a safer neighborhood, and that’s a big [improvement] given how Chicago was when it started. But they were a dreadful housing authority; they were the bottom of HUD’s management list. … The thought that they were going to be able to pull that off and deal with the needs of the people who lived in the houses was pretty daunting.And they didn’t at first. They really struggled with relocating the residents.

More context in a February piece by Popkin for CityLab.

Win for sanctuaries: A federal judge in California Thursday refused to reinstate President Trump’s executive order that cut off certain funding from sanctuary cities, allowing lawsuits  challenging the order by San Francisco and Santa Clara County to move forward. (AP)

Hyperloop hype: While everybody’s abuzz over Tesla boss Elon Musk’s tease yesterday about a D.C. to New York Hyperloop, across the country Urbanize L.A. dismisses the concept as fantasy, saying: “Los Angeles should build subway tunnels to relieve its traffic, just as every other major city in the developed world has done.”

The ride-sharing dilemma: As Uber and Lyft continue to win an edge over public transit, local governments face some big decisions ahead: Should they outsource to the private companies, or steal their ideas then regulate them out? (Bloomberg View)

Obamacare block: President Trump’s administration has slashed contracts with two vendors that provided community-based assistance for Affordable Care Act sign-ups in 18 cities—a move some see as another attempt to destabilize the marketplace for Obamacare. (AP)

Don’t stop the startups: Huge corporations like Amazon and Hewlett Packard were once startups based out of their founders’ garages, Planetizen reminds us. So why are city governments choking home-based ventures today with restrictive zoning rules?

Jersey charm:

Jersey City's waterfront glowing before an evening storm. #jc #sky #skyline #sunset #color #storm #citylab #citylabontheground

A post shared by Josh (@joshnh4h) on Jul 20, 2017 at 7:09pm PDT

Share your city scenes on Instagram with #citylabontheground