The changes reshaping Chicagoland: transit projects, development, stadium moves, budgets, and what each one means for the people who live here.
The ten Chicago community areas with the most Water in Basement 311 requests since December 2018: Austin leads at 8,207 of 69,852, 1.7 times Chicago Lawn, with a Southwest Side cluster behind it - requests, not verified floods, counts, not rates, and a table shaped by where the worst storm days landed.
The Deep Tunnel from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District's own records: 1.55 trillion gallons pumped back out of TARP to the Stickney and Calumet plants in the 28 years the district's daily logs carry in full, 2018 the record year; $3.856 billion in contract dollars; 110.4 miles and 15.15 billion gallons of reservoirs - and a last reservoir stage the district's own documents moved from 2029 to 2032, with an 18-month hole in the posted logs stated, not filled.
The Skyway lease from the city's posted documents and the owners' own filings: $1.83 billion up front in January 2005 for 99 years, $446.3 million of it refunding Skyway bonds; three reserve funds whose schedules show two drawn to $134,000 and $4,000 by 2016; $11,977,992 in deal fees; and $1,441,818,000 still unrecognized at the end of 2025, counted $18.5 million a year through 2103. Control of the concessionaire has changed twice; the city's record stops at 2016.
Chicago's 311 file holds 69,852 Water in Basement requests since December 2018, and they arrive with the storms: one day in August 2025 holds 5.4 percent of them, the twenty busiest days a third, July and August half. Austin leads at 8,207. Requests, not verified floods - and a closing clock that records status, not findings.
The ten largest department labels in Chicago's 2026 Budget Ordinance file: Finance General - not an operating department - leads at $8.19 billion, 44 percent of the $18.67 billion total, ahead of police at $2.11 billion. Appropriations, not spending, summed by the file's own labels.
The eight charges that appear on the most dockets in Chicago's administrative-hearings file, from 144,837 cases: inspection orders lead at 39,062, ahead of porch, wall, and stair repairs - counted at docket grain, with no fine sums, for reasons the parent analysis explains.
Chicago's administrative-hearings violation file at honest grain: 841,271 charge-line rows describing 144,837 dockets, every one issued by the Buildings department despite the general name. Hearings collapsed in 2020 and 2025 was the busiest year since 2010; 44 percent of dockets carry a fine; the file records no disposition.
Chicago's 811 hit ledger, read at report grain: 62,897 notice rows describing 14,508 hit reports since 2015. Gas service leads the struck-facility mentions, Peoples Gas-owned facilities appear in 43 percent of reports - and 846 reports record what was hit as UNKNOWN. Reports, never verified strikes.
Chicago's passenger-vehicle register, read whole: 16,329 records across nine types, fewer than half ACTIVE - and more taxi records at VIOLATION (3,518) than ACTIVE (2,679). Active liveries now outnumber active taxis; three types have no active record at all; 14 electrics citywide. Statuses reported exactly as recorded.
The Near West Side leads Chicago with 8,088 completed pothole patch jobs since 2018 - but by the file's own potholes-filled counts, Ashburn leads the whole city with 89,393. Both measures shown, with the completed-jobs boundary from the full patch-ledger analysis.
