The changes reshaping Chicagoland: transit projects, development, stadium moves, budgets, and what each one means for the people who live here.
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.
After 130 published readings of Chicago's own files, the files themselves became a subject: columns that never vary, units nobody states, outcomes the categories cannot record, sibling files never merged, names that drift, geography that fails its own coordinates, and words bigger than the file. Every instance linked and re-verified.
Chicago's own mosquito-trap ledger, twenty seasons deep: 187 positive West Nile pools so far in 2026 - the fourth-most through week 32 in the file, behind 2012, 2016, and 2025 - with the weekly surge charted. Trap-pool tests, never human cases, and the boundary holds on every number.
Chicago's TIF deal file, read whole: 767 council-approved redevelopment and intergovernmental agreements since 1986, $6.46 billion in approved subsidy against $24 billion in project costs. The CTA holds the two biggest; The 78 leads 2026; only 30 percent carry a completion certificate. Approvals, never disbursements.
CDOT's own patch ledger, read whole: 2,756,235 potholes filled across 239,812 completed jobs since 2018 - and 2026 through August 17 has already out-filled all of 2025. The median job runs request-to-patch in about five days; every area's count mapped; completed-jobs boundary stated.
The 1st Ward leads Chicago with 276 active shared-housing registrations - the city's term for Airbnb-style rental permission - with the 44th and 27th behind it and the top ten wards holding 46 percent of the citywide 3,852. Ward grain by design: the file's host names and addresses were never touched.
On September 29, 2026 the City Council voted 46 to 3 to approve, on conditions, the proposed sale of the company that holds Chicago’s parking meters, with a lease amendment under which the city is to receive $75 million, five percent of the company’s net income each year as the amendment defines it, and two percent of what the owners are paid in a later transfer that needs city approval. The 75-year lease itself, priced at $1,156,500,000 in the agreement and $1,151,355,186 on the operator’s books, and the $160,953,305 in true-up payments the city made through fiscal 2024, read from the documents.
West Town leads Chicago in bike-rack installation records since 2015 with 739, the Loop nine behind - and the top ten areas hold just over half the file's 9,448 mapped records. No complete rack census exists in any city file; this list ranks the records that do.
Eight of Chicago’s high-volume 311 request types, ranked by median time from filing to recorded closure: traffic signals in 3 hours, graffiti in 17, potholes in 5.8 days with a 96.9-day slow tail, garbage carts in 15.9 days. 883,837 requests timed.
