The changes reshaping Chicagoland: transit projects, development, stadium moves, budgets, and what each one means for the people who live here.
Chicago's bike-rack records come in two files that were never merged: 9,449 records of installs since 2015 - reaching all 77 community areas, led by West Town and the Loop - and a 5,164-row file frozen in 2011. More than half the current records carry no type, the quantity column's unit is unstated, and no complete rack count exists in either file.
Sixteen adopted budget ordinances, 2011-2026, read as one: the only department label in every file is Finance General, which nearly tripled to $8.19 billion - 44 percent of the $18.67 billion 2026 ordinance - while the salaries account's share fell from 29 to 19 percent. Authorizations, never spending.
CDOT's permit file, read whole: 2,300,109 rows, 1,801,871 distinct applications - and 985,144 of them marked Open, including 88,142 with 2016 start dates. Eleven permit types from public-way openings to dumpsters, the year arc since 2013, and the file's calendar noise, disclosed.
Chicago's TIF Investment Committee recorded 1,698 decisions on requests for TIF money across 2019-2024 - 1,515 approvals carrying $4.48 billion of the $4.95 billion asked - and its recorded outcomes contain no denial category at all. The biggest ask: the Red Line Extension's $950 million. Both committee files read at their own boundaries, with the 2025-26 file's missing outcome column disclosed.
Chicago's house-share ledger runs both directions: 3,852 active registrations spread across all 50 wards - and a prohibited list of 2,230 buildings totaling 184,978 units whose owners or boards filed to bar house-sharing, heaviest on the high-rise lakefront. Three city files read at their own grains, host names never touched, and the list's unusable vote dates disclosed rather than smoothed.
Chicago's own GIS of the Pedway sums to 6.66 miles of traced walkway across 44 named routes - while the dataset's own description says 'roughly five miles.' Both figures are the city's; we added up the map. The ten longest links, the 2013 time-capsule route names, and what the Pedway is not - measured entirely from the city's last published map of the system.
The lowest posted street clearance in CDOT's truck-limit file is 9 feet 8 inches, at Melrose and Ravenswood - and the 1800 West block of Ravenswood holds three of the eight lowest postings. 1,713 posted height restrictions read in full: the fourteen lowest with ties shipped whole, one in three below 13 feet 6, and the Loop and Near West Side tied at 134 postings each. Posted signs, not measured steel - the file names no structures, and neither does this page.
The Harold Washington Library Center logged 953,677 visits in 2025 - about three times any other location - with Sulzer Regional the busiest branch outside the Loop at 310,522. The top ten locations by the library system's own door counts, each with its 2019 comparison; only two beat their pre-pandemic count.
No Chicago lobbyist reported receiving more in 2025 than Patrick Carey: $1,837,000 across his clients' quarterly filings, with John Dunn at $1,795,250 behind him. The ten registered filers with the most reported compensation, every figure summed as filed from the city's mandatory disclosure ledger - which records pay, not influence.
Bally's Corporation tops Chicago's 2025 lobbying ledger: lobbyists reported receiving $1,125,113 from it, more than any other client name in the city's mandatory disclosures. The ten clients with the most reported compensation - a three-way $240,000 tie inside the list - every figure as filed, with the co-filing ambiguity bounded, never subtracted.
