The Downtown Agenda

What does a 21st century downtown need to be?

Downtown Chicago is not returning to its pre-pandemic daily activity or economic value because it was optimized for patterns that have since changed: how people work, live, shop, and go out.

For generation upon generation, downtown Chicago has been the center of gravity for our city’s economy: the largest driver of regional output, the heart of the city’s tourism, the home of its major institutions, and the anchor of the property tax base that helps fund services across the city’s other 76 neighborhoods. That position is no longer secure; a downtown built for old patterns will keep losing ground to the new ones.

An underperforming downtown triggers a shift in the tax burden to homeowners and landlords in our outer neighborhoods, thereby threatening affordability.

For these reasons, the Chicago Architecture Center is convening a working group of civic leaders, business executives, architects, and urban planners to take a deeper look at the health and vitality of downtown. Ultimately, this group is wrestling with one question: What does a 21st century downtown need to be?

Drawing from research efforts by local architect teams, economists, public commentary, and dozens of interviews with subject matter experts worldwide, our working group seeks to produce a set of near-term policy recommendations by early 2027 with emphasis on spurring more human activity and more financial investment in the city’s historic core. The work rests on original economic modeling of downtown today: what is it worth now, what role does it play in the city’s fiscal health, and how it can shape the affordability of neighborhoods well beyond the Loop.