Estimated reading time: 3 minutes (626 words)

For a city that is as in flux as Chicago, one number sticks out: 2.6 million. That’s the estimated population of the city in 2022, according to the Census Bureau, using the most up to date data. 

That’s well down from the city’s peak of 3.6 million in 1950. But it’s close to a goal that should be attainable with competent leadership and a growth agenda. The mayor and city leaders should set the goal to grow Chicago to three million residents. 

Three million might be a round, semi-arbitrary number, but reaching that milestone would require buying into and following through on an entirely different way of conducting business that would generate numerous positive downstream effects.

In The Atlantic, Derek Thompson coined the term “the abundance agenda” to make the point that we are living in a time of scarcity, and that choosing to be innovative and productive can effectively address a number of the issues facing the nation today. 

His argument is that the United States has chosen a policy of paucity. Decades of poor policy decisions have made it more difficult to accomplish goals like more housing, cleaner energy (including nuclear), easier access to medical treatment and education, and so on. 

He’s correct, of course, that most of this boils down to stifling regulation and red tape. These are choices made by politicians and the agencies they create in an effort to achieve goals that are often tangentially related to the issues at hand (e.g., onerous levels of red tape for simple construction projects). 

Layers of bureaucracy, red tape, and misplaced spending priorities smother creativity, production, and innovation. 

This applies in Chicago, too. Almost 33,000 people left the city between 2021 and 2022, according to U.S. Census numbers. Only New York City lost more. A poll by the Illinois Policy Institute and Echelon Insights in February 2023 found that if given the opportunity, 34 percent of Chicago residents would leave. The largest factors behind their decision were crime, taxes, leadership, and affordability. 

Chicago’s issues are well documented, and as issues are on a national level, most of them are self-inflicted by poor policy choices. Crime is needlessly exacerbated from a combination of a lenient justice system, poor police leadership, controversial state laws, and city policies that actively undermine effective enforcement of the law.

Housing and shelter are still cheaper than other large cities, but Chicago’s property taxes have far outpaced the cost of living. According to a 2020 report released by Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas that examined 20 years of data, Chicago’s total taxes on residential properties “skyrocketed” 164 percent, from $1.33 billion to $3.51 billion and total taxes on commercial properties rose 81 percent, from $1.92 billion to $3.48 billion. As a whole, all taxes billed in Chicago increased 114.8 percent in 20 years — while wages only rose 56.8 percent. 

All of these costs are pushed down to residents, whether they are homeowners or renters, and create difficult conditions that contribute to the issues the city faces today. 

If scarcity is the problem, abundance is the solution. 

The city and Mayor Johnson intuitively seem to understand this, even if some of their championed initiatives are controversial. 

An effective abundance agenda would require a critical examination of every policy, from property taxes and crime, to transportation, zoning, licensing, and everything in between. But examining is just the start. A completely new way of thinking, legislating, and implementing needs to be established. Clear policy objectives followed by competent leadership and a resolve to innovate need to be prioritized.

The goal should be to make the city more responsive to its constituents, and by extension, make it a better place to live, work, and move to — and ultimately, to grow it to three million citizens.