How do you renovate an entire city? This page shows how a neighborhood gets renovated, how the work spreads, and what happens when, both in the neighborhoods where the rebuild starts first (the frunchroom zones) and citywide.
HOW IT WORKS
HOW DO YOU RENOVATE AN ENTIRE CITY?
You do it one neighborhood at a time. Start with its center, spread out block by block, add more every year, and connect them until they meet.
THE CONDITION REPORT
What's under the street today.
Before you renovate a house, you inspect it. Chicago is behind on every layer of the street: the pipes, the pavement, the bridges. Most of it you never see until it breaks.
~4,400 miles
of water mains under Chicago's streets, and about 4,500 miles of sewers. In 2011 the city estimated about a quarter of the water mains and more than 41% of the sewers were over 100 years old. It hasn't published a newer count.
4.3 miles
of water main replaced in 2023, against the city's own goal of 12. At that pace it would take about a thousand years to get through the system once.
~170 miles
of streets and alleys repaved in 2025, out of roughly 5,900. A street lasts about 15 years. At that pace, yours comes up about once every 35.
14 years
with no preventive maintenance on the city's main streets, from 2000 to 2014, the Inspector General found. Each dollar spent on preventive maintenance can save $4 to $10 in rebuilding later.
100 of 601
bridges in Chicago are rated poor, counting bridges of every owner, not only the city's.
412,000
lead service lines still carrying water into homes. The city's current plan finishes in 2076.
Double fees
are all it takes for a utility to cut open a street the city just repaved. A street can be repaved one year and dug up the next.
Today's pace, next to what it takes to keep up.
Chicago falls behind for a simple reason. Every street and pipe has a lifespan, and each year the city replaces less than wears out. The plan is to keep up: replace each street and pipe on the schedule it was built to last, before it fails instead of after.
Streets and alleys
About 5,900 miles in all · MILES REPAVED A YEAR
NEEDED TO KEEP UP: THE PLAN: about 400 a year (for a 15-year street life)
TODAY: about 170 (2025)
The city's own standard since 2015 is 300 a year. At today's pace, your street comes up about every 35 years.
Water mains
About 4,400 miles in all · MILES REPLACED A YEAR
NEEDED TO KEEP UP: THE PLAN: about 44 a year (for a 100-year pipe life)
TODAY: 4.3 (2023)
The city's own target is 12 a year. At today's pace, it would take about a thousand years to get through the system once.
Sewers
About 4,500 miles in all · MILES REPLACED OR LINED A YEAR
NEEDED TO KEEP UP: THE PLAN: about 45 a year (for a 100-year pipe life)
TODAY: 3.1 replaced and about 35 lined (2023)
Sewers are the closest to pace, because a sound pipe can be lined from the inside. Replacement is far behind: 3.1 miles in 2023, against the city's own target of 6.
Lead service lines
About 412,000 still in the ground · LINES REPLACED A YEAR
NEEDED TO KEEP UP: THE PLAN: about 20,000 a year to finish before the federal deadline, around mid-2049
TODAY: about 8,000 (2025)
On the city's current plan, the last lead line comes out in 2076.
Sources: City of Chicago 2025–2029 Capital Improvement Program; City of Chicago water and sewer release (October 14, 2011); Department of Water Management 2024 budget hearing response; CDOT and CBS Chicago (April 2026); Chicago Inspector General, CDOT Pavement Management Audit (December 2015); Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ (April 2026); WBEZ (June 30, 2026); CDOT Roadway Construction Moratoriums. The "needed to keep up" rates, the thousand-year and the 35-year figures are campaign arithmetic: about 5,900 miles of street over a 15-year life, and 4,400 miles of water main and 4,500 of sewer over a 100-year life; 4,400 miles at 4.3 a year; 5,900 miles at about 170 a year. The 2023 sewer figures are the Department of Water Management's. The 2025 lead pace is the city's own figure; the 2076 date is the city's current plan.
WHY DO IT THIS WAY
Upgrade everything at once, then keep it up.
Chicago fixes neighborhoods piecemeal, over decades. The city replaces a water main one year and the sidewalks three years later, and resurfaces the street two years after that. Then someone digs up the new pavement to reach a pipe. Each one is a patch, the patches never add up to a neighborhood, and the city keeps paying to come back to the same block. Nobody knows what's under the street until they open it.
This plan renovates a neighborhood the way you'd renovate a house: everything in one go, from the pipes up. Then the city has as-built drawings, a warranty on the work, and a schedule it can see coming. That's the whole idea, and it's why the work goes one neighborhood at a time instead of a little bit everywhere.
Everything upgraded at once
The pipes, sewer, street, curbs, sidewalks, trees, wires and fiber are all upgraded at once, in one trench, by one contractor. Chicago's own Project Coordination Office saved $251 million from 2012 to 2022 just by getting departments to share a trench. This plan takes that idea all the way, to every layer of the street.
As-built drawings and a warranty
When it's done, the city knows exactly what it has and where. It gets as-built drawings, which show what was actually built, and a digital record of everything underground. And the work comes with a warranty, so what fails early gets fixed by whoever built it.
A maintenance plan we can keep
Because everything went in the same year, we know when each piece comes due. That becomes a preventive maintenance plan the city can stick to, instead of waiting for things to break.
Enough investment to change a neighborhood
A greened lot here and a bike lane there don't change what a developer, a grocer or a family decides. Renovating a whole neighborhood at once does change those decisions. When the city puts real money into a corridor, a builder isn't gambling on that neighborhood alone anymore.
When each piece comes due
Everything goes in the same year, so the next hundred years of work is on the calendar from day one. When the pipes are due, everything above them is rebuilt in the same dig.
Street surface
about every 15 years
Curbs and sidewalks
about every 30 years
Water mains and sewers
about every 100 years
Year 0
50
100
Green marks the year everything is new. Black marks the next scheduled work. In between, preservation work, like sealing cracks early and sealing the surface at mid-life, makes the street surface last longer.
IT STARTS IN THE FRUNCHROOM
Every neighborhood gets a downtown.
Think about the last place you went that you didn't want to leave. Maybe it was a ski town, a square in Italy, or Disney World with your kids. You could walk everywhere, cars weren't in charge, and the whole place was built around people being in it. Chicago's neighborhoods don't have that. If someone says "meet me in Wicker Park," you have to ask where.
Frunchroom is Chicago slang for the front room, the room in a Chicago house you keep nice for company. Each neighborhood gets one: a free public plaza at the center where you can just be, without buying anything, with the shops facing in and the cars taken out of the middle. And each frunchroom is the center of a zone, the area where the rest of the plan is put in place first.
1 mile
The frunchroom
It's a free public plaza where two main streets meet, with an artwork at the center that makes power for the corridor.
Two main streets, a mile each way
From the plaza, each main street runs about a mile out in every direction to the next major street: about four miles of corridor, rebuilt all at once from the pipes up. It's all done in one trench, by one contractor, on one timeline.
The zone
The zone is the box those major streets make around the plaza, about a mile out on every side. That's where the rest of the plan lands first: faster permits, the new zoning that lets you build what your neighbors already built, corner stores and greened vacant lots. Chicago has a major street about every half mile, so the zone follows the grid, and the box bends to fit the streets that are there.
Then block by block
The rebuild moves outward from the center through the blocks in the box: new water mains and sewers, sidewalks, trees, buried wires and geothermal energy.
HOW A NEIGHBORHOOD GETS RENOVATED
From application to opening day.
Any neighborhood can apply
All 77 of Chicago's community areas can apply, rich or poor. Even Lincoln Park doesn't have a frunchroom today. Sites are scored on transit and the shops already there, because a frunchroom has to go where a neighborhood center already half-exists. Without that, it would be a plaza with nothing around it.
Chicago picks
Twenty sites are named finalists. The winners are picked half by public vote and half by aldermen. Need decides the order. The qualifying sites that have been most starved of investment go first, and at least five spots in the first round are guaranteed to them.
Protections go on first
Before the zone is even announced, the city funds community land trusts that buy and hold homes so they stay affordable, tenants get the first chance to buy their building when it sells, and tenant and property tax protections are already running. These protections come from Keep Chicago Chicago, the plan's protections for people who already live there. If they aren't in place, the zone doesn't break ground. A plaza that drives out the people it was built for would be a failure.
Try it before pouring concrete
Within weeks of being picked, the street gets a trial run. It's closed to through-traffic, and furniture, food trucks and planters go out. It costs almost nothing, the neighborhood finds out what its own block can feel like, and we learn whether the site was right before anybody pours a plaza.
Design it with the neighborhood
The first year is design. At the center goes a public artwork that also makes power for the corridor, designed by the neighborhood with an artist it picks. Pilsen's should feel like Pilsen. Bronzeville's should honor the Great Migration.
Build it once
The whole corridor is built at once: the plaza, street, water main, sewer, sidewalks, trees and geothermal energy for the buildings alongside it. All of it goes in one trench, built by one contractor on one timeline. When it's done, the city gets as-built drawings, a digital record of everything underground and a warranty on the work, and the preventive maintenance schedule starts that day. Every storefront on a block under construction gets $1,500 automatically, and can claim up to $25,000 a year for documented losses.
Open it
The zone opens with two rebuilt main streets, about four miles in all, and a free plaza at the center, running on its own power. The first zones open in Year 3.
The Frunchroom
Keep Chicago Chicago
HOW IT SPREADS
Each zone grows out from its center until the zones meet.
Here's what it could look like. The zones cover the whole city like tiles. Each one is a box about two miles on a side, around its own downtown. About four zones open a year. The rebuilt blocks spread out from each center, paid for by the Chicago Remodel Fund, a voter-approved line on the property tax. The Yellow Brick Road corridors, streets where people walking come first and then bikes, link the zones together. Pick a year to watch it fill in.
Year 3
Year 5
Year 7
Year 10
Year 13
Year 16
The Loop
Lake
Michigan
Open zone, its center and two main streets
Blocks rebuilt, spreading out
Zone being built
Yellow Brick Road links
Spine Line under Western
32 zones
open by Year 10
more zones being built
~62%
of the city shown inside an open zone
This is an illustration, not a plan. No zones have been chosen. The city is cut into equal tiles on the address grid; real zones follow the major streets and the neighborhoods that apply. The order is made up to show the pattern: spread across the city first, then fill in. The policy puts the qualifying neighborhoods that have been most starved of investment first. Corridor links are drawn as straight lines between the nearest open centers, not real routes. The pace shown is about four zones opening a year from Year 3, and 30 to 32 by Year 10 (campaign arithmetic). O'Hare airport is left off the map, which is why it shows 54 zones rather than the roughly 57 the city's full land area works out to. Boundaries and the river are from City of Chicago map files, placed on the address grid approximately.
Assess every street first
In the first year, every block, pipe and bridge in the city gets surveyed. Not every pipe is old: the city had replaced more than 700 miles of water main by 2019. So the assessment, not a guess, decides what each street needs, and anything critical gets fixed right away.
When a street is opened, do all of it
When a street needs a new water main or sewer, everything on it is done in the same dig: the pipes, the street, the curbs and the sidewalks. Then that stretch doesn't need major work again for 15 to 30 years. Streets whose pipes are sound get repaved and kept up on schedule instead.
Zones first, then everywhere
The frunchroom zones come first: their blocks are first in line, and then streets citywide go in order of their condition. The budget covers 44 miles of streets fully rebuilt from the pipes up each year by Year 5, about 1% of the city's streets, plus 400 miles of repaving a year by Year 4. The assessment decides which streets those are.
More zones every year
The city adds about four new zones a year and pays for them in cash, reaching 30 to 32 zones by Year 10, and they keep coming until every part of the city is in one. Each zone covers about four square miles, so it takes 57 zones to cover the city, and at four a year the last ones are picked around Year 15 (campaign arithmetic). From Year 4, once the River Crossing Fee (the toll non-residents pay to drive across the city's bridges over the Chicago River) has a track record, the city can borrow against it to build zones faster.
Connected to each other
Yellow Brick Road corridors link the centers, so you can get from one neighborhood's downtown to the next on foot, by bike or in a small electric car without touching the Loop. The Spine Line, a new subway under Western Avenue and 95th Street, ties every L line together.