Paved Paradise rebuilds Chicago's streets all at once, from the pipes under the street to the sidewalk, so every layer is done together and each street is dug up only once. By Year 4, the city repaves 400 miles a year. By Year 5, it rebuilds about 44 miles a year from the pipes up. The city publishes the schedule for every layer of the street, so you can see when your street is scheduled for work.
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PART OF THE NEW BURNHAM PLAN
CONSTRUCT · SYSTEMS
Paved Paradise
You won't keep dodging the same pothole, because each street is rebuilt from the pipes up, once, and then kept up on a schedule.
You won't watch a crew tear up your street to reach a pipe a year after it was repaved. Every rebuilt block comes with as-built drawings, a record of exactly what was built and where, and a warranty on the work.
Chicago fixes its streets one layer at a time, one complaint at a time, and never fast enough to keep up. Just keeping the streets from getting worse takes about 400 miles of repaving a year. The Chicago Department of Transportation resurfaced 188 miles of streets and alleys in 2024. The city's Inspector General found no preventive maintenance on main (arterial) streets from 2000 to 2014, and noted that every $1 of preventive maintenance could save $4 to $10 in major repairs. Putting it off doesn't save money. It hands the bill to the next mayor, with interest.
So we plan the whole street together: the pipes, lead lines, sewers and fiber underneath, the road and curbs, and the sidewalks, lights, trees and bus shelters on top. When a street's pipes are due, every layer is rebuilt in one dig. We repave 400 miles a year by Year 4 and fully rebuild about 44 miles a year from the pipes up by Year 5, so every street gets rebuilt about once a century, on purpose, instead of when it fails. A survey of every block decides which streets are due first. Then every repaved street gets a maintenance schedule, so it stays good. Western Avenue goes first, rebuilt end to end while the Spine Line, the new subway under Western Avenue and 95th Street, is built beneath it.
Everybody gains. Drivers dodge fewer potholes. People walking get even sidewalks and curb ramps. Homeowners get backflow valves on their sewer connections and stormwater storage where the block floods. The work is done by Chicagoans, with local hiring, Chicago Trades Pipeline apprenticeships and the Dignity Wage on every contract.
Your water and sewer bill rises no more than 1% a year above inflation, about $5 a month more by Year 10. The rest comes from funds already in the plan.
WHAT IT WON'T DO
It doesn't close your street. Most streets stay open to cars, and every home and storefront keeps access for deliveries, emergencies and people with disabilities.
It doesn't dig up your block again and again. Every layer is rebuilt in one dig, no block is repaved if utility work is due within five years, and a utility that cuts a new street fixes its patch at its own cost.
It doesn't raise the property tax line for the Chicago Remodel Fund, the neighborhood fund, if costs run high. The work slows down first.
It doesn't borrow to pay bills, and none of the money goes to pensions. We borrow only to build things that last, like pipes.
It doesn't leave small businesses to ride out construction alone. Every storefront on a block under construction gets $1,500 automatically.
How it connects
Nothing in this plan works alone. These are the questions people ask next, and the policies that answer them.
Who pays for the rebuild? The Chicago Remodel Fund, a voter-approved line on the property tax, puts about $782 million a year into rebuilding neighborhoods block by block, with no bonds and no interest.
Chicago Remodel Fund →
Is my sticker going up? The Chicago Mobility Fund prices the city vehicle sticker by weight and makes it the city's road maintenance fund.
Chicago Mobility Fund →
When do the lead pipes come out? Lead-Free Chicago replaces every lead water line before the federal deadline, decades ahead of the city's own plan.
Lead-Free Chicago →
What happens to Western Avenue? The Spine Line, a new subway, is built under Western Avenue from Howard to 95th Street, and up top Western is rebuilt end to end as a boulevard with trees, bike lanes and sidewalk cafes.
Spine Line →
Which streets become people-first? Yellow Brick Road corridors are streets where people walking and biking come first and cars can't cut through, and they lead to each neighborhood's new plaza and main street, called a frunchroom.
Yellow Brick Road Corridors →
Complete Neighborhoods: The Frunchroom →
Who owns the chargers? The city does. Chicago Powers Itself has Chicago make its own power and own its public electric vehicle chargers.
Chicago Powers Itself →
Who does the work? Chicagoans do, hired locally and trained through the Chicago Trades Pipeline, the plan's program to train Chicagoans with the unions for careers rebuilding the city.
Chicago Trades Pipeline →
FISCAL IMPACT
Investment Cost
RENOVATION STEP
Construct · Systems
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01
Where it ranks
OUR PRIORITIES
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86.3 / 100
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PROVEN Paved Paradise rebuilds each street once, every layer from the pipes below to the sidewalk, on a published schedule. Everyone uses the street every day, and the rebuilt street is the base for the rest of the plan: the frunchrooms (each neighborhood's own downtown), the Yellow Brick Road streets for walking and biking, and the lead pipe replacement are all built on it.
When you'd feel it: Year 2.
See all the priorities
How I set them
02
How it works
Three layers, one plan
Every street is three systems stacked on each other. The pedestrian layer includes sidewalks, curb ramps, streetlights, trees, seating, bus stops and shelters, and chargers at the curb. The vehicular layer includes the road surface, curbs and gutters, alleys, bridges and viaducts, signals, bike lanes and Yellow Brick Road corridors (streets where people walking come first, then bikes). The utility layer includes water, sewer, gas, electric, telecom and fiber, plus stormwater as its own system. Paved Paradise, the plan to rebuild the whole street once from the pipes up, sets the plan for the public way: the streets, alleys and sidewalks and what lies under them. Each system's own program stays in its own policy. Lead lines are replaced under Lead-Free Chicago. The block-by-block rebuild is paid for by the Chicago Remodel Fund, the voter-approved neighborhood fund on the property tax. Energy is covered in Chicago Powers Itself, where the corridors go is set in Yellow Brick Road Corridors, and bus service is covered in Enjoy the Ride.
Schedules that line up
The road surface is redone on a cycle of about 15 years, longer once preservation (regular preventive maintenance) is in place. Curbs and sidewalks are rebuilt at every second repaving, about every 30 years. Pipes are replaced on a cycle of about 100 years. When a street's pipes are due, every layer above them is rebuilt in the same dig.
Not every street carries every car
The city keeps the Chicago Department of Transportation's (CDOT's) existing street types and adds one new type: pedestrian and LSV streets, for people on foot and low-speed vehicles (LSVs, small electric vehicles for short trips). Their legal model is Argyle Street's Shared Street (2016), where people walking have the right of way over all other traffic. The types are truck routes and arterials, neighborhood streets, pedestrian and LSV streets (people, LSVs, and emergency and service vehicles; nothing else over 3,000 pounds), Yellow Brick Road corridors, and alleys. Trucks use truck routes, local streets get weight limits, and garbage pickup and deliveries move to alleys or off-hours where possible. Parking shifts toward the edges of the places people want to be. The street-by-street map is drawn in Year 1 from the condition survey, with neighborhood input.
Catch up on repaving, then keep it up
Every block is measured in Year 1 and sorted: good streets get preserved, fair streets get resurfaced, poor streets get rebuilt. Repaving reaches 300 miles a year by Year 2 and 400 by Year 4, and stays at or above 400 until the share of poor streets falls. Every repaved street gets a maintenance schedule: crack sealing early and a surface seal at mid-life. A fixed share of each year's road money is protected for preventive maintenance. One public scorecard reports a yearly condition score and the share of poor streets. Anything that puts people at risk gets fixed right away, whatever the schedule says.
Rebuilt once, from the pipes up
About 12 miles of street are fully rebuilt in Year 1, 25 by Year 3 and 44 a year by Year 5. That's about 1% of the city's street network each year, which means the plan deliberately rebuilds every street once a century. Condition, not age alone, picks the blocks. If the street and the pipes are both due, the block gets a full rebuild in one standard utility trench. If only the street is due, it is resurfaced. If only the pipes are due, the pipes are replaced and the street is restored curb to curb. If both are fine, the block gets preservation only. No block is repaved if utility work is due within five years. Every full rebuild replaces service connections to the building (lead lines and the private sewer lines that connect buildings to the main), adds backflow valves, city-owned fiber and spare conduit, a digital record of everything underground, root space for trees, stormwater storage where the block floods, and curb power for chargers.
Water, sewers, lead lines and stormwater
By Year 5, the city replaces about 44 miles of water main and 45 miles of sewer a year, counting sewer lining where the pipe is sound (in 2023 the city replaced 4.3 miles of water main and 3.1 miles of sewer). Lead lines come out with every dig (the pace and funding are set in Lead-Free Chicago, the plan's lead-line program). The city keeps its combined sewers, which carry rainwater and wastewater in the same pipes. Instead of replacing them, each block holds rainwater before it reaches them, with underground storage, permeable pavers, green alleys, bioswales, rain gardens and trees.
Western Avenue goes first
While the Spine Line, the new subway, is built under Western Avenue, Western gets a full rebuild and is redesigned from end to end. The Spine Line's budget covers moving utilities and putting the street back at its station and shaft sites. Paved Paradise pays the rest of the cost of rebuilding the full corridor, so the budgets neither overlap nor leave a gap. The order of the work is set before construction starts.
Gas, power, fiber and WiFi
The city spends no money moving or extending gas lines. On rebuild blocks, the city pays to convert every building that opts in to heat pumps or geothermal heat. The city also asks the state to let Peoples Gas retire gas lines instead of replacing them. Overhead electric and telecom lines are buried during full rebuilds. The city owns the fiber in every rebuild and leases it on equal terms to competing providers; it doesn't become an internet provider. As a condition of the fiber leases, free WiFi goes where people gather: bus shelters, frunchrooms (each neighborhood's new central plaza), corridors and transit stops. Heated pavement is used only where the heat is free or comes from waste heat, and it heats the travel lane, not the whole street from curb to curb.
A fleet built for the streets we want
How wide a street has to be is set in large part by the fire trucks that have to use it. The International Fire Code, the model many US cities build on, calls for fire access roads at least 20 feet wide, and at least 26 feet where a ladder truck has to reach a building taller than 30 feet. So the streets and the fleet are designed together. When the city buys fire trucks and ambulances for the firehouses that serve a new frunchroom zone, it buys compact ones; the rest of the fleet changes as its vehicles are due for replacement. The Fire Department writes the specifications, every vehicle meets the same national safety standard, the Fire Department and the Department of Transportation write the street access standard together, and response times from those firehouses are published next to the rest of the city's.
Bridges and the lake
Bridges are restored first and replaced only when the engineering requires it. Every bridge's rating and plan goes on a public map, every bridge gets a regular schedule of preventive maintenance, closures are planned years ahead, and bridgehouses open to the public where an engineering review says it's safe. In Year 1, the city publishes one citywide network plan for Yellow Brick Road corridors (streets where people walking come first), trails and crossings to the lake, which folds in the 606 extension, the Crosstown, the Weber Spur, and the Bronzeville, Englewood and El Paseo trails; the big barriers along the way get overpasses or underpasses.
One owner, one schedule
A Public Way Office, created by executive order and reporting through the Mayor's Delivery Unit (the small team in the mayor's office that tracks every commitment and reports progress publicly), runs the condition survey and the public map, schedules work so each street is dug up only once, and enforces the rules for cutting into streets. A utility that cuts a street guarantees its patch and fixes it at its own cost if it fails. Core repaving, sidewalks and ramps come off the aldermanic menu (the money each alderman directs to projects in the ward) and onto one citywide list ranked by condition. New buildings rebuild the sidewalk and street in front of them using the standard kit of parts. Road condition goes on the city's Livability Map, the public map of every block, pipe and bridge.
Standard parts, local character
The city uses one paver system, one concrete specification and one asphalt specification for each street type, and one standard design each for shelters, streetlights, benches, bike racks and charger pedestals. Replacement parts are stocked, so a broken bench is replaced in days. Each neighborhood picks from a small palette of paver colors and an accent. Walking paths are smooth, following U.S. Access Board guidance.
Construction you can live with
Rebuilds are phased, every storefront and home keeps access, schedules are published, and active blocks get "open during construction" signage. A small-business construction fund pays every storefront on an active block $1,500 automatically and up to $25,000 a year for documented losses; the Spine Line runs its own fund for its station digs. Paved Paradise ties into the protections in Keep Chicago Chicago that help people stay in their neighborhoods.
Built by Chicagoans
The pace of building is tied to local hiring and to apprenticeships through the Chicago Trades Pipeline. Every contract carries the standards of the Dignity Wage, the plan's minimum wage for adults, and of the Public Work Act, the plan's rules for openness about work done for the city. A city-affiliated crew installs and maintains the chargers. Its technicians are on a Trades Pipeline track paid at the Dignity Wage, $30.53 an hour (about $63,500 a year full time) plus benefits, with a path into the IBEW (electrical workers' union) apprenticeship.