Justin Ishbia, poised to become the next chairman of the Chicago White Sox, may have the chance to shape 47 contiguous acres in the middle of the city. At this scale, the opportunity is not simply to build a stadium or add housing, but to shape the trajectory of development in Chicago — to influence how neighborhoods are built, to better align urban form with the needs of contemporary life, and to push the regional building industry toward a more innovative and productive future.
It is an opportunity to fulfill the spirit of Daniel Burnham’s “make no little plans” maxim, which envisioned a city shaped by ambitions that would outlast their authors. Today, the conditions for such ambition are unusually aligned. Regulatory reform is gaining momentum; demand is rising for walkable, family-friendly neighborhoods in urban job centers; and construction technology is entering a new phase of efficiency. The question is whether Chicago will act on that convergence — whether it will seize the opportunity to build something that extends its civic tradition and positions the city as a capital of a new American urbanism defined by growth, durability and multigenerational living.
That outcome will remain out of reach, however, if the Amtrak rail yard Ishbia plans to buy becomes another iteration of the standard stadium district: a ballpark ringed by parking, entertainment venues and large apartment structures on slab podiums. These environments are designed to perform at moments of peak activity, and on game days, they do. But for much of the year — weekday mornings, winter afternoons, road trips — they are dead. They are not real neighborhoods, but real estate products engineered for intermittent use and transient occupancy.
Chicago already has a better model. The neighborhood around Wrigley Field works because the stadium is embedded in dense, fine-grained city blocks with a mix of residential and commercial properties. On a single block, one finds apartments, larger family units, owner-occupied homes and long-term residents alongside newer arrivals. Some people stay for a few years; others remain for decades. The neighborhood accommodates the full Shakespearean arc of life — the “seven ages of man” — rather than a single stage.
The opportunity in the South Loop is to extend that tradition into a more complete and contemporary form. The courtyard block represents the next step: an evolution of Chicago’s midrise courtyard apartment into a system capable of shaping entire neighborhoods.
In this model, buildings meet the street to form a continuous public edge, while interior courtyards organize shared green space at the heart of each block. These spaces support daily life — children at play, neighbors in conversation, families at home — while ground floors accommodate shops and services and upper floors provide a wide range of housing, including units suitable for families. It is a form that has long delivered affordable density and natural income diversity through small, low-cost buildings with a range of unit sizes and price points.
Just as important as the physical form is the economic system it supports. Chicago’s neighborhoods were historically built by many actors operating within a shared framework: small buildings on small lots, aligned consistently with the street. This structure enabled incremental development, broad participation, and diversity of ownership over time. It produced a mix of housing, small offices and neighborhood-serving retail sustained by a dense local population. We did not abandon this model because it failed, but because zoning, building codes and financing shifted toward larger, more consolidated projects.
The South Loop site is large enough not only to revive that pattern but also to advance it into a form suited to contemporary needs. Its scale allows for multiple blocks subdivided into smaller parcels and developed over time by a range of builders. Organized as perimeter courtyard blocks, this approach could balance density with green space, support a mix of large and small units, and accommodate both ownership and rental housing within relatively low-cost, midrise buildings. It is a way to produce family-capable urban neighborhoods at scale — something American cities have struggled to deliver.
More Top Picks Leaf Blower
Within such a framework, a stadium and a health care campus could be integrated into a broader urban fabric rather than standing apart from it. The same streets that fill with fans on a summer evening could remain active throughout the year because they are lined with homes, shops and everyday uses.
Chicago has done this before. Its most enduring neighborhoods were not the result of singular vision, but of shared patterns applied consistently over time. The opportunity now is to extend that tradition — to take a proven urban logic and evolve it into a system capable of meeting the demands of a new century.
For Ishbia, the choice is not simply what to build, but what kind of precedent to set. One path leads to a familiar outcome: a stadium district that performs on schedule but never becomes a real neighborhood. The other leads to something more durable — a place where the stadium is embedded within a living urban fabric, and where the same streets that fill with fans on a summer evening remain active throughout the year.
This is the kind of opportunity Burnham had in mind — not a single project, but a pattern capable of shaping the city long after it is built.
“Make big plans,” Ishbia, “aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.”
Alicia Pederson is vice president of the Greater Rockwell Organization and a member of local urbanist groups Abundant Housing Illinois and Strong Towns Chicago.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected].