The Bottom-Up Revolution
Chicago organizers Ellen Steinke and Dr. Chloe Groome walk through the fight to re-legalize ADUs, fix single-family zoning, and head off a looming transit fiscal cliff. They recount the campaign to save transit funding, including a sketch-driven show that turned insider debates about the Road Fund into something regular Chicagoans could act on. The episode follows their blend of detailed policy work, neighborhood organizing, and improv-rooted comedy.
Transcript (Lightly edited for readability)
Hey there, and welcome to Bottom Up Shorts. I am Norm with Strong Towns, and I am excited to introduce each of the contestants in the Strongest Town Contest this year. With me today are the folks from Chicago, Illinois. Chicago is a fantastic city, and we have a great local conversation there — Strong Towns Chicago. Joining me today are Ellen Steinke and Dr. Chloe Groome, who are co-participants and leaders of the Strong Towns Chicago group. Welcome to you both.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you.
Can you offer a quick introduction? Who are you, what put Strong Towns on your radar, and what has lit a fire in your belly that this is the year for Chicago to be crowned the strongest city — or town, I mean, it started as a town, and has town-like characteristics. Increasingly, in every other part of the world, we want this to be recognized.
I'm Ellen Steinke. I'm on the board at Strong Towns Chicago, and I lead the Transit and Safe Streets Working Group.
I put on educational comedy shows. I spent time in Vancouver and in Valencia, Spain, and I loved life there. I figured out it was because of the non-car, non-sprawl housing situation, and I wanted to bring that back home. I met up with Strong Towns at a city council meeting, and the rest is history.
It was actually me specifically — I poached Ellen at a zoning meeting.
So Norm, thank you for the intro. As you said, I'm Dr. Chloe Groome. I have a PhD in a completely unrelated field,
but I learned about Strong Towns almost a decade ago now, and it just made a lot of things make sense to me. I grew up in the kind of
cookie-cutter, Strong Towns Ponzi-scheme suburb, and I didn't like it, but no one in my life believed me or understood my perspective.
Once I moved to Chicago and left academia, I knew I wanted to really get into this. Chicago is the place — I've met the best people, we're growing really quickly, and it's been so amazing to see.
One of the places you're working on is introducing a lot more housing options within the city. We've done videos on the great patchwork of apartments and wide range of housing types. Part of that work is introducing accessory dwelling units — backyard cottages, additional living spaces within existing neighborhoods. Can you share why that's such a vital part of helping the city of Chicago and the community to become ever stronger?
It's so important. Right now, Chicago is facing — at least the city admits — over a billion dollars in an estimated budget gap. The shocking thing to me, actually, I'll throw this out to you, Norm. Here's a pop quiz.
How much of the residential area of Chicago is zoned single-family only?
Oh, this is going to depress me — 65%?
It's 75%.
So we're unnecessarily throttling the tax base by doing that. With ADUs — the city banned them. There are so many names for them: granny flats, carriage houses, coach houses, and so on. They were banned in 1957,
which was a horrible mistake. We worked really hard
with the City Council and different alderpersons to get them re-legalized. We're really excited that that passed back in the fall. Depending on which part of the city you're in — Chicago has 50 wards — the alderperson still has to opt in, so it's still not legal everywhere. But it is legal in a huge portion of the city now, when it wasn't before. We're really happy to see that, and it gives people options.
One of the most common reasons people build them in Chicago is for aging parents — having them nearby for child care and being able to provide support. I've often said, when we talk about the missing middle of housing types, it's not exactly missing — we know exactly where it went.
It just got banished. Much like a duck that has a pop-can ring around its neck — that animal is not allowed to grow, and the thing that harms it is if it grows at all. Growth in our city should be expected, much like we expect animals to grow, and yet we've artificially constrained it in so many different ways.
I know this is not a podcast about housing policy, so let's dive into the "Funny That You Should Care" campaign. Ellen, do you want to talk about what was necessary to begin rallying support for improved transportation within the community, as well as holding on to what you already have?
Last year, we were facing a fiscal cliff for transit in Chicago — we could have lost about 40% of it, which would have been a huge loss. Part of the reason I moved to Chicago was because of transit. I lived in LA and I was like, this is an amazing city, but I never want to go anywhere because the driving feels treacherous. So I moved to Chicago in part because of that, and then it was about to lose its transit. That wasn't cool.
One big piece was getting public support and getting the fact that we could be losing almost half of our transit onto people's radar. The vast majority of people in the city weren't even aware of the situation at all.
I had already put on a show back in February about Chicago streets. I connected with another group called Better Streets Chicago, and they turned us on to this whole situation. So we decided to put on a whole show about saving transit in Chicago — what was happening, why there was a fiscal cliff, and what factors were holding it up, besides just lack of
people knowing about it and why it was important. I feel like people tend to see transit as kind of old-fashioned. They think of trains, they think of the Wild West and wearing bonnets and things like that. They don't really think of trains as the modern solution to transportation — the most efficient, cost-effective, and safe form of transportation there is. They think of it as, "Oh yeah, that's an old-timey thing, and I guess we should be getting rid of it because it's old." No — it's the best.
The show is structured like an essay punctuated by sketches. We had little sketches that drove home points about what's going on and why our legislators can't decide on how to fund transit. We had a game show — like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire — just pick an option. It doesn't matter which option; they're all fine. We also had a song about
how the road construction lobby in Illinois is the largest campaign contributor in the state,
and they were playing a role in gumming up the works, even though they adamantly said they weren't. But that's another story.
We did a song about how the pot they were trying to protect was called the Road Fund. There's a rule called the Safe Roads Agreement, where they claimed money from the Road Fund can't be used for anything but roads. But if you look at the Safe Roads Agreement, it says that money made from transportation can only be used on transportation. They were making it say that money from roads is only for roads — but that's not what the law said. They knew that, because they helped write the law to make sure the money would keep going to them. Anyway, we wrote a song
about how buses never use roads — they float, exactly. We argued that transportation money should be used for transportation, and it shouldn't be called the Road Fund.
Back in the fall, we had state legislators as guests on the show — two of them who were interview guests started using our arguments on the State House floor for closing arguments, saying "Stop calling it the Road Fund, call it the Transportation Fund." They ended up using money from the Road Fund to save transit. So we instructed them with comedy — maybe, or maybe we just put arguments that were already out there onto people's radar, because it was politically risky to say them. I went to a town hall and some lady raised her hand and said, "I saw in a comedy show that there's $5 billion sitting in a pot that's not being used — why can't we use that?"
Ellen is humble. I'm going to say it was Ellen and it was the comedy show.
I love it — breaking through the storied history of Chicago's political class with comedy, and being able to really influence that. When we talk about money and the capacity of any given city to be resilient over time, what stood out to me when I was in Chicago was that Dustin from Batavia — one of the suburbs — put together the finance decoder, comparing several suburban cities with Chicago itself. What stood out in the line about Chicago is that it has deep financial capacity. Yes, some of the indicators look a little nerve-wracking, but the deep well of vibrancy actually means that Chicago, in many ways, was doing much better financially than many of the neighboring suburbs. That's part of the Strong Towns message.
Maybe you can comment on this as you think about voting for Chicago in the Strongest Town Contest: Chicago is one of the few big North American cities where daily life still works at a human scale. While many people first think of downtown and high-rises, Chicago is really a patchwork of neighborhoods that each function like towns on their own, with their own Main Street, local businesses, parks, schools, and community institutions. That neighborhood fabric is built into Chicago's design. To me, that's what you're capturing when you say Chicago deserves to be crowned the strongest community this year. What reflections come to mind?
I want to respond to something you said earlier — about Chicago having so much potential and so much vibrancy. It's so true, and it's so key to understanding the city. Chicago is great, but it could be absolutely incredible. That's part of why I love it so much, and why so much of my work for Strong Towns Chicago is driven by love. It's like when you love someone who just can't stop making bad decisions, and you're like, if you just
just listen to me, please. Maybe one day they'll turn a corner, and you'll see that incredible person you know is there.
I see that with individual neighborhoods too. I live in West Loop, which is one of the more downtown, skyscraper-heavy parts of Chicago. Even so, it has its own personality. There's a small business that opened near me called Cheese and Board — free publicity for them — an amazing little charcuterie shop that sells cheese and salami. Even though I live in this massive area surrounded by skyscrapers, I know the owner of that business. Every time I come in, the employees know my name. I live a very charming, storybook life in my neighborhood — I can walk to everything, and I routinely run into people I know just going about my day. It feels really special. That's just one neighborhood out of 72 community areas.
I'm really scratching the surface here, and I haven't even seen all of Chicago. But that's part of why I organized the neighborhood walking tour — it's partially for myself.
Ellen, what is something that stands out to you — the reason that folks should rally around the flag for the city of Chicago?
Chicago has the potential to achieve a lot of those Strong Towns goals — walkability, transit, safe streets, not doing the suburban thing. In the neighborhoods, it has that town feel: you see people, you meet people, you go to your regular spots. Chicago's attitude is just "we can get it done." Not-so-secretly in our group, I think our motto is becoming "we can do anything."
Chicago has been a place where people rally historically. We have jazz and improv here — you make something beautiful and create on the spot. It's resourceful, creative, and sort of a "if we set our mind to it, we're gonna get it done" kind of energy.
I have belief in us — yeah, being an ideal strong town that's almost there.
One of my favorite things about Chicago is Strong Towns Chicago. You have jazz groups, comedy groups, sports groups — all of those different types of things. But Strong Towns Chicago has done something really cool, Chloe: there's not only an opportunity to get into the weeds about urbanism, but you all are just hanging out, spending time together, helping to create a welcoming environment for newcomers into the city and helping people who are new feel connected to those who have a long-standing connection with the city.
Can you share a bit more? This Strong Towns Chicago local conversation — slash social club, slash welcoming space, slash pool of awesomeness — what's that been like, and why is it so compelling? Especially for groups that are just starting out: if you're a group leader, take note of what Chicago has done. The more I heard about all that you do together to encourage each other, the more I said, "I want that for my community."
Part of it is that I just wanted to build what I would want.
I am a self-motivated person, usually for the greater good. With Strong Towns, I started by organizing neighborhood walking tours. With the first one, I remember being so nervous — what if four people show up and the tour guide who lived in the neighborhood feels demotivated? We ended up having 25 people show up, and that was way early on.
I just saw immediately that there was so much pent-up desire for meeting people, discussing these kinds of topics, and having a social space where anyone can show up with a guarantee that you agree on at least one thing. With Strong Towns, if you believe in this message, you're probably a decent person in other ways.
Not to say that everyone in Strong Towns is a moral paragon, but I haven't met a dud yet.
We keep them away with the "Don't Be a Jerk" agreement. We ask everyone in the Strong Towns movement to conduct themselves in a way that brings more people into the movement. There's also that core value: if you love your place, it will love you back. There's that earned benefit over time — not always immediately. Your community will break your heart at various points along the way, and yet, if you love your place, it will love you back.
Chicago is vibrant, massive, and consequential. It has great communities and great community organizations like Strong Towns Chicago. Folks, if you're listening, head over to the StrongestTown.com website and cast your vote. Remember, as a Strong Towns member — and if you're not yet a member, go become one, because your vote counts more. We create two pools: if you're a member, we put that in a distinct pool, because we know our Strong Towns members have a higher level of discernment on the question of what it takes for places to thrive, prosper, and create lasting prosperity that will endure for generations.
I hope this also inspires you to make travel plans to go to Chicago. If you do, check out the Strong Towns Chicago website or their Instagram feed — they've got things going on all the time, and it'll be worth your while. Ellen, Chloe, thank you so much for joining me today.
It was a pleasure. Thanks for having us.
Go to Chicago, and thanks, folks. Take care and have a great rest of the day. Take care of your places.
This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at StrongTowns.org/membership.