The Current State

Chicago’s Resident Government Relationship Today
For years, Chicago’s roads have been fertile ground for inequities. While metro lines only go so far, they’re directed towards downtown and the city’s core. Residents living in the South or West side are forced to commute by car and that’s where a number of problems start. Fines and fees make it extremely expensive to own a car in Chicago. Citations and tickets can quickly pile up, and for the working class, which is majorly BIPOC and Latinx communities, the price tag can be detrimental. One fine for a low-income resident can snowball into thousands of dollars, garnished tax refunds, vehicle impoundments and a drivers-license suspension. Many residents have resorted to declaring bankruptcy as a way of relieving the crushing weight of debt

Inequities in Civic Technology

Red Light Cameras

When former Mayor Richard M. Daley ushered in Chicago’s red-light cameras nearly two decades ago, he said they would help the city curb dangerous driving. But for all of their safety benefits, the hundreds of cameras that dot the city have come at a steep cost for BIPOC and Latinx drivers.

Speed Cameras

Though automation may provide advantages to agent enforcement, speed cameras do not eliminate bias. The volume of automated tickets issued, the location of cameras, and the structure of fines, fees, and forfeitures in fact reinforce racial and economic inequities. A study conducted by the University of Illinois Chicago shows that the spatial distribution of tickets per household shows predominantly Black and Latino areas receive a higher number of tickets per household as compared to other parts of the city. [Source]

Parking Zones & Tickets

Parking enforcement and fines are a disproportionately high financial burden for low-income households. Moreover, data on traffic safety enforcement indicate that BIPOC residents are more likely to receive citations than any other race. These practices go far beyond the pandemic ticketing pause, and undermine trust in local government and law enforcement.

What Would a Future Look like if …

… We Designed Civic Infrastructures to be Sustainable and Anti-racist?
... Actors were Held Proportionately Accountable for Actions?
... Resources were Equitably Redistributed?

Embodied Goals in Context
In order to realize our goals, we’ve created strategies for how to achieve them through technological, social, and financial infrastructures. In order to manifest these strategies and their overlapping impacts, we’ve placed each in the context of an intersection.

1. Collect 2. Decide 3. Invest

1. Collect
To intervene in a system, you must be able to understand system dynamics and measure what matters in order to justify and quantify the change you wish to make. The City of Chicago’s current data sets doesn’t cover the wide variety of residential and commercial driver behaviors that affect the level of safety on city streets. More robust and comprehensive data collection, aggregation, and organization methods can open the door to new possibilities in how street safety is not only measured but managed.

Adaptive Traffic Management
What if traffic management systems prioritized community safety and wellbeing in an adaptive and equitable manner?

Enterprise Accountability Tax
Corporations utilize heavy and high polluting vehicles to do business in Chicago at all times of the day but evade all city taxes. By measuring vehicle impact on infrastructure and the environment, we’re creating pathways to measure road damage and greenhouse gas emissions as a more equitable civic revenue stream.

Adaptive Curb Management
Without dedicated spaces, delivery vehicles find the need to double park or inconvenience residents’ right of way for short-term deliveries. What if delivery vehicles were incorporated into a system that ensured parking availability and limited the risk of parking violations?

2. Decide
For marginalized communities, decision-making power can often be out of reach. Townhall meetings and forums can be inaccessible or even costly for many. In our speculative future, communities receive accessible and impactful decision-making power. What they need is provided expediently, without red tape, long approval processes, or unnecessary bureaucracy. By using AI technology to support equitable decisions, empowered communities can create new realities.

Bus Stops as Civic Centers
By redesigning bus stops to be community participation hubs, we’re meeting citizens where they are to learn where they want the community to be.

Infrastructure Deficiency Detection + Prioritization
With Chicago’s 311 hotline, you can report a broken pothole or debris in the bike lane. But where’s the detection of neglected neighborhood roads? Aspects like driver difficulty due to road infrastructure, lack of pedestrian density, vacant lots, and sidewalk availability will be measured with AI to redistribute resources to the communities that need them the most.

3. Invest
‘Building community,’ is like planting a seed. Watering it now is expecting growth later. Investing in communities now is an expectation of future growth and prosperity. Too often, marginalized communities are disinvested and deprioritized. Resources always seem out of reach, or if they are presented - they’re scarce. We believe investing in a community is a wholesome practice, encompassing financial, social, and human investment. It’s a ritual that meets a systemic issue with a systemic answer. Investing time, opportunities, and directed finances to the fruition and growth of communities bloom into equitable, sustainable spaces for all.

Equity Fund
Through a fund financed by the Enterprise Accountability Tax, resources will be redistributed to neglected communities based on the votes of a representative committee.

Community Asset Map
Asset mapping is a great way of promoting community ownership and empowerment. Through public and interactive asset map, residents will always know the power they share.

Prototypes Round 1 >

DISCOVER
Context & Agents
Understanding the current ecosystem for Fines and Fees in Chicago through an evaluation of Red Light Cameras, Speed Cameras and Parking Meters.

Prototypes Round 2 >

DETERMINE
Data & Resources
Synthesizing previous prototypes and identifying key data systems and resources that might address and inform the public.

Prototypes Round 3 >

DEVELOP
Equity & Sustainability
Re-center the systems and core principles of Equity and Sustainability that will support BIPOC and underprivileged communities.

Discussion & Prototype Fair

DELIVER
Synthesis & Presentation
A culmination and presentation of work conducted over the past 14-weeks by ID students, addressing the complexity of a future, equitable system.

Components

Final Prototypes