Research

Chicago Comprehensive Choice Initiative (CCCI)
CPS will partner with the Egan Urban Center (EUC) at DePaul University to implement a community development approach to school choice.  The EUC will provide inroads and road maps into Ch icago communities by lending its outreach and facilitation expertise in effectively reaching key associations, organizations, and institutions operating within the identified communities targeted for programming by this proposal.  This plan focuses on three key strategies for informing and encouraging parental involvement in the process of school choice: (1) implementation of a grassroots approach for targeted marketing of school choice information to reach underserved parents; (2) establishment of a two-way channel of communications to solicit parental input into the school choice process; and (3) linking of schools to existing community resources and services.

Hourglass Economy  
The Institute for Latino Studies (ILS) at the University of Notre Dame and the Sociology Professor & Senior Egan Research Fellow John Koval have proposed a two-year project focused on the occupational fate and mobility of low-wage workers – especially minorities and recent immigrants – in the context of an industrial economy that is rapidly morphing into a post-industrial hourglass economy. This two-stage project would include a national conference, tentatively entitled “The Hourglass Economy: Its Characteristics, Causes and Consequence,” that would document and analyze the change process. This would be followed up by a research project to develop 1) guidelines and a mobility roadmap to help low-wage workers traverse this changing economic terrain and 2) a set of procedures that would gauge and measure the success of these workers in adapting to the evolving “new economy”.   
     
Olympic 2016 Research and Information-Sharing Project  
On April 14, 2007 the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) chose Chicago as the U.S. applicant city to compete with other international cities to host the 2016 summer games. Egan Urban Center's will focuses on the economic and community impacts of hosting the Olympic Games in 2016 and proposes to use the planning process adopted by Chicago’s 2016 planning committee as the focus of the research and information-sharing effort.

The USOC’s announcement brought an outpouring of excitement and hope from Chicagoans that their city would win the ultimate designation as host city. Many others also expressed an interest in getting detailed information about how the Olympic Games might benefit the city and the various communities that would be used as Olympic venues. Still others have raised concerns about the costs to the city, the state and even U.S. taxpayers to pay for the event.

Essentially, EUC proposes to research what experts and scholars have found in reference to the economics and community impacts of preceding Olympic Games, and to gather information from various local sources including local journalistic accounts and through discussions with civic and community leaders. EUC hopes to stimulate a more informed discussion of the Olympics among an array of local stakeholders including community-based organizations, community leaders and residents, city-wide civic organizations, elected officials at all levels, other researchers and, crucially, Chicago’s 2016 Olympic planning committee.   
     
Preservation Compact - Rental Housing Strategy for Cook County  
Preservation Compact is a rental housing strategy to reserve the downward trend of the affordable housing supply by 2020 for Cook County. Guided by the Urban Land Institute and funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the project was created to bring together leaders from public, private, nonprofit and government sectors to develop strategies to preserve and improve affordable rental housing units.

The rental housing action plan consists of 6 keystone initiatives to preserve and promote affordable rental housing:

• Preservation Fund: A preservation fund to increase capital flow to properties at risk of being lost from affordable rental market
• Interagency Council: An Interagency Council composed of governmental partners key to preservation, to improve coordination and information flow to preserve at-risk properties
• Rental Housing Data Clearinghouse: A Rental Housing Data Clearinghouse and early warning system for buildings facing expiring subsidies or otherwise at-risk of leaving the affordable rental market
• Energy Severs Program: An Energy Severs Program to cut operating costs for owners of affordable rental properties
• Rental Housing Alliance: A Chicago-area Rental Housing Alliance to help tenants seek new ownership in at-risk buildings
• Lowered Property Taxes: Lowered property taxes on multifamily rental buildings to bring them in line with those on single-family homes and reduce the burden on both owners and renters

New Communities Project   
The Egan Center is providing research assistance to the Metropolitan Chicago Information Center for the MacArthur Foundation-funded project that is tracking the impact of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation’s (LISC) New Communities Program (NCP) in 16 Chicago neighborhoods over a 10-year period. Our role includes:

• help in constructing and coordinating access to large databases;
• exploratory analyses and index construction;
• strategy advice to MCIC research analysts on database construction, access and analysis, as well as index development.

National Empowerment Zone Action Research Project (NEZARP)  
The National Empowerment Zone Action Research Project covers 9 cities and Chicago more extensively through a longitudinal study incorporating various research methods. This project contributes to creating awareness and assessment of the implementation and impact of Empowerment Zone’s activity across the country in the designated primary zones. EUC works in several capacities to maintain the dialogue and network necessary to inform the project as well as perform research analysis for the project.