Illinois

Chicago preservationists are urging owners of the last of the city's neon signs to keep them intact.

The architecture studio that won The History Channel's City of the Future competition last year has gotten some help making its ideas possible.

Midway Airport may become the first U.S. airport to be privatized if the 99-year lease for $2.52 billion is approved by the City Council and F.A.A., following in the footsteps of privatizing the Chicago Skyway toll road in 2005.

As the 100-year anniversary of the writing of the Burnham Plan for Chicago approaches, the city and its suburbs are thinking big about how to improve the city.

The Chicago Housing Authority is considering tearing down a 300-unit public housing project, with a vote expected Tuesday. Residents are understandably unhappy, and advocates say the demand for affordable housing is already greater than supply.

Chicago's Metro is closing down its rolling taverns- not for reasons of temperance, but because they need the room for the growing number of rail commuters.

A new report from the Metropolitan Planning Council pegs the annual cost of congestion to the Chicago region at $7.3 billion.

Olympics-related construction in Beijing has impressed many, but does little to make the city a better place. Architecture critic Blair Kamin says Chicago needs to be careful about not repeating China's mistakes if it hosts the games in 2016.

Author Alan Ehrenhalt says that conditions are ripe for the permanent return of downtown residential neighborhoods, and that a "demographic inversion" has already begun in Manhattan, Chicago and Washington, DC, among other cities.

A non-profit group in Chicago wants to open a museum dedicated to American public housing in the Former Public Housing Authority Building.

The Chicago Transit Authority has announced plans to remove all the seating from some of its rush hour trains in order to deal with increased demand.

The American Society of Landscape Architects has awarded the Lurie Garden in Chicago's Millennium Park with it's highest honor.

More than 2 million people are expected to be added to the metropolitan Chicago region by 2030, and water supplies may not be able to keep up. Officials are trying to find a solution.

Chicago's Loop is becoming a hot neighborhood.

The Chicago Tribune examines what became of an ambitious city project, led by Mayor Daley, to revolutionize public housing. Private developers received public funding to tear down old projects and replace them with mixed-use neighborhoods.

As part of a plan to utilize the city's rainwater and recycle it back to lake Michigan, Chicago has been renovating its 13,00 alleys to become permeable surfaces, where rainwater can soak back into the ground. 40 alleys have been redone so far.

Transit officials in Chicago are calling on the city to rebuild its historic streetcar system. Rails still exist on many streets, but city officials are leaning away from streetcars and towards bus rapid transit.

Flood waters along the Mississippi River continue to rise, leaving many Midwest towns deep under water. The Army Corps of Engineers has just identified 27 levees that may not be high enough to handle the rising waters.

Oklahoma City residents used to 70-mile commutes are turning to carpooling as gas hovers at $4 a gallon. But with the largest land area of any U.S. city, providing public transit remains a major challenge.