A City That Works
A newsletter turned movement for a Chicago built on pro-growth ideas and pragmatic solutions.
Who they are.
A City That Works (ACTW) began as a newsletter with a vision toward elevating the conversation in Chicago about how we can build a city based on pro-growth ideas and pragmatic solutions. The organization worked to translate its thinking into advocacy, by adding a political arm to support candidates with aligned values.
Their agenda is unglamorous on purpose. By reckoning with the City’s financial challenges, spurring economic growth, encouraging data-driven improvements to public safety, and building more housing, ACTW believes Chicago will truly live up to the name it earned under Richard J. Daley, “The City That Works.”
Why we believe in the leader.
Conor Durkin started the newsletter as his personal blog, with the goal of trying to understand and explain some of Chicago’s toughest challenges. The organization is now led by Executive Director Richard Day. Arriving at A City That Works with a background in business, technology and public policy, Richard has advised aldermen on policy, worked inside City Hall, and is now building A City That Works from a newsletter into a fully-fledged organization as its Executive Director.
Conor and Richard epitomize Alta Futures’s values, sparked by curiosity and an innovative mindset on how they believe change can happen, while grounding these beliefs in data-driven strategies. They dig into pension actuarial assumptions, police staffing, and transit governance, in public, under their own names, week after week. They make the case for pragmatic, pro-growth answers, and they get to them by asking what Chicagoans are experiencing rather than by starting from a conclusion.
Why the work got us excited.
A City That Works emerged over the past year as one of the more interesting voices in Chicago, willing to take positions that are bold and well supported at the same time. Policy work can sometimes disappear into white papers and lofty conversation. This organization has done the opposite, concentrating on the clear, tangible, and sometimes unglamorous changes that would make the City function better: reforming the building code, rewriting citywide zoning, improving state capacity and procurement. Through its PAC, A City That Works is also testing a bigger idea: that electoral competition is itself a driver of better governance, and that a pool of candidates with experience and curiosity can move the city toward more pragmatic answers.
Just as important is where those positions come from. A City That Works blends high-level analysis with perspectives from Chicagoans on the front lines of public service, as in their view from the wheel piece on what CTA operators can see that planning documents cannot. Building the argument from the ground up rather than just the top down is exactly the instinct we look for.
A City That Works is a bet that Alta Futures is excited to make and we’re eager to support their work as they pave a pragmatic, thoughtful road ahead for Chicago.
“Change lasts when we build a shared, accurate understanding of the system we are trying to improve, rather than just a constituent part or problem.”
— Richard Day, Executive Director
