Community-Oriented Solutions to Addressing Environmental Health in Chicago

Introduction

Hazel M. Johnson, a community organizer and mother who is widely considered to be the matriarch of the environmental justice movement, once wrote:

Environmental justice means ensuring that all people, no matter their race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic position, have equal access to a safe and healthy environment (EPA 2020). As a resident of Altgeld Gardens, a public housing project in the south side of Chicago, Johnson gained an interest in environmental health and justice in the 1970s after becoming increasingly alarmed by patterns of illness in her community, including recurring bad odors and widespread asthma among children (Beth 2018). She quickly discovered that Altgeld Gardens—a 97 percent Black community—was surrounded by 50 landfills and built on top of stored chemicals that were leaking. At the time, the community had the highest cancer rates in the country (Cosier 2017). 

Taking a step back in time provides some context for Chicago’s history of racial inequities. Almost 100 years ago, a report by the city’s health commissioner found Chicago to be the healthiest city in the world among those with a population of 1 million or more, touting a comparatively impressive mortality rate of 11.5 per every 1,000 people (New York Times 1926). While this headline put Chicago on a global map for its strong public health infrastructure, it was later revealed that the mortality rate among Black residents was twice as high as that of white residents. This sharp disparity highlighted that while the city’s public health infrastructure was robust, it was not distributed equally, especially in nonwhite communities. 

In the 1970s, decades after the report was published and with little to no significant progress made, Johnson started organizing (Cosier 2017). Without targeted urban planning and environmental health initiatives, marginalized communities in Chicago continued to be harmed by pollution and neglected by policymakers, leaving community organizers like Johnson to take matters into their own hands. 

Today, 100 years after the initial publication of the report, Black Chicagoans still have the highest mortality rates compared to other races. Their deaths are often linked to pollution exposure, with the leading causes including heart disease, cancer, and accidental death (Chicago Health Atlas n.d.). While enacting public policy and waiting for its effects takes time, it is important to recognize and identify the patterns of inequity that persist, especially in communities that are historically ignored and marginalized. Hazel M. Johnson passed away in 2011, but her life of dedication is just one story of many that highlight the critical importance of prioritizing environmental health policies. While grassroots organizing has paved the way for change, government action is essential to address community needs permanently. 

Environmental health, or the relationship between the environment—including human-made buildings and landscapes—and human health, is a concept that often falls through the cracks of urban planning, environmental regulation, and public health governance. Yet just as public goods are regulated, harmful environmental exposures must also be monitored through effective public policymaking. A core tenet of Rooseveltian values is that the protection of public goods must fall under the responsibility of the government to build and maintain public power and dignity. Furthermore, strong partnerships with community-based organizations are also essential, as they have direct access to communities in need.

The history of Chicago makes clear that proactive and intentional community involvement in urban planning can prevent many of these issues, building a more sustainable future for current and future generations. In spring 2025, Mayor Brandon Johnson proposed the creation of the Hazel M. Johnson Cumulative Impacts Ordinance. The ordinance would require new manufacturing and industrial projects and plants to undergo a more extensive cumulative impacts study and increase review processes. It would also create an Environmental Justice Advisory Board to review the cumulative impact study, ensuring that community leaders guide this process. This legislation, if passed, would mark a major milestone in creating more equitable environmental health policy for Chicagoans. Still, it does not address the root problems of environmental health inequities.

In truth, solving environmental justice issues in Chicago requires creating holistic solutions that necessitate collaboration across many sectors, especially within community-based organizations and city government. Most importantly, solutions must focus on shifting the decision-making power from developers to where it belongs: between the local community and the local government. Policy mechanisms such as Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs) have succeeded in other cities in restoring this balance. While promising, many CBAs focused exclusively on labor and housing agreements and could be further expanded. This brief argues that expanding the scale of CBAs to include environmental health and urban planning provisions would proactively prevent and treat the pattern of health and economic burdens falling on marginalized communities. 

Chicago’s Environmental Health Landscape: An Introduction

Chicago, like many large cities across the country, has a history of structural violence against marginalized communities. Starting in the early 20th century with the Great Migration, the city was segregated as the majority of Black people settled in the south side between the Loop and 71St (Digital Scholarship Lab n.d.). Around a decade later, redlining, a policy approach that explicitly discriminates against poor and nonwhite communities by categorizing them as “undesirable” and thereby unfit for loans, formalized this segregation. By making it almost impossible to move, Black residents remained in heavily industrialized areas and in closer proximity to toxic waste facilities and, as a result, farther away from economic opportunities. Today, Black and Latinx communities are still more likely to live in close proximity to manufacturing areas with a high association of manufacturing related pollution; 29 percent of the land in Latinx Chicagoans’ neighborhoods and 23 percent of land in Black Chicagoans’ neighborhoods are zoned for manufacturing (Metropolitan Planning Council 2025). Similarly, areas that received a higher rating in the redlining process, and were therefore deemed more suitable for loans, remain whiter than areas with lower ratings (Leiter 2023). These “best” zones have median home values of $937,000, compared to “undesirable” zones with median home prices of $323,000 (Leiter 2023).

Beginning in the 1970s, community organizers began to spotlight environmental and health equity problems in Chicago, leading Johnson to create People for Community Recovery (PCR), a nonprofit leading Chicago’s environmental justice movement and policy advocacy work. With no formal experience working in environmental health, Johnson used her lived experience to lead PCR. She connected with others who shared her questions and concerns, effectively building a grassroots movement that gained national attention (Cosier 2017). Using this momentum, she used PCR to advocate for policy that shifted the burden of industry off of Black and brown communities, building a foundation for the environmental justice movement. Since then, PCR has had major impacts on improving environmental health, from starting lead education programs to removing soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to advocating for solar energy developments on the south side of Chicago (People for Community Recovery n.d.).

Often siloed as a purely environmental topic, environmental justice is an intersectional issue that overlaps with structural inequities. In Chicago, inequities in urban planning, including housing and public transportation access, result from systemic racism and classism. These issues relate mostly to the economic development hindered by decades of racist policies, such as redlining, urban renewal, and the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway (Leiter 2023). The expressway was opened in 1961 along the “Black Belt,” or the region of the South Side where the majority of Black Chicagoans lived. During the construction and expansion of the expressway, homes in these communities were demolished, leaving residents displaced. Looking just at citywide statistics dilutes current racial inequities, as a birds-eye view portrays it as a diverse, prospering city. A closer look at demographic data reveals stark inequities as Chicago’s nonwhite populations have a high dissimilarity index score—a tool used to measure segregation within cities. Black Chicagoans received a score of 74, meaning that 74 percent of white Chicagoans would have to move neighborhoods to evenly distribute white and Black residents across the city (Cherone n.d.).

More recently, Chicago faces growing issues as climate change worsens. The city’s size, global recognition, and unique geographic placement next to the Great Lakes—the world’s largest freshwater source—makes it appealing to many groups of people. For tech developers, Chicago is an ideal data center market due to its geography and high demand for data center power. However, data centers come with environmental, economic, and health consequences as they consume large amounts of water, raise utility bills, and often use fossil fuel-powered energy. Additionally, experts have predicted that the city will become a prime destination for climate migration, meaning there will likely also be an increased demand for affordable housing for minority communities (Sheridan 2024).

Community Benefit Agreements: Potential for Solutions

To remedy environmental justice concerns from the past, present, and future, Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) are promising tools. CBAs are agreements between developers and local communities that determine the impacts of proposed or potential projects (Riedl et al. 2025). The first CBA in the US was the Staples Center Agreement proposed in 2001 (Lynch 2016). Brought together by a coalition of residents, labor unions, and community-based organizations, the agreement determined that 20 percent of housing in the newly built entertainment district would be affordable. The CBA also brought investments into the community, such as park and recreational center improvements, and determined that 70 percent of jobs created by the development project would pay a livable wage (Lynch 2016).

Another successful example of a CBA is the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment in the Bronx borough of New York. That redevelopment agreement also secured livable wages, but included a provision naming the local community—led by Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition—as a codeveloper of 20 percent of the project. This community ownership model ensured that local citizens had tangible power during decision-making processes, which have been ongoing since the CBA was adopted in 2013 (Our Bronx n.d.). The redevelopment also required that buildings have strong environmental standards, such as LEED Certifications, to reduce pollution and ensure energy efficiency.

CBAs have taken various forms since, but many have encountered similar barriers to their full success. First, CBAs must have specific goals and binding language (Riedl et al. 2025). Although CBAs are often meant to be legally binding contracts, many make general promises or set goals without a specific timeline, penalties for industrial noncompliance, or implementation guides, making them ineffective. Vague or ambiguous language can create confusion, create legal loopholes, and prevent urgency; binding language with quantitative targets listed as part of the developers’ requirements would be more effective than setting ambitious objectives. Another key element is regulatory effectiveness. Governments must have capacity for quality monitoring and have transparent and efficient reporting mechanisms and pathways (Riedl et al. 2025). These elements outline the longevity and legitimacy of the agreement, responsible for ensuring that the developer meets their targets.

Over the past 20 years, CBAs have emerged all over the US. However, the formality of the agreements has varied, often leaving the question of enforcement up to community coalitions’ advocacy efforts. The brief suggests that local governments can play a more direct role in supporting community members’ CBAs, especially those pertaining to environmental health that will inevitably fall in between the responsibilities of different offices. CBAs have also focused mostly on labor and housing agreements, despite their potential to promote environmental protection. 

For example, in 2022, when General Iron obtained a permit to create a scrap metal recycling plant in Southeast Chicago, the city did not act until continued measures were taken by community members and an impact report was ordered (Chase 2024). The plant was originally supposed to be in the community of Lincoln Park, an affluent and primarily white neighborhood in Chicago, so the decision to move location made clear who has power to prevent pollution in their neighborhoods in Chicago.

The Hazel M. Johnson Cumulative Impacts Ordinance (HMJ CIO) is a novel policy that would require a more thorough review for new industrial development projects. What makes it unique is the creation of an Environmental Justice Advisory Board, composed of several leaders from Chicago-based environmental nonprofits, who would conduct and oversee these reviews. This creates a direct pathway for community-based organizations to voice their concerns about developments in their community (City of Chicago 2025). If passed, this ordinance would be a major symbol of progress for the environmental justice community. Yet, in some ways, it is still a form of reactive policy. Creating long-term impacts requires even more proactive policy. CBAs and the HMJ CIO are examples of policies that put people first, but they can go a step further.

Policy Proposals

While there have been many successful CBAs over the past two decades, most of them have followed the same format, focusing on a specific development project in a local community, limiting the benefits to a hyperlocal context. In other words, past CBAs have been one-offs that start and end with a development project, historically focused on labor and housing agreements to ensure community members’ economic benefits. Centering environmental health as a priority to protect community-level health and ensure environmental sustainability creates a potential for more proactive public policy. Shifting focus on environmental sustainability also implies a more long-term agreement that is continually reviewed and assessed. While climate action plans set goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, CBAs could focus more on implementing environmental solutions to achieve public health goals. As the primary means to create public power, the government should facilitate this exchange, creating provisions for developers before they can even propose a project that will have significant impact on environmental and human health. 

Align Citywide Goals with Environmental Health Priorities 

Urban environmental health issues often overlap between different departments, leaving them with little targeted focus for finding solutions. To adequately address environmental health concerns, experts from across city departments should come together and create a taskforce designated to track progress on implementing environmental health standards across city projects. Building capacity for solutions should focus on embedding environmental health concerns into existing policies, not creating new ones. This also includes expanding how environmental health is communicated across projects, as environmental policies and standards are often siloed. Chicago has already taken steps toward achieving environmental justice, many of which came out of the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan (City of Chicago 2022). Key strategies in Phase 5 of the CCAP detail the importance of “integrating community resilience and climate justice criteria into department-level strategic planning and annual budget setting by 2023” (City of Chicago 2022). While this goal aligns the CCAP and the Chicago Department of Public Health, the next CCAP should expand on policy implementations and clearly outline how the CDPH plans to use environmental actions to better community-level health.

Another example is developing affordable housing units that maintain environmental health standards. The city should require robust standards for new government-funded public housing projects and incentives to embed public housing with other environmental initiatives. For example, establishing criteria that developers must meet before even submitting a project proposal would shift the power from developers to local communities. Chicago is currently experiencing an affordable housing crisis; as the city works to build more affordable housing, CBAs could play a key role in ensuring developments are also environmentally safe (Bandoch and Estabine 2025). Creating more equitable housing that prioritizes residents’ environmental health would require three key considerations: capacity, geography, and agency (EPA 2026). First, capacity refers to the city’s ability to increase affordable and environmentally sound housing. While funding would be a barrier, highlighting the economic benefits of green housing like retrofitting older buildings and using renewable energy sources could demonstrate how environmental solutions are often more efficient. Geography, or an individual’s physical proximity to environmental exposures from the natural and built environment, refers to how racial minorities are still very segregated in Chicago. Aligning environmental health priorities would mean targeting specific neighborhoods most impacted by pollution first. Lastly, agency refers to the ability of families to move between neighborhoods and advocate for environmental health standards where they live. 

Build Power Between Local Governments and Communities with New CBAs

Historically, CBAs have been agreements between developers and communities enacted after the initiation of a development project has taken place. An agreement created after a project has already begun is inherently reactive, leaving little room for community feedback to be implemented. Transitioning to a more proactive policy could shift power dynamics by making local community members key stakeholders. CBAs between the government and local communities would provide a framework for proactive environmental policy. By agreeing to maintain or achieving specific environmental conditions (such as standards for water or air quality, or adequate green spaces) in a limited time frame, communities could build more substantive power with policymakers. These CBAs would create formalized opportunities for community members to build power, allowing them the same opportunities and connections developers have to influence urban planning policy. Indirect pathways for building relationships and trust between the local community and government, such as through increased civic engagement and youth participation, would also strengthen CBAs. 

A citywide CBA aimed at creating stronger environmental health protections would use urban planning policy as a mechanism to do so, allowing for increased impact compared to a typical CBA structure. The CBA would involve working directly with frontline environmental justice organizations on planning and implementing environmental health and urban planning initiatives, such as through the advisory board already outlined in the HMJ CIO. One example of success is Detroit’s 2016 Community Benefits Ordinance (CBO) which requires that projects investing a minimum of $75 million and $1 million in property taxes have CBAs to address unintended impacts on the local community (Draus 2026). The ordinance then requires developers to sit down with neighborhood action councils (NACs) and reach agreements for the CBA within three months. While the CBO has led to several successful agreements, critics have voiced concerns over the burden put on NACs, who serve on a voluntary basis, and the reality that many smaller development projects fall under this threshold, allowing them to continue without a CBA. Creating CBAs between the government and community would require any development to be assessed on whether or not its impacts match the community’s intended goals.

Conclusion

Environmental health is a complex yet necessary issue to address in urban environments. Within Chicago, community areas segregated by race and income highlight clear social disparities. CBAs between the city’s government and local community could provide a framework to fill the gap between local and federal policy. Policy that prevents harmful development projects from taking place would address the root cause of community-level health issues caused by pollution. This CBA would require a novel policy framework, but many of its provisions would already exist as goals in both Chicago’s plans and in grassroots advocacy campaigns. Potential for a Chicago-wide CBA could also include provisions for other climate goals, such as increasing public greenspace and supporting a just transition to renewable energy. Recent attacks on environmental justice, such as retracting Justice40—a provision to allocate 40 percent of federal funds to underserved communities—and repealing several key environmental policies, such as the Endangerment Theory, have created a gap in government funding and the capacity to advance environmental justice efforts. Therefore, it is essential for research to show the economic benefits of environmental health initiatives that reduce climate and health burdens. While the ideas provided in this brief may seem unnecessary or abstract, history has shown how short-term solutions have failed to achieve environmental justice outcomes. Exploring how the government can better support community voices and create sustainable solutions is a way to increase public power and create a safer environment for all.