Featured projects

The EDA University Center @ UIC promotes green economic development through strategic community driven services that expand forward looking eco-friendly businesses and develop a highly skilled workforce talent pool that is prepared for these opportunities.

The EDA UC website is currently being updated; see the site here.

Led by the Voorhees Center, the Illinois Defense Manufacturing Consortium (ILDMC) works to support communities in four  defense manufacturing-intensive areas in Illinois:the Chicago region, the Greater Peoria region, the Quad Cities region, and the Rockford region. The ILDMC was awarded a $5 million grant in 2022 from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program to make long-term investments in critical skills, facilities, workforce development, research and development, and small business support in order to strengthen national security innovation.

Every year, the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services and its partners tally the number of residents experiencing homelessness in homeless shelters, encampments, and unsheltered areas not meant for human habitation. The Point-In-Time (PIT) Count follows the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) methodology and is reported to HUD annually. The Count serves as a one-night snapshot of homelessness in Chicago and is one data point out of many that helps to guide homeless services and funding.

The ADA-PARC is a collaborative research project of 7 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Regional Centers. It is a Participatory Action Research Collaboration (PARC) that 1) looks at participation disparities experienced by people with disabilities, 2) examines key environmental factors contributing to these disparities, 3) highlights promising practices at state & city levels, and 4) develops strategies for dissemination and utilization of findings by ADA Centers and others.

The Socioeconomic Change of Chicago’s Community Areas, also known as the Gentrification Index, examines neighborhood change across Chicago from 1970 to 2010. It uses key indicators to measure how much a neighborhood’s wealth or poverty has changed in this time.

This report shows that inequality is growing in Chicago. Some neighborhoods have grown wealthier, while others have grown poorer. At the same time, the number of middle-class neighborhoods has gone down.