Crypto News: What a great downtown reinvention could look like

Persistently high vacancy rates and deep discounts in the US office real estate market are making the case for a reset of central business districts. And Chicago, where a redevelopment campaign for its downtown is just beginning to take shape, may offer its peers a roadmap.

Last year, the University of Chicago launched an annual innovation challenge calling on grad students to pitch plans to revive the city's core. The most revealing proposals from this year reimagined future business districts as not "monocultures of high-density white-collar work," contributor Zach Mortice reports, but residential destinations that would attract other demographics — including artists, young professionals and families with kids. Today on CityLab: Struggling Downtowns Are Looking to Lure New Crowds

— Linda Poon

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What we're reading

In Albuquerque, developers are turning old motels into affordable housing (High Country News)
More than a third of this country's population has applied to relocate (CNN)
The Trump administration is building a national citizenship data system (NPR)
Inside the Roosevelt, a migrant shelter no more, echoes of a crisis (New York Times)
LA bus ridership plummets amid fears of immigration arrests (Los Angeles Times)