The suburbs are bleeding America dry

If you want a funny and surprisingly entertaining primer on why zoning reform matters, this Climate Town video is worth 20 minutes. It traces single family zoning back to a history of racial and economic exclusion, then shows how those rules continue to push development outward and make communities more car dependent and climate intensive.

The point isn’t to ban single-family homes or transform Oak Park overnight. It’s simply to let people build different kinds of homes so more of us can live near transit and everyday necessities. Housing policy is climate policy, and greater housing choice can help make Oak Park more affordable, sustainable, and inclusive.