Case Study 04 — SPARK Center + DePaul University — 2026
DePaul University's Institute for Housing Studies (IHS), the Visual Informatics and Data Analytics (VIDA) Center, and The SPARK Center propose a comprehensive one year project to support the SFF's development, implementation, and ongoing assessment of its housing portfolio. The project team will begin by working with SFF to identify relevant questions aligned to their strategic goals to guide the project and data collection. Guided by these questions and using a mix of publicly available data and data sets provided by IHS, the team will model and test various housing strategies to understand the trade-offs associated with different approaches and make informed decisions on which strategies might provide the most favorable outcomes. This comprehensive analytical support will equip SFF with data-driven tools and insights to clarify future needs and opportunities, illuminate potential trade-offs and synergies, and ultimately support more strategic and effective deployment of resources within its housing portfolio.
As a PhD Design Researcher at SPARK, my role spans data visualization, community-facing design, and a Design Justice review of the research project to evaluate its alignment with equitable, community-engaged design practices.
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/ The Steans Family Foundation
The Steans Family Foundation has maintained a 30-year “to and through” commitment to the North Lawndale community. Their portfolio focus on systems policy, development work addressing systems-level change in early childhood education, employment, and community development. The SFF partnership with DePaul is focused on potential social andeconomic impact of its investments and grantee activities in North Lawndale, specifically through “block by block” predictive analytics.
/ North Lawndale Community
North Lawndale is a historically Black neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. The community has experienced a history of redlining, disinvestment, industrial pollution, and ongoing displacement pressures. Despite these structural challenges, North Lawndale is a vibrant community with deep institutional knowledge of community development, grassroots organizing, and mutual aid. Any research intervention in this context carries both the potential for meaningful impact and the risk of reinforcing extractive institutional relationships.
1. Engage with SFF to develop a clear understanding of the SFF’s housing priorities and short, medium, and long-term goals
2. Produce data sets and informational resources for each housing priority area, summarizing key literature, describing current conditions in North Lawndale,and identifying indicators to track progress and impact
3. Build accessible data products that inform and guide SFF staff, board members, and external stakeholders around the foundation’s housing work
4. Provide additional technical support to SFF staff throughout the year to applythese data resources to emerging housing questions.
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The project started with stakeholder engagement: regular meetings with SFF leadership and their housing team to understand priorities and refine research questions. The team conducted a literature review on housing investment strategies, displacement dynamics, and equitable development in neighborhoods with profiles similar to North Lawndale. IHS's parcel-level real estate dataset, covering every property in Cook County since 1997, forms the foundation of the analysis, supplemented by the Chicago Health Atlas and Social Vulnerability Index. The analytical work uses both cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches to model housing scenarios and their effects on home values, residential mobility, and displacement risk.
My role centers on translating this analysis into accessible visual formats: dashboards, data narratives, and tools that SFF staff and community stakeholders can use to guide decisions. Alongside the visualization work, I conducted a principle-by-principle Design Justice review of the full research proposal. Using the ten Design Justice Network Principles as a structured evaluative rubric.
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RQ1
How could the redevelopment of vacant lots affect the property tax base, property values, and population growth in North Lawndale? What peer communities share similar market conditions?
RQ2
How can home improvement programs increase equity for legacy homeowners, prepare for ownership turnover, and support long-term neighborhood growth as a tool for closing the wealth gap?
RQ3
Which renters are most vulnerable to displacement due to rising housing costs? What policy interventions could help stabilize renters and mitigate displacement pressures?
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Project deliverables include a stakeholder engagement report, a literature review white paper, baseline data comparing North Lawndale to peer neighborhoods, interactive dashboards, a predictive analytics report on housing strategy impacts, and a data narrative guide. The data narrative guide is a storytelling piece that walks SFF through the research with embedded charts and plain-language explanations.
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/ Environmental Mapping Prototype:
Interactive map of air quality burden, contamination, brownfields, green infrastructure, and Enviornmental Justice (EJ) Action Plan initiatives. Built to contextualize housing strategy within ecological conditions.