Kris Tiongson Urban Planning Portfolio
Illustrations by Andrea Posada
Welcome I lived in Metro Manila for 17 years and have been living in the Chicago metro region for the past 8 years. These two metropolitan regions, with their many similarities and differences, have shaped the way I view and understand cities. At-scale, my passion is in social justice, but I’m most engrossed in the issues of housing justice, community economic development, and multiculturalism. As I wrap up my Master’s degree in Urban Planning & Policy, I hope to apply my research and data expertise and background in doing justice work and fighting alongside underrepresented and marginalized communities
Kris Tiongson kristoffertiongson@gmail.com
Metropolitan Planning Council | Chicago, IL | Feb. 2021 - present Research Assistant • Working alongside the organization’s Housing and Community Development Team, conducting meaningful research on issues and policies, writing blog posts, articles, and policy briefs, and attending stakeholder meetings. • One project had me as the lead person on following the development of the Chicago’s 2021 Inclusionary Housing ordinance. I wrote MPC’s public testimony on the ordinance and co-wrote an op-ed that was published on Crain’s Chicago Business.
EDUCATION University of Illinois at Chicago | Chicago, IL | Aug. 2016 - May 2021 Joint BA in Urban Studies and Master of Urban Planning & Policy • Certificate in Geospatial Analysis & Visualization • Concentration: Spatial Planning • GPA 3.6 Harper College | Palatine, IL | Aug. 2014 - May 2016 Associate in Arts • GPA: 3.9.
SKILLS & EXPERTISE GIS
Adobe Illustrator
Outlook
Excel
Adobe InDesign
Tableu
SketchUp
Adobe Photoshop
AutoCAD
INTERESTS
LANGUAGES
Music
English
My dog Karaoke
Mundelein, IL
INTERNSHIP & WORK EXPERIENCE
PROFILE
Coffee
(224) 645 - 7149
Filipino (Tagalog)
The Magnificent Mile Association | Chicago, IL | Jan. 2021 - present Mapping and Demographic Analysis Intern • Working on a project on visualizing and quantifying the economic impact and footprint of The Magnificent Mile District on the city and the region. • As the lead person on updating the demographic and economic profile of the District, one major accomplishment of mine was creating a shapefile of the precise boundaries of the District, which had not existed prior to my work with the Association. This opened up the doorways for the substantial data-driven analysis we have been working on and will drive the work of the Association moving forward. City of Chicago Department of Housing | Chicago, IL | Jan. 2019 - June 2019 Intern • Worked alongside the Assistant Deputy Commissioner of the Bureau of Construction and Compliance. • Managed the spreadsheets and inventories of the over 400 properties within the City’s affordable housing portfolio, monitoring the compliance and non-compliance of property owners of City requirements and policies Starbucks | Buffalo Grove, IL | June 2016 - Sep. 2020 Barista • Provided customers with excellent customer service, quality beverages, and a clean, comfortable environment. Woodman’s Food Market | Buffalo Grove, IL | Aug. 2018 - Aug. 2019 Checker, Produce Clerk • Provided customers with a quick, pleasant check-out experience. • Ensured a fresh, well-stocked, clean, and visually appealing produce department, while expounding knowledge of produce to customers.
Contents 1
Racial Inequality & the Spatial Dimensions of COVID-19 in Chicago
6
Employment & Industry in The Magnificent Mile District
9
Oak Street Infill Development
11
Envisioning Madison Street
13
Village of Skokie Comprehensive Plan
15
Metro Manila’s Housing Crisis & the War on Informality
17
RefugeeOne Resilience
19
Op-Ed on Affordable Requirements Ordinance Update
Racial Inequality & the Spatial Dimensions of COVID-19 in Chicago In our Spatial Planning Studio class, we are visualizing racial inequality in Chicago in the advent of COVID-19. Our main objective in this class is to conduct a comprehensive geospatial analysis and update on how this pandemic has hit different communities and people throughout the city. Focusing on the three “pillars” of sustainability: Social, Economic, and Environment, our team of three was assigned to the economic pillar. Focusing specifically on the issue of economic fairness, the objective of our sub-team is to visualize how COVID-19 has not only unmasked economic inequities throughout Chicago, but has exacerbated it. What I’ve personally focused on is looking at industry and employment as lens to which we can understand the disparate economic impacts of this pandemic. The aim is to visualize not only where workers working jobs that have been vulnerable due to COVID-19 live, but also the demographics of these workers. “Vulnerable” Industries: 1. Accomodation and Food Services 2. Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation 3. Construction 4. Manufacturing 5. Retail Trade 6. Transportation and Warehousing 7. Utilities Source: Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics 2017, U.S. Census Bureau
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Kris Tiongson | Urban Planning Portfolio | 2
As shown in these maps, certain community areas in the west and southwest parts of the City have been disproportionately vulnerable throughout the pandemic. Top 10 community areas with the highest share of jobs worked by residents that are low-wage jobs in vulnerable industries: Armour Square, Brighton Park, Gage Park, South Lawndale, New City, Belmont Cragin, Hermosa, Humboldt Park, Mckinley Park, and Riverdale.
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Kris Tiongson | Urban Planning Portfolio | 4
This analysis has clearly shown that Black and Latinx Chicagoans, particularly the latter, have been hit hardest. While I’m not able to get statistics on exactly how many workers by race/ethnicity are working vulnerable jobs from this data, what I’ve found is that, looking at community areas that are majority one-race, 46% of jobs worked by residents living in majority-Latinx community areas are in a vulnerable industry, compared to 35% for majorityBlack and only 28% for majority-white community areas. Note: “majority,” in this analysis means at least 50% of jobs worked by residents in a community area are worked by one race/ethnicity.
Black Majority
35%
Latinx Majority
46%
White Majority
28%
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I wanted to last highlight that not only have Black and Latinx Chicagoans been most vulnerable throughout this pandemic in terms of job loss and unemployment, but they also disproportionately make up the city’s “essential” population. This data uses occupation data from the American Community Survey. Essential operations were identified based on IL Executive order 20-10.
source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 2015-2019 5-Year Estimates.
Essential Operations: 1. Community and social services 2. Health practitioners and other tehcnical occupations 3. Healthcare support 4. Protective service 5. Food preparation and service 6. Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance 7. Faming, fishing, and forestry 8. Construction and extraction 9. Installation, maintenance, and repair 10. Production 11. Transportation and material moving
Employment & Industry in The Magnificent Mile District As part of our Graduate program’s professional practicuum requirement, I’m interning with The Magnificent Mile Association. One of the central objectives of this internship is to visualize and quantify the economic impact or footprint of the District on the City of Chicago and the region. One approach I’ve taken to achieve this, so far, has been through an analysis of the District’s employment and industry patterns and trends. Relying on block-level data from the U.S. Census LongitudinalEmployer-Household Dynamics program, I was able to draw the exact boundaries ot the District and get accurate employment data. With origin-destination data, I was able to build off on this analysis and map out the places of residence of District workers in the entire state of Illinois. Total
Percent of Total
Professional, Scientific, & Technical Services
44,413
18%
Accomodation and Food Services
37,900
16%
Healthcare Suport and Social Assistance
23,215
10%
Administrative Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services
21,498
9%
Retail Trade
19,687
8%
Top Industries (2017)
Total District Jobs Source: U.S. Census LEHD
239,698
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Oak Street Infill Development In an Introduction to Geospatial Analysis and Visualization course, we were tasked to take a vacant lot in the Near North Side of Chicago and transform it into a townhome complex. Provided with the design, set-back, and other building and zoning guidelines, the main objective of this exercise was to familiarize ourselves with SketchUp. We were then asked to present our models using the five traditional plan views.
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Kris Tiongson | Urban Planning Portfolio | 10
Envisioning Madison Street
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As part of our Spatial Planning Methods class, my collegues and I were tasked to update Oak Park’s 2014 Comprehensive Plan. A central component of our updation of the plan was the re-imagining of Madison Street. Littered with vacant lots and empty parking lots, we saw a good opportunity to transform Madison into a lively corridor and a vital asset to Oak Park residents. However, our analyses of much larger problems, such as Oak Park’s rising affordability issues and the exodus of Black residents and low-income renters, presented a high need for a redevelopment plan that centered equity and community ownership. In these two photoshop renderings, I took two vacant commercial properties and reimagined them as worker-owned cooperatives. As these two properties were next to a large vacant lot we had selected for a town square plaza, I felt that a community market and a bookstore/coffeeshop type of co-op made a lot of sense.
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Village of Skokie Comprehensive Plan Our plan-making studio course provided us the opportunity to gain first-hand experience of the comprehensive planning process. Working alongside 18 other students, our team was assigned the Village of Skokie. Focusing on the four plan areas of Economy, Land Use, Housing, and Transportation, our goals and objectives were hinged on achieving four specific outcomes or “scenarios.” Our vision was a village that would continue to welcome and support an increasingly multicultural population, a village that provided opportunities for successful aging in place, offered services and amenities that would attract more young adults to the area, and a village that would invest in a “green” economy that would ensure health and livability for future generations.
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In addition to many writing and analysis contributions, this project also allowed me to gain substantial project management experience. My most significant contribution was the creation of the outline of the entire plan, as well as the creation of the templates for the plan area chapters and the evaluation and implementation sections. Fresh into the COVID-19 lockdown, with two months left in the semester, I took it upon myself to organize the team online in crafting the entire plan. With the entire team following my outline and templates, and with me leading the writing team and acting as the main llaison with the design team, the final product was a 150+ page comprehensive plan for the Village of Skokie. The images in this page include examples of the draft templates I created as well as the final design and layout versions created by the design team.
Metro Manila’s Housing Crisis and the War on Informality
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This is an excerpt of the final research paper I wrote for a Global Urbanization and Planning class. The objective of this paper was for us to conduct a critical analysis on a specific issue facing a city or urban area in a non-western country. For my paper, I chose to write on the housing crisis in Metro Manila, Philippines.
Reuters/Erik de Castro
The 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines -- and the collapse of the two-decade long Marcos regime -- marked an important turning point in the country’s history. Setting forth a series of neoliberal reforms such as the decentralization of governance and the democratization of civil society organizations, the government had reinforced a strong commitment to democracy and participation among people, communities, and non-governmental organizations and enhanced the capabilities of local governments to plan and develop their cities.1 This commitment was further reinforced with the enactment of the Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992. This landmark legislation not only made explicitly clear the right of all people to decent, affordable housing, but was aimed 1 Emma Porio, “Decentralisation, Power and Networked Governance Practices in Metro Manila: Space and Polity: Vol 16, No 1,” 2012, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ abs/10.1080/13562576.2012.698128.
as the centerpiece of the then-government’s apparent pro-poor agenda.2 Yet, nearly three decades later, the Philippines still faces a chronic urban housing problem. Over 43 percent of the country’s urban population live in informal settlements.3 This urban housing problem is most apparent in the country’s primate agglomeration: Metro Manila. Revcent estimates indicate that of the over 1.5 million Informal Settler Families (ISFs) across the country, nearly 600 thousand (or 40 percent) live in Metro Manila. Today, an estimated one out of every four residents in Metro Manila live in informal settlements.4 However, 2 Chester Arcilla, “Producing Empty Socialized Housing Privatizing Gains, Socializing Costs, and Dispossessing the Filipino Poor,” Social Transformations: Journal of the Global South 6 (May 31, 2018): 77, https://doi.org/10.13185/2868. 3 lation Living in Slums (% of Urban Population) - Philippines | Data,” accessed December 10, 2020, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.SLUM.UR.ZS?locations=PH. 4 Gayatri Singh and Gauri Gadgil, “Navigating Informality: Perils and Prospects in Metro Manila’s Slums” (World Bank Group, 2017), http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/ en/564861506978931790/Navigating-Informality-Metro-Manila-7-26-17web.pdf.
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this urban housing problem extends far beyond the issue of informality or the substandard living conditions within many of these informal settlements. These spaces of informality have long been the avenues of class tensions and struggles and contestations over space -- from the Spanish colonizers’ displacement of indigenous residents to the criminalization of informality during the Marcos regime, and to the gentrification-induced displacement that has been preeminent in the past three decades.5
deployment of danger zones8 and resiliency planning9 as grounds for eviction, Metro Manila is now in the grips of the largest eviction crisis in the country’s modern history.
[This is an excerpt; full paper available upon request.]
And while gentrification is not a new phenomenon in Manila, the landscape of gentrification that had emerged out of the neoliberal restructuring of the 1990s had manifested in a very different, and a more violent, way. Driven by public-private partnerships and a government striving to become an informal-settler-free , globallycompetitive city,6 what we have seen is an unprecedented number of ISFs in Metro Manila being evicted and relocated to the fringe to give way to the proliferation of mixed-use commercial, business, and residential districts and high-rise condominiums in the core.7 Moreover, while this form of gentrification-induced displacement is still very much pertinent in Metro Manila, recurring flooding disasters -- particularly in the wake of the 2009 Typhoon Ondoy -- had spawned a new form of displacement. These disasters have re-invigorated anti-slum discourse. As the government and the media redirected the blame for all these flooding disasters on the haphazard growth of informal settlers throughout history, displacement numbers are the highest they’ve ever been. In the past decade, environment-induced displacement has emerged as the most eminent form of displacement. Through the 5 Arnisson Andre C. Ortega, “Manila’s Metropolitan Lawndscape of Gentrification: Global Urban Development, Accumulation by Dispossession & Neoliberal Warfare against Informality,” Geoforum 70 (March 1, 2016): 35–50, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.02.002. 6 Ibid. 7 Kenneth Cardenas, “GLOBALIZATION, HOUSING MARKETS, AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF A SOUTH CITY: THE CASE OF 21ST-CENTURY MANILA,” n.d., 21.
8 Maria Khristine Alvarez and Kenneth Cardenas, “Building Back Better: Resiliency Revanchism and Disaster Risk Management in Manila,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, accessed December 9, 2020, 9 Maria Khristine Alvarez, “Benevolent Evictions and Cooperative Housing Models in Post-Ondoy Manila,” Radical Housing Journal 1, no. 49–68 (2019): 20.
refugeeOne resilience
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Trump Administration | COVID-19 | Gentrification This is an excerpt of the final research paper I wrote for a Community Development class. The objective was to analyze a community development organization or program. For my paper I chose to write about RefugeeOne, the largest resettlement agency in Illinois, and how the organization has had to endure through the different, multi-scalar attacks and changing neighborhood dynamics that continue to present challenges to the organization and refugees today.
refugeeone.org
The City of Chicago has long prided itself as a safe haven for immigrant communities. Having built up an inclusive legal environment and a robust set of policies supporting undocumented immigrants and DACA recipients, the city was named the number one most welcoming city in the U.S. for immigrants in 2019.1 It should be highlighted that much of Chicago’s esteemed diversity and the strong influence immigrants have had on the city’s social, economic, and cultural fabric owe a lot to the tens of thousands of refugees that have settled in the city throughout the past century. And while the largest wave of refugees came in the wake of the Vietnam War when tens of thousands of Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian refugees migrated to Chicago, 1 Grace Hauck, “This Is the Most Immigrant-Friendly City in America, New Report Says,” USA TODAY, accessed December 6, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/ story/news/nation/2019/11/13/chicago-ranked-top-city-immigrants-new-american-economy-says/4182404002/.
the city’s history of accepting refugees date further back -- whether it be Russian refugees at the end of the Russian Revolution, Jews and Eastern Europeans at the end of World War II, or Cubans at the end of the Cuban Revolution.2 However, it was ultimately Vietnam that had set in motion the city’s rise toward becoming one of the most accepting cities for refugees. Following national trends, the majority of the refugees resettled in the city were refugees fleeing communism -- mainly Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the USSR, and Cuba. It wasn’t until the mid 1990s when Illinois began resettling refugees of other nationalities such as refugees from many African countries.3 Over the past two decades, with the upsurge 2 “Refugees,” accessed December 6, 2020, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1053.html. 3 “A History of Refugees in Illinois, by the Numbers,” WBEZ Chicago, January 23, 2013, https://www.wbez.org/stories/by-the-numbers-refugees-in-illinois/c86d639c-ab1b44d2-b0c4-f17a28502d67.
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of geopolitical conflicts and violence in the Middle East and parts of South and Southeast Asia, a large percentage of the refugees resettled in city have been Iraqis, Assyrians, Lebanese, Rohingya (Burmese), Bhutanese, and many other Middle Eastern and Asian refugees.4
and, likely, the largest Palestinian community in the U.S. 11 [This is an excerpt; full paper available upon request.]
Nonetheless, the City of Chicago has become one of the national leaders in welcoming refugees. In fact, the city had the third largest number of refugees resettled between 1983 and 2004. What had set the city apart from other major cities, however, was the much more varied ethnic makeup of its refugees. Also noteworthy was the fact that the city had led the country with accepting the most refugees from Yugoslavia (Bosnians, Serbs, etc.) and came second to Detroit in accepting Iraqi refugees.5 Since 2004, the ethnic make-up of Chicago’s refugees has gotten more diverse. For instance, a significant percentage of the refugees resettled in the Chicagoland area for much of the past decade has been refugees from Burma (Myanmar) and Bhutan.6 Furthermore, between 2007 and 2016, 40 percent of ther refugees resettled in the Chicagoland area were from Muslim-majority countries such as Iraq, Librya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.7 Today, Chicago is home to the largest Iraqi-Assyrian community in the U.S.,8 the largest Rohingya community in the U.S.,9 the largest Serbian community in the U.S.,10 4 “Refugees.” 5 Audrey Singer Wilson Jill H. Wilson Audrey Singer, Jill H., “Refugee Resettlement in Metropolitan America,” migrationpolicy.org, March 1, 2007, https://www. migrationpolicy.org/article/refugee-resettlement-metropolitan-america. 6 “A History of Refugees in Illinois, by the Numbers.” 7 “Refugees in Illinois: More than 40% from Banned Countries - Chicago Tribune,” accessed December 6, 2020, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ ct-muslim-refugees-in-illinois-htmlstory.html. 8 “Iraqis,” accessed December 7, 2020, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory. org/pages/651.html. 9 “‘A Place I Can Call Home’ | Feature | Chicago Reader,” accessed December 7, 2020, https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/rohingya-refugee-survivor-home/Content?oid=71435983. 10 “Serbs,” accessed December 7, 2020, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory. org/pages/1132.html.
11 “Palestinians,” accessed December 7, 2020, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/946.html.
Crain’s Op-Ed on the 2021 Affordable Requirements Ordinance
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As part of my research assistantship with the Metropolitan Planning Council’s Housing and Community Development team, I’ve been assigned as the lead person on following the development of the recently-updated version of the 2015 ARO. As the lead researcher on this topic, I was given the opportunity to co-write an op-ed on the new ordinance. This op-ed was published on Crain’s Chicago Business.
co-writing credits: Kendra F. and Liz G.
The City’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance (ARO) confronts racist and classist forces such as redlining, restrictive covenants and contract buying that have painted familiar maps of disinvestment in our region. How? • Expands access to affordable housing. MPC Analysis of American Community Survey data revealed that more than six in 10 Black Chicago households and more than five in 10 Latinx Chicago households could not afford an ARO rental unit under current conditions. That’s why the new ordinance spurs the production of units that are actually affordable to most Black and Latinx Chicagoans through a four-tiered, weighted “income-averaging” system ranging from 30 to 60 percent of the area median income (AMI). • Balances the geography of affordable housing throughout the city. There’s currently red tape around
Crain’s via Getty Images
the location of affordable units under the current ARO; so many developers end up paying a penalty fee rather than building units. In fact, only 1,046 affordable units have been completed or are under construction to date. The new ARO incentivizes developers to build more affordable houseing, in bigger units that accomodate more families and in more parts of the city where options are desperately needed. • Aligns affordable housing with transit. Low-income households need not only affordable housing but also access to affordable transportation. This ordinance includes provisions to ensure that affordable units are as well-served by transit as the marketrate projects that triggered their development. read full article on: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/opinion/proposed-housing-ordinance-combats-segregation
Thank you.
Illustrations by Andrea Posada