What do you see?

Opinion: In many Chicago wards, nobody runs against the person in the seat. They say it was designed that way. Here's what design really means.

By The founder of Chicago PoliticsUpdated Oct 21, 2026

Opinion · A letter from the founder of Chicago Politics, first published on Chicago Politics. It was written about Chicago. The question is for every city.

Somebody told me recently that in half the wards in this city, nobody runs against the person in the seat. I asked why. And they said something I can’t stop thinking about. They said it was designed that way. The lines were drawn so one person would win. The wards were cut up so the people inside them would never add up to enough. It’s designed, they said. And you can’t fight design.

I went home and sat with that word.

Because look around you. Everything was designed. Your phone was designed to keep you scrolling at 2 a.m. The map on it was designed by someone who’s never stood on 47th and Western. The school they sent you to, the bus that stops two blocks short, the empty lot that’s been empty since you were a kid. Somebody sat in a room and decided. And they decided without us. And we learned to call it normal.

But I want to tell you something about design that nobody tells you.

Your parents designed something. Maybe they came here with a suitcase and a promise to someone they left back home. Maybe your mom was never at the game, but somehow there was always food on the table and a ride home. Maybe your parents couldn’t be there, and you learned later that the reason was you. There was no map. There was just a question in their heart, the same question that started every single thing you see around you: what do you see?

They saw you. Before you existed, they saw a kid graduating. A kid with a diploma on the wall and a future bigger than the block. They saw it, and then they worked until it was real. That is design. That is all design has ever been. One person sees something that isn’t there yet and works until everyone else can see it too.

And if your mother can design a life out of nothing in a country that didn’t want her, don’t tell me a few lines on a map can’t be moved.

A few days later a friend of mine was phone banking, calling strangers, asking them to register to vote. And she told me about one call. An older woman on the Southwest Side who said nobody had knocked on her door in years. Nobody had asked her what she needed. She said she’d vote for anyone who showed up and asked. Anyone.

Nobody is running. And she’s already waiting.

So the design isn’t finished. The people who drew those lines didn’t count her. They didn’t count your tía who’s never missed an election, or your little brother who turns eighteen next year, or you. That’s the trick. They never do. They design the room so you’ll believe you were never invited.

So here’s my question for you, and I mean you. Is this who we want to be, or who we were designed to be?

Think about what you want to see when you walk out your front door tomorrow. Think about your block. Do you want the same boarded-up corner, or a store that stays open past eight? The same empty lot, or a place your little cousin can actually play? You already know what you want to see. Everybody on your block knows.

Now ask the harder question. Not what. Who. Who do you want on the fifth floor of city hall, deciding whether any of it happens?

Because somebody is going to design the next ten years of your ward. Somebody is going to sit in that room. Your parents already did the hardest part. They got you here.