The city is changing how it reviews operating licenses for businesses that get complaints from neighbors. Last week, the city council pushed through a series of amendments aimed at tightening Chicago’s deleterious impact and public nuisance ordinance — a set of regulations that give residents in Chicago a platform for “addressing negative quality of life and public safety concerns in their neighborhoods” caused by new liquor license applicants or existing liquor establishments.

Ted Mazola has a booming voice, an easy laugh, and a philanthropic vision for the vibrant, charming and diversified University Village neighborhood he has always called home. In the area where he lives and does business, the affable 62-year-old has been a one-term alderman of the 1st Ward, co-founder of the University Village Association, a driving force behind the rejuvenation of Maxwell Street and a board member of the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind.

Bob Fioretti is not happy. Less than a year ago, he was elected to his second term as alderman of Chicago’s 2nd Ward, a sprawling city council district that stretched from the Near South Side all the way west to East Garfield Park, becoming the dominant alderman in the South Loop and Near West Side, as well as much of the West Loop.

Frank Lassandrello has been brewing beer since he was 18. No, it wasn’t necessarily legal, and no, it wasn’t necessarily good, but it certainly gave him a head start on his peers. As a freshman at Green Mountain College, he found it was simply an easy way to do what so many college students enjoy doing: imbibing alcohol. But 12 years later, with professional brewing experience at some of the Midwest’s most prominent craft beer breweries under his belt, Lassandrello is striking out on his own again with Broad Shoulders Brewing, set to open this summer at 2337 S. Michigan Ave.

Chicago's political battle lines are being redrawn, and the new aldermanic ward boundaries increasingly look like they'll be along the lines of a map presented by the city council’s Black Caucus.

The Near South Side has changed a great deal over the past 15 years. Decaying housing and industrial sites gave way to condominiums, upscale stores and parks.

Things didn't go quite as planned at a Chicago Public Schools community hearing last Friday. The idea was to hold a community input session at Malcolm X College on the Near West Side on the proposed closing of Richard T. Crane High School. Following a PowerPoint presentation, community residents would speak one at a time for two minutes each and no more.

As 2011 came to a close, West Loop came out as one of the clearest winners in Chicago's restaurant scene. In a poll of the city's food writers on the blog Eater Chicago, 10 of 17 declared the West Loop the city's best dining neighborhood.

Chinatown is turning 100. There's hardly a mystical tale behind it, but it’' been a century since the first Chinese businesses opened up in the area centered around Cermak Road and Wentworth Avenue.

At 7:30 a.m., the Randolph Street Pedway is brimming with activity. Morning commuters walk briskly in both directions through the underground corridor that connects Millennium Station and the Daley Plaza, linking them with every building in between.