You can slice, dice and interpret trends with the massive amount of Chicago building permit information available through the city’s open data policy.
The data available covers permits issued by the Department of Buildings in the City of Chicago from 2006 to the present.
“The dataset for each year contains more than 65,000 records/rows of data and cannot be viewed in full in Microsoft Excel,” the city’s portal says.
The information includes the publicly available information about Chicago’s permitted projects — including the contractor type, name, and contact information. “Data includes up to 15 different contractors per permit if applicable.”
You can access the data (for free) at https://data.cityofchicago.org/login