Dear Planning & Zoning Commission,

I hope you're all doing well.

I'm sharing this as a written comment for general awareness, not connected to any specific agenda item. I served on the Planning & Zoning Commission in 2019–2020 as a student representative, and I've found myself reflecting on that time more recently.

Serving on the Commission was genuinely formative for me. It was one of the first times I saw, up close, how much care and intention go into shaping the physical structure of a city—land use, zoning, traffic, density, and long-term patterns that most residents never think about day to day, but that quietly influence everything.

As I've gotten a little older, one thing I've started to notice more is how businesses can still struggle even when the physical framework is solid. One reason, I think, is something we don't often talk about explicitly: how people discover local businesses in the first place.

More and more, the way residents find restaurants and other small businesses is mediated by large platforms and algorithms. These systems tend to reward past success: places with more reviews, more clicks, more brand recognition get shown more often. Over time, this creates a feedback loop where attention concentrates on the same familiar businesses, while newer or independent ones—even when they're excellent—struggle to ever be seen.

Restaurants are just one slice of the local economy, but they're an important one. They drive foot traffic, shape the feel of commercial corridors, and often determine whether an area feels alive or hollow. And they're fragile. Many don't last more than a few years. When discovery quietly favors the already-visible, it becomes much harder for new efforts to survive long enough to be discovered at all, sometimes even by people who live a few blocks away.

Out of curiosity (and honestly, some concern), I created a project called the Naperville Underrated Food Map. The idea was simple: instead of asking "what's already popular?", I wanted to ask which places seem to be quietly doing better than you'd expect given how little attention they get.

I used machine learning, which is essentially teaching a computer what a "typical" restaurant looks like based on things like reviews, ratings, and location, then surfacing the places quietly outperforming that baseline. In practice, it also makes discovery feel curious again instead of repetitive.

Here's the link, in case it's helpful context: https://www.juandavidcampolargo.com/projects/naperville-food-map

I wanted to share this because it made me realize something I didn't fully appreciate when I was serving: even when we get the physical environment right, businesses still live or die based on whether people can find them.

Discovery is becoming a structural issue, and it has started to feel like a kind of soft infrastructure, not something governed locally, but something that has very real local consequences.

For example, restaurants are fragile. Many open with everything on the line and quietly close a few years later, often without most residents ever knowing they existed. When discovery increasingly rewards past success and visibility over effort and quality, it becomes harder for new businesses to survive long enough to become part of the fabric of a place.

That matters beyond food. It affects which storefronts stay filled, whether commercial corridors feel alive or hollow, and whether people with new ideas believe there's room for them here. Over time, those small outcomes add up to the character, resilience, and openness of a city.

I think it's something worth being aware of as we plan for the future. Supporting local businesses isn't only about permits, zoning, or incentives; it's also about whether people can actually find and support what already exists.

I do think this is one of the next big planning challenges that doesn't look like a planning challenge: whether new local businesses still get a fair shot in a world where discovery is increasingly controlled by algorithms that reward whoever already won yesterday, regardless of how well we plan on paper.

Ten years from now, we'll still be debating setbacks and zoning categories, but we'll also be living with the outcome of whether local entrepreneurs had a real chance to be found in an algorithmic world. If we want a resilient city that keeps renewing itself, we may need to start thinking about discovery the way we think about other forms of infrastructure: something that either supports the local ecosystem, or slowly erodes it.

Supporting small businesses may require new forms of civic awareness and experimentation alongside traditional planning tools. That could mean paying closer attention to visibility and turnover patterns, supporting local discovery efforts, encouraging tools that spread attention more evenly, or partnering with organizations that help residents find what already exists before it disappears.

In other words, we may need to think not only about where businesses are allowed to exist, but about whether the ecosystem around them gives new efforts enough oxygen to survive long enough to take root.

I wanted to share this perspective simply because I care about Naperville and the long-term health of its neighborhoods and commercial areas. My time on the Commission helped shape how I think about that responsibility, and I remain grateful for the care and thoughtfulness you all bring to it.

Thank you for your time and for the work you continue to do for our community.

Warm regards,

Juan David Campolargo