City Planners Unveil Ambitious Campaign For A Green, Walkable Chicago
By Zoe Greenberg in News on Feb 26, 2016 3:27PM
In 1909, for the first time, a team of city planners envisioned a new Chicago: a bustling city with diagonal streets and wide boulevards, a magnificent lakefront, plenty of green space, and an intricate system of highways that connected the city to its sister states.
A team of city planners is putting together a new vision, this time for a bustling 21st-century metropolis more focused on parks and walkable streets. The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, or CMAP, unveiled its new initiative Wednesday, enthusiastically titled ON TO 2050. The plan builds on the organization’s previous “Go to 2040” strategy, released in 2010.
While only in the beginning stages, the new plan will focus heavily on transportation, according to WTTW’s Chicago Tonight. The initiative aims to create walkable communities surrounded by public transportation, green infrastructure, and ‘infill development,’ where vacant lots are built up instead of abandoned. The planners also hope to prepare the city for impending climate change and improve storm water management.
"With our partners, we have just begun to analyze a wide range of issues for possible inclusion in the ON TO 2050 plan," CMAP executive director Joseph C. Szabo wrote in an email to Chicagoist. "At this point, CMAP not only doesn't have all the answers, we don't even know all the questions. We want to hear residents' big ideas about how to improve quality of life and economic prosperity for communities across the seven-county region."
The ON TO 2050 plans will be adopted citywide in October 2018. In the meantime, CMAP is looking to hear from government officials and regular citizens. If you have a great idea for Chicago, you just might get to make it a reality: write to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning at onto2050@cmap.illinois.gov. You could be the Daniel Burnham of 2016.