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The following materials announce NIPC's release of the
Common Ground Preview of the 2040
Regional Framework Plan, made public on September 29, 2004. Please credit images to
Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission.
Common Ground Preview of
the 2040 Regional Framework Plan. Here is the preview
report that NIPC Commissioners voted to approve on September 29.
Link: http://www.nipc.org/news/cg
preview.pdf. (File size:
10 MB)
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2040 Regional Goals Poster.
Created as a supplement to the Framework Plan preview, this poster
summarizes 52 regional goals identified by participants in Common
Ground's extensive public involvement workshops.
Link: http://www.nipc.org/news/cg
preview.pdf. (File size:
387 KB)
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2040 Centers
and Corridors Map. This map is reproduced from the Common Ground
preview report, showing where participants expressed their desired
locations of population/employment centers and transportation corridors.
Link:
http://www.nipc.org/news/centers-corridors.jpg. (File size:
3 MB)
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Conceptual
Illustration: Vision of the Region in 2040. This rendering shows the Common Ground vision of
multi-density Centers connected by Transportation Corridors and protected
Green Areas. Link:
http://www.nipc.org/news/birdseyeview.jpg. (File size: 7.8
MB)
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Sensible Growth vs. Sprawl
Illustration. Each of these four JPEG illustrations is a
variation on the very same map showing how unplanned community growth
creates sprawl. Please select the version that suits your needs.
Black/white with
caption, 6-county background (File size: 2.2 MB)
Black/white with
caption, no background (File size: 2.0 MB)
Color with caption, 6-county background
(File size: 2.9 MB)
Color with
caption, no background (File size: 2.4 MB)
Press Contact: Tom Garritano (tgarritano@nipc.org,
312-454-0400)
Northeastern Illinois 2040 Regional
Framework Plan is
Previewed
Common Ground nears completion of its blueprint
for regional
and local land-use planning
CHICAGO -- The Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC)
today released its first preview of the 2040 Regional Framework Plan, a
product of more than three years’ public discourse and expert analysis of
land-use trends and needs. The plan will be central to allocating the
region's investments for transportation, economic development,
environment, and other forms of land use.
According to NIPC’s official forecasts for Cook, DuPage,
Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties, population will grow from the
2000 total of 8 million to 10 million by 2030, a 25-percent increase.
With federal funding through the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT),
NIPC began the Common Ground project in 2001 to answer pivotal questions
about how land-use planning can preserve or enhance quality of life.
"This preview is the first public glimpse of a richly
detailed portrait of the region’s desired future as expressed by nearly
4,000 Common Ground participants," said NIPC president Mike Smith. "In
dozens of workshops, attendees from all walks of life -- individual
residents, business leaders, planners, and decision makers -- used
interactive technology called 'Paint the Region' to show where they want
to live and work, how they want to get around, and which natural
resources need to be preserved. The project team has done a remarkable
job of synthesizing these inputs to provide a robust framework for
collaborative planning at the regional and local levels."
Common Ground's Paint the Region software let workshop
participants convey their preferences in painstakingly layered maps,
which yielded a vision of livable communities that are walkable, safe,
and easy to traverse, with preserved natural resources. The process
identified three primary planning elements -- Centers, Transportation
Corridors, and Green Areas -- the strategic location of which will
determine whether residents benefit from well-planned communities or
suffer from unplanned sprawl.
Centers are defined as hubs at several levels of density,
ranging from Global in the case of Chicago, Metropolitan (Evanston and
Joliet, for example, among 29 total), Urban/Suburban (Downers Grove and
St. Charles, among 69 total), Town (Palos Park and Peotone, among 173
total), and low-density Hamlets (Golf and Wayne, among 15 total). Each
type of center has unique characteristics, the Common Ground preview
says, but all share factors of housing, employment, transit, and natural
resources that help determine quality of life. The document points out
that biking can contribute to health, while effective public transport
creates efficiencies that boost the local economy and environment by
reducing traffic congestion. By aggregating residences and jobs in these
locations, communities can save on infrastructure costs, which tend to be
higher when sprawl results from unplanned development.
"In this process, we're like 400-meter runners with most
of the track behind us and 50 meters to go," said Hubert Morgan, Common
Ground program manager for NIPC. "Today's preview is an important
milestone leading up to creation of the full 2040 Regional Framework
Plan, which will be submitted to NIPC Commissioners as a draft for review
in December. The region and its communities have spoken, with a clear
vision that our staff is now working hard to express via highly detailed
maps and plans that depict the 'desired future' for northeastern Illinois
over the next 30 years."
The preview document, available at
http://www.nipc.org, asserts that
interconnected factors such as housing, roads, public transport,
employment opportunities, and natural resources combine to determine
whether a community is "livable." An imbalance of these factors can
develop in the absence of effective planning, according to the Common
Ground report, with a diminishing quality of life due to longer commutes,
increased cost of living, environmental decline, and other undesired
outcomes. The 2040 Regional Framework Plan is intended as a guide to
avoiding those negative results by providing local planners with the
tools necessary to address their communities' needs in a
more-collaborative manner.
Common Ground surveyed the region's 272 municipalities and
discovered that only 210 had comprehensive plans, of which 75 percent had
not been updated since 1989. Ninety percent of the plans made little
mention of affordable housing and transit-oriented development, two major
priorities of Common Ground workshop participants. The 2040 Regional
Framework Plan is designed to jump-start local communities' planning
efforts, while showing that collaboration rather than competition among
counties and municipalities is in the region's best interests.
"Local land-use planning is clearly the prerogative of
local governments, which control zoning that determines whether property
may be used commercially, industrially, residentially, and so on," said
NIPC executive director Ron Thomas. "But just as nations of the world
have become more interdependent due to advances in technology and
transportation, so our neighboring communities depend on one another to
make sound choices for land use. Common Ground points toward a bright
future of coordinated planning across the region, and it's our one chance
to avoid the unchecked sprawl that would exact a price from all of us
regarding quality of life."
Common Ground participants' recommendations for new or
extended expressways reinforced the current Regional Transportation Plan
(RTP) through 2030 funded by IDOT and developed by the Chicago Area
Transportation Study (CATS), in consultation with NIPC. Looking beyond
2030 to 2040, participants envision an extension of I-355 to the planned
south suburban airport. New rail facilities or expansions identified by
Common Ground include an extension of Metra’s Milwaukee District West
line to Hampshire in Kane County. That expansion is called for in the RTP,
as is the Outer Circumferential Rail that Common Ground participants
favor.
"We welcome Common Ground's framework plan, which will be
central to the next Regional Transportation Plan," said IDOT Urban
Program Planning bureau chief Randy Blankenhorn. "IDOT and its partners
rely on NIPC for overall land-use planning and related data that let us
make sound decisions about where to direct transportation resources. The
preview report places residents' transportation needs in a broader
context, showing how each community can enhance its 'livability' through
collaborative planning that builds on the Common Ground process."
The preview 2040 Regional Framework Plan is available at
http://www.nipc.org/. NIPC will release Common Ground's longer draft
Framework Plan will be released by NIPC upon Commission review in January
2005, followed by a final report with implementation details to be
reviewed by the Commission in April.
--END--
About NIPC
NIPC was created in 1957 by the Illinois General Assembly
as the region’s comprehensive land-use planning agency. The legislation
authorizes NIPC to conduct research for planning -- including official
forecasts of population, employment, and other socio-economic indicators
-- to advise units of local government on their plans and policies, and
to provide general comprehensive plans and policies for use by local
governments. NIPC's role was reaffirmed in 2000 by an Interagency
Agreement with the Chicago Area Transportation Study (CATS), the Regional
Transit Authority (RTA), and the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT).
The agreement stipulates that NIPC's plans and data are the basis for the
Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) that guides critical decisions and
investments of federal transportation funding. For more, see
http://www.nipc.org.
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