Communities are finding a solution to their growing pains through convenient, green neighborhoods along accessible transit lines. It’s called “Transit-Oriented Development.” But for most, it’s just a return to the way things were.
Flash forward a generation to Chicagoland, circa 2030. The number crunchers tell us we’ll need to make room for two million new neighbors—plus their homes, schools for their kids, industrial parks and office buildings where they can make money and stores where they can spend it. And then there’s the not-so-trivial matter of providing space on the roads for the million or so cars they’ll probably use to get around our bulging region.
Or will they?
Right now, communities across northeastern Illinois are making decisions that will determine whether existing and future residents get more traffic, pollution and sprawl, or less. The savviest are turning to our first line of defense against road congestion—Chicagoland’s vast public transportation system—to find solutions to their growing pains. To do so, they’re borrowing some pages from the history books while rewriting others.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, communities in all corners of the region, from Chicago Heights to Elgin to Lake Forest, came to be because of their proximity to the region’s earliest rail lines. That legacy is alive today: Our metropolis boasts the nation’s second largest transit network and dozens of great neighborhoods accessible by train and bus. Recently, Chicagoland had the opportunity to show off many of these neighborhoods when 1,500 urban planners came to town from as far away as Melbourne, Australia, for the annual Rail-Volution conference. The event showcased how local communities are using transportation connections to fight congestion, ease workers’ commutes, boost local business and attract new housing development.
Rail-Volution also proved Chicago has earned its reputation as the “granddaddy of transit-oriented development.”
At its best, TOD, as it’s known among community planner types, is the creation of vibrant, walkable neighborhoods where homes, jobs and shopping places are all conveniently connected by public transportation. Some urban planners champion TOD as a highly efficient use of land and tax dollars, and a way to attain the elusive sense of place absent in so many communities over-run by parking lots and strip malls. Case in point, visit Wicker Park, Bronzeville Logan Square and other hot city neighborhoods whose development got a big shot in the arm from nearby transit El and bus service. And Evanston, Highland Park, Arlington Heights and Flossmoor are proof that it can work in the suburbs, too.
“Well-planned development near transit is popular because it meets the needs of many markets,” says Scott Goldstein, vice president of policy and planning for the nonprofit Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC).
Local businesses get a steady source of customers, he says, while communities reap new tax revenues. Residents save money, time and sanity by not having to drive everywhere. And all of us are better served when we develop where expensive infrastructure, like roads and sewers, already exist, rather than digging up precious green space.
Despite the clear benefits of TOD, a new development pattern heavily financed by the government and private corporations began to take hold after World War II. Veterans and their growing families settled giant tracts of suburbia on what was then the outskirts of our region, making the grass on their side of the fence greener by sheer force of pesticides, lawn mowers and will. They created enclaves of tidy, cookie-cutter homes purchased with the help of VA loans. And they got in when the land was cheap. Just a few years later, the arrival of the behemoth, federally subsidized Interstate Highway System would turn these “greenfields”, or clean, developable land, into developers’ goldmines, ushering in the era of car-centric development. Ever since, the scales have tipped in favor of auto-oriented, rather than transit-oriented, development.
Today’s high gas prices, global warming, and grinding traffic congestion and cultural shifts are creating the perfect storm to temper the lure of the automobile, and with it, car-centric development. Even die-hard road warriors are alarmed when they learn that the average household spends more on driving than on food, education or health; or that one-third of land in our cities is consumed by streets and parking lots.
Communities once again are being re-imagined, with transit-oriented development applying the best of the good old days to a modern context. However, the re-learning curve has proven steep.
Many municipalities still abide zoning codes created during the height of the industrial era, when the prevailing theory of community development was to keep homes and soot-belching factories as far apart as possible. Today, these 20th-century zoning rules separate where we live from where we shop, learn and gather—bad news for transit-oriented development…and for people!
Places like south suburban Blue Island are finding they must update outmoded policies to make way for new-fashioned TOD. Blue Island—where three commuter rail lines make 80 stops each day—is embarking on a transit-oriented revitalization plan to attract new jobs, shops and homes. Back when the city’s 35-year-old zoning code was written, people were still riding around in ’64 Lincoln Continentals; today’s cars don’t need the mammoth 180 square feet per car required for off-street parking, according to Jodi Prout, the city’s planning and development director. Other outmoded regulations call for provisions that by today’s standard’s are ridiculous, like mandating parking space for eight cars per doctor at all medical or dental facilities. The irony of Blue Island’s extreme parking requirements is that the city is just 4.5 square miles—very walkable. In fact, six out of 10 kids walk to school each day, says Mayor Don Peloquin.
Another holdover of post-World War II development—and an obstacle to TOD—is fear of the “D” word: density. Density is the ratio of the number of living units in a development to the amount of developable space; the higher the density, the more single-family homes per acre or apartments per square foot.
Developers and community planners often encounter intense opposition to dense development. Than Werner, planning and zoning administrator in west suburban Elmhurst, says community fear of density almost doomed a recent 123-unit condominium development one block from the train station and two blocks from Elmhurst’s downtown.
Resistance to density can be traced to historic examples of poorly planned developments. Consider Chicago’s public-housing high-rises, which stood for decades as monuments to poverty, racism and crime—and in the process, tainted many Chicagoans’ perceptions about density.
Advocates of sustainable development like MPC, the Congress for the New Urbanism and Smart Growth America see density as absolutely essential to preventing sprawl and building strong, appealing communities. They’re working to educate the public and decision makers about a more holistic way of viewing density. The holistic view preserves land and natural resources, such as wetlands, they say. It drastically reduces the amount of roads and sewers that need to be built and maintained to serve new neighborhoods. And a certain level of density is increasingly essential to attracting retailers, many of whom will only set up shop in neighborhoods that can promise a certain number of shoppers.
What’s more, recent studies show that people living in condos and apartments tend to have fewer kids and cars than those in single-family homes. Yet people often are surprised to learn that denser multifamily developments put less strain on our already-overcrowded schools and roads, says Werner, who combats misconceptions about density by dropping zingers like that one at community meetings.
While Elmhurst ultimately approved the condos—which sold out very quickly, by the way—Werner says well-reasoned arguments don’t always do the trick.
“For some, logic will never work,” said Werner. “The only way to do it is to put out the carrot and the stick.”
Doug Farr, founder of Chicago-based architecture and urban design firm Farr & Associates, is betting on the carrot. Farr is a nationally recognized proponent of sustainable, or green building design. Now, he’s helping the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) craft and pilot a set of green standards to apply to entire neighborhoods, known as Leadership in Energy Efficiency and Design for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND).
The idea, he says, is that the green building craze has been good, but a green neighborhood movement would be even better. Many of the proposed LEED-ND guidelines, however, conflict with development regulations on the books in Chicagoland and across the U.S. “LEED-ND is illegal in half the country,” he says, due to outdated policies. “Sprawl was done quite legally, and now a series of reforms are necessary to allow change to happen.”
LEED-ND not only is intended to make green development a badge of honor for communities, but also to encourage the market to start offering more sustainable choices. In other words, a little nudging is needed to change (long-subsidized) business as usual.
Some local governments are ahead of the curve, like Kane County’s Advisory Committee, which will vote on a proposal, based on LEED-ND guidelines, that would give developers a 40 percent discount on fees if their plans encourage walking and reduce the need to drive. The proposal will come before a final vote in spring of 2007. Communities have been overwhelmingly supportive of the measure, says Kai Tarum, Kane County’s planning director—and she believes developers will be, too.
The ultimate coup for TOD, according to many community planners, would be a seismic change in the way the state doles out funding for new transportation projects. Backroom deals and clout would take a backseat to a set of criteria requiring all state-funded projects to incorporate plans for nearby workforce housing and retail development. The result: fewer roads to nowhere, more transit-oriented development.
Whether reforms come at the local or state level, change 2030 is barreling toward us. Whether reforms come at the local or state level, a “rail-volution” is needed now. It’s one train you don’t want to miss.
Mandy Burrell is a Chicago-based writer and a former associate editor of Conscious Choice. She now works for the Metropolitan Planning Commission.