MPC works with Rogers Park and West Town communities to help them prepare for the city's upcoming remapping process using the MPC-designed Zoning Change Strategy.
More than one hundred people packed a meeting room in Pottawattomie Park in
Rogers Park this past Wednesday to hear MPC’s overview of Chicago’s zoning
ordinance rewrite, and to volunteer to participate in MPC’s Zoning Change
Strategy process. Ald. Joe Moore (49th Ward) sponsored the meeting, which
offered residents an opportunity to ask MPC staff about how the new ordinance
would impact development in the neighborhood. MPC also introduced community
residents to its Zoning Change Strategy, which sends residents out into the
community to identify neighborhood assets and challenges in preparation for the
citywide zoning remapping process. MPC will train Rogers Park residents on how
to conduct the analysis in early September.
West Town Leadership United (WTLU) is midway through the Zoning
Change Strategy process. MPC’s West Town training session was conducted entirely
in Spanish, for the group’s predominantly Spanish-speaking constituents.
MPC provided the group with maps, cameras and logbooks to analyze the
neighborhood. WTLU’s members then split into teams, recruited their neighbors and began
the task of identifying positive and negative development issues in the
community. MPC is in the process of evaluating the data collected by the group,
which includes housing issues, character of commercial districts, and
manufacturing nodes. The data will be used to craft a Zoning Change Strategy for
the neighborhood that will highlight potential zoning issues for residents to
share with their elected officials prior to the city’s zoning remap process.
Rogers Park and West Town are two of five communities participating in MPC’s
Zoning Change Strategy process.