Follow your local newspaper or attend your community's board
meeting and you'll learn of imminent development plans in the works.
As local government decision makers everywhere review, tweak
and approve proposals, they also grapple with how to prepare for the region's
population swell — a projected growth of nearly 2 million people by 2030 — in
ways that benefit their communities.
Meanwhile, in many towns there are new faces at the helm. In
northeastern Illinois , more than 90 mayors changed seats in April, in addition
to hundreds of board member turnovers and new appointments made.
Across the region, new leaders are evaluating the merits and
downfalls of housing, retail and commercial development proposals and shaping
the future of their communities.
Many of these critical development decisions are being made
by elected and appointed officials who voluntarily serve on planning and zoning
commissions, as well as town or city councils, but often lack backgrounds in
community planning.
Some also have neither resources nor staff available to aid
in development and re-development decision making, nor to help with potentially
community-altering verdicts. And even for those that do, it's difficult to make
informed and sensible decisions on every proposal that comes forth.
Already, communities across the Southland are facing that
proverbial fork in the road. They are challenged to embrace cutting-edge design
tenets — including new urbanism, transit-oriented, mixed-use, and conservation
developments — as they work to revitalize town centers and neighborhoods,
maintain open space and improve both the tax base and quality of life.
South Holland and Glenwood are designing new town centers;
Tinley Park and New Lenox are implementing transit-oriented development plans;
and Manhattan and Plainfield are trying to prepare for future growth.
Meanwhile, other towns are struggling to develop a
reinvestment strategy — that road map to the future. In most communities, local
officials are considering development proposals at each and every board meeting.
It's critical that they carefully weigh the real, long-term effects for both
residents and business owners before making their decisions, which will shape
the Southland's future.
Yet across the region, subdivisions get approved, parcels
annexed, and zoning decisions made, often without being measured against a
comprehensive plan or community vision. Fortunately, there's help.
Since livable, attractive communities are created as a
result of hundreds, even Sensible Tools for Healthy Communities: A
Decision-Making Workbook for Local Officials, Developers and Community
Leaders.thousands, of development decisions, last year the
Metropolitan Planning Council collaborated with the
Campaign for Sensible Growth
and the
Metropolitan Mayors
Caucus to develop