By Guest Author- March 14, 2008
1998. Making History: Launching the region’s first smart growth coalition
The Campaign for Sensible Growth is established by six organizations that saw the need for a coordinated regional effort to improve planning and development practices. The coalition partners – the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC), Regional Transportation Authority (RTA), Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI), American Lung Association, Openlands, Urban Land Institute-Chicago (ULI-Chicago), and Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC) – make a commitment to promote economic development and preserve open space while minimizing the need for costly new infrastructure in northeastern Illinois. The Campaign’s primary audience is comprised of local and elected officials, community business leaders, and developers who recognize the benefits of coordinated planning for growth on both a local and a regional scale. MPC and now-defunct NIPC agree to co-chair the Campaign which MPC would house and staff, with joint fundraising among the partners.
Over the next several years, six additional organizations join the six founding members to form the Campaign’s Steering Committee: the Conservation Foundation, Northwest Municipal Conference (NWMC), Kane County, Chicago Urban League (CUL), South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association (SSMMA), and the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC). Building off of the momentum of the national smart growth movement, the coalition partners use education and outreach, policy development, and on-the-ground technical assistance to begin growing a member base that will eventually surpass 100 organizations and 2,000 individuals.
In the early years, the expertise of the American Planning Association (APA) — the Chicago-based professional association of urban and regional planners — helps to formulate sensible growth strategies for the Campaign. The Campaign produces the first of many publications that would establish it as a strong contributor of neighborhood planning concepts to Chicago area communities. Growing Sensibly: A Guidebook of Best Development Practices in the Chicago Region captures the attention of regional leaders by showing visual images of mixing uses and “walkable” developments, placing people near jobs, and encouraging compact growth along existing infrastructure to preserve open space. This first of three guidebooks is released at a major event entitled, “Growing Sensibly: From Main Street to the Region’s Edge,” featuring then-Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist as a keynote speaker.
Publications: Growing Sensibly: a Guidebook of Best Development Practices in the Chicago Region
1999. Early Accomplishments: From local to regional, from technical assistance to policy development
The Campaign releases Sensible Growth in Illinois: Tools for Local Communities to position Illinois nationally as a smart growth leader. The publication is written (with significant help from the APA) to aid the local implementation of then-Gov. George Ryan’s Illinois FIRST program, which allocated $12 billion for state transportation infrastructure, environmental clean-up, and community-building projects. It also informs a newly launched Smart Growth Task Force in the Ill. House of Representatives. State efforts are a necessary part of the early Campaign work plan, but localized research is equally important to the mission. More targeted works includes Revitalizing Industry: A Look at the 21 st Century — 20 case studies of successful redevelopment of Chicago-area industrial sites.
Highly visible projects are a boon for Campaign partnerships. This year marks the coalition’s first major event with the Chicago District Council of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a Smart Growth Symposium with nearly 400 sensible growth proponents in attendance. The partnership with ULI, a respected international organization of mostly real estate and developer interests, proves to be an important relationship for the Campaign’s work in communities with disinvestment and development challenges, and leads to nearly 20 intensive Technical Assistance Panels, or “TAPs,” around the region over the next nine years. ULI-Chicago and the Campaign follow a national TAP prototype: working with a local client, agreeing on a problem statement, compiling background materials, and assembling a diverse team of volunteer experts to provide the technical assistance.
The Campaign’s community-level involvement enables it to articulate those local needs to the top policy leaders while also placing them in a regional or statewide framework. Legislative initiatives are necessary to push an effective and lasting sensible growth agenda of strong communities within a stronger region. For example, the Campaign-created Sensible Growth Technical Assistance Act proves a testing ground for the coalition’s legislative prowess when it is first introduced in the Ill. Senate. Though the bill dies this session, other successes follow. The Campaign prevents the elimination of Facility Plan Areas, a state program that manages the orderly expansion of sewer systems, which enable population and commercial growth in the region. The Campaign also works with steering committee member Openlands to create and help enact the Illinois Open Land Trust Act , dedicating $160 million over four years for the acquisition and preservation of additional land for public open space and conservation.
Publications: Sensible Growth in Illinois: Tools for Local Communities ; Revitalizing Industry: a Look at the 21 st Century ; Illinois Open Land Trust Act
2000. Earned Credibility: Campaign reaches key leaders
Building on prior legislative victories and recognizing the increasing need for resource-deprived Illinois communities to plan for their futures, the Ill. House Urbanization Revitalization Committee passes the Sensible Growth Technical Assistance Act, which later dies on the House floor to the great disappointment of planning advocates and Campaign constituents. Committed to trying different approaches to building state capacity for sensible growth, the Campaign works with allied planning leaders on the creation of the Balanced Growth Sub-Cabinet under Gov. George Ryan to better coordinate key state agency decisions on growth and development in Illinois. This sub-cabinet is granted the authority to recommend strategies for how state programs can achieve efficiencies though smart growth.
The Campaign transitions its leadership from its first manager, Lois Morrison, to Ellen Shubart, who brings a 20-year career in journalism and a notable commitment to community participation. Shubart’s background makes her a natural fit for the Campaign, with it goals of promoting innovative, consensus-driven reinvestment opportunities. The second annual Smart Growth Symposium with ULI again draws an impressive audience, with 250 constituents curious about smart growth as the new planning paradigm. Under Shubart’s leadership, the Campaign also launches the successful quarterly newsletter, Growing Sensibly , which features Campaign work and sensible growth issues and solutions in the region.
Publications: Growing Sensibly, Winter ; Growing Sensibly, Spring
2001. Sensible Growth Takes Hold: Campaign visibility increases
A new legislative session bring renewed energy. In 2001, the coalition partners rename its sensible growth legislative initiative the Local Planning Technical Assistance Act, which this time receives a unanimous vote in the Ill. House before successfully passing through the Senate Executive Committee. Though the bill is never called for a vote on the Senate floor, Campaign partners are nevertheless encouraged. The work of the coalition is beginning to pay dividends in the form of a more robust sensible growth advocacy thanks to the Campaign’s education and outreach activities. Legislators are listening to constituents who want the benefits of good community planning, and absorbing the findings of the Smart Growth Task Force.
In an effort to build local capacity for sensible growth, the Campaign releases several issues of the highly effective ideas @ work series – an occasional publication outlining innovative sensible growth policy and technical information, and featuring local-level case studies from around the region and the country. Early volumes cover topics as varied as exemplary legislative models that encourage smart growth, expanding housing options through inclusionary zoning, and transportation techniques to ease traffic. The growing success of the coalition calls for more effective communications, so the partners launch a Web site and weekly e-mail (listserv) to establish regular contact with members.
Technical assistance continues as the heart and soul of the Campaign, with the HP3 Initiative , which evaluates workforce housing in three communities: Highland Park, Hanover Park, and Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. HP3 is staffed primarily by ULI national, with support from the Campaign and ULI–Chicago. Other technical assistance on sensible development wins the Campaign an Illinois Tomorrow Award from the State of Illinois for its outstanding balanced growth initiatives in 2000. The award, which is presented to the Campaign by then Illinois Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood, recognizes organizations and governments that engage in cooperative ventures that lead to a better quality of life for communities.
Publications: ideas @ work Vol.1 No.1 ; ideas @ work Vol.1 No.2 ; ideas @ work Vol.1 No.3 ; ideas @ work Vol.1 No.4 ; ideas @ work Vol.1 No.5 ; HP3 Initiative
2002. Planning Becomes Institutional; Technical assistance is hallmark
Persistence pays off. After three attempts in the Illinois legislature, the Local Planning Technical Assistance Act finally passes both legislative chambers to become Public Act 92-0768, which establishes the Local Planning Fund and validates the virtues of local comprehensive planning in the state of Illinois. The fund would help coordinate development decisions within and across communities, effectively leveraging state investments for transit, infrastructure, and economic development. Coalition partners work tirelessly to secure an allocation for the fund, which still needs funding in 2008. Nevertheless, municipalities begin using the 10-component framework of the act as the accepted definition of what constitutes a comprehensive plan.
The Campaign assists ULI—national with a high-profile TAP in Waukegan to address the development challenges of the ailing city’s once-prosperous downtown and lakefront. The release event for the panel’s recommendations attracts more than 200 people, including dozens of potential developers and investors. TAPs have now become a prominent feature of the Campaign’s work. More localized partnerships with ULI–Chicago this year include TAPs in exurban Richmond to address growth, in Highwood , Ill. to examine housing and redevelopment issues, and follow-up work in Hanover Park , Ill. to create a village center utilizing the principles of transit-oriented development (TOD). Each TAP produces a written report that allows other communities to learn from the TAP experiences. Additionally the Campaign produces several ideas @ work issues, tackling complex TOD zoning and historic preservation issues.
Publications: Local Planning Technical Assistance Act ; Richmond TAP ; Highwood TAP ; Hanover Park TAP ; ideas @ work Vol.2 No.1 ; ideas @ work Vol.2 No.2 ; ideas @ work Vol.2 No.3 ; ideas @ work Vol.2 No.4
2003. Campaign Standard: Strong relationships and quality technical assistance yield results
The 2003 spring legislative session offers encouraging prospects for sensible growth in Illinois, including the passage of the Campaign-supported Affordable Housing Planning and Appeals Act , which requires municipalities with more than 5,000 residents to create plans for at least 10 percent affordable housing, and – working with the Illinois EPA – the Illinois Wetlands Protection Act, which proposes regulations on activities harmful to isolated wetlands. The Campaign also continues to push for dedicated funding for NIPC, the region’s federally mandated land-use agency — an activity that would become core to the Campaign mission.
The Campaign and ULI–Chicago conducts two south suburban TAPs in 2003. In Park Forest , the focus is on revitalizing the downtown of the country’s first planned suburb. In Riverdale , the panel is charged with restoring an historic and highly disinvested residential neighborhood called Pacesetter. The latter becomes front-page news in the Chicago Tribune , and both efforts would yield significant results years later with innovative developments and celebratory groundbreakings.
Four ideas @work issues are published in 2003, covering such topics as environmental stability and employer-assisted housing. Additionally, the Campaign works with NIPC to produce Building Sustainable Communities , a series of fact sheets on sustainable development’s basic concepts and implementation techniques. These fact sheets emphasize that unmanaged growth can result in problems with flooding, degraded water quality, and heightened traffic congestion for communities. The publications are used to publicize sustainability practices, and the Campaign holds regional meetings for government officials to explain how to apply them to their communities.
Publications: Affordable Housing Planning and Appeals Act ; Park Forest TAP ; Riverdale TAP ; ideas @ work Vol.3 No.1 ; ideas @ work Vol.3 No.2 ; ideas @ work Vol.3 No.3 ; ideas @ work Vol.3 No.4 ; links to all Building Sustainable Communities fact sheets
2004. Going Interactive: Campaign introduces first “how-to” workbook
Publications are at the center of the Campaign’s 2004 work plan, serving as an effective way to reach core audiences of local and elected officials, business leaders, and developers. Changing Course: Recommendations for Balancing Regional Growth and Water Resources in Northeastern Illinois examines the relationship between development patterns and water resources in the region, and provides ways for state and local officials in the 12-county northeastern Illinois region to preserve water quality and quantity. Sensible Tools for Healthy Communities — decidedly “local” — uses U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 10 Principles of Smart Growth as the framework for development review. The step-by-step guidebook is written for municipal officials — planning commissioners, zoning boards, and city councils. The Sensible Tools format and process — aided by the expertise of a broad-based technical advisory team — provides the template for future guidebooks and the interactive exercises for training community leaders that accompany them.
The Campaign and NIPC receive the APA Illinois Chapter’s 2004 Public Education Award for their partnership on Building Sustainable Communities . Award criteria include enhancing public understanding of planning and demonstrating local applicability.
The Campaign’s geographic scope for TAPs broadens to include the fast-growing exurban portions of the region, including strategizing for transit-oriented developments in Elburn , Ill., located in rural western Kane County, the last stop on a Metra line. A Joliet TAP with ULI focuses on downtown restoration. The Campaign also begins to apply its concepts of technical assistance to the three-county region of Northwest Indiana – Lake, Porter, and LaPorte counties – by working with Indiana mayors, legislators and organizations like the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC), the Indiana Quality of Life Council, and the Northwest Indiana Forum.
Publications: Changing Course: Recommendations for Balancing Regional Growth and Water Resources in Northeastern Illinois ; Sensible Tools for Healthy Communities ; Elburn TAP ; Joliet TAP
2005. Digging Deeper: Campaign pilots new watershed partnerships
The Campaign’s 2005 work plan focuses on mitigating the impact of development on water resources in the region’s exurban counties, based on the recommendations in Changing Course (2004). The coalition partners lead the passage of the Stormwater Management Act of 2005 , enabling countywide stormwater planning and management. The Act grants authority to create stormwater management committees in the fast-growing, urbanizing counties on the edge of Chicago region that face increasingly urgent stormwater management issues — Boone, DeKalb, Grundy, Kankakee , Kendall , and LaSalle — and to Madison, Monroe and St. Clair counties downstate. Until the 2005 legislation, only the six northeastern Illinois counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will had the ability to set up such committees. The Campaign partners would spend the next three years convening workshops on the legislation for county and municipal leaders in the affected counties.
Thanks to support from the Joyce Foundation, the Campaign gathers data and strategies for local governments working together to effectively protect water resources in two developing watershed pilot projects at opposite ends of the region: Kishwaukee River in McHenry County and Trim Creek in Kankakee and Will counties.
Extensive collaboration between government and community stakeholders leads to Reclaiming Trim Creek: Managing Growth and Protecting Resources in the Kankakee River Watershed . The plan includes a detailed assessment of current watershed conditions, green infrastructure maps for use by local developers and planners, and recommended action strategies. Restoring farmed wetlands, promoting compact design, and establishing a cross-sector water management steering committee are among the project’s recommendations.
Preserving the Kishwaukee Watershed: Guiding Development in the Marengo-Union Region presents the findings of a similar study. This McHenry County region is critical to the health of the Kishwaukee watershed, and projected population increases over the next 20 years led community stakeholders to dedicate time and resources to this intergovernmental planning project.
Two issues of ideas @ work focus on water resource management in 2005. The Campaign also publishes a TAP report about economic redevelopment in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood , and 10 Ways to Make your Community Competitive: Lessons Learned from the Chicago Region , a compendium of best practices from previous TAP reports, written by MPC and ULI – Chicago. This report originally appeared in an abridged format in the August 2005 Urban Land for ULI members worldwide.
Publications: Stormwater Management Act of 2005 ; Preserving the Kishwaukee Watershed: Guiding Development in the Marengo-Union Region ; ideas @ work Vol.4, No.1 ; ideas @ work Vol.4, No.2 ; Andersonville TAP ; 10 Ways to Make your Community Competitive: Lessons Learned from the Chicago Region
2006. Renewed Focus on Planning: From regions to neighborhoods
The Campaign’s credibility among constituents in the Chicago region and around the state is due to the strength of its mission, work plan, supporting partners, and staff. With regional awareness of sensible growth – a goal central to the original Campaign mission – now established to Chicagoland, the Campaign’s work turns a corner in 2006.
In March, the Campaign hires new manager Michael Davidson to succeed the retiring Ellen Shubart. One charge for Davidson, a planning expert with a decade of experience in the research department of the APA — the professional association for the field of urban and regional planning — is to lead the coalition through a self-assessment. The process examines how the Campaign will respond to a changing regional planning landscape, including demographic changes and the coalition’s expanding geographic scope. The result is a Campaign work plan that prioritizes three core functions — policy development, education, and technical assistance — as the most efficient and effective. The process also affirms optimal ways to utilize staff and other resources, and refines the Campaign’s support for local communities that need to build their planning capacity as well as for regional planning leaders such as the newly formed CMAP and the state.
Successful Campaign-led policy initiatives are a mainstay of the Campaign’s eighth year. Following passage of the Stormwater Management Act of 2005, and prompted by the Campaign’s January 2006 release of Troubled Waters : Meeting Future Water Needs in Illinois , Gov. Rod Blagojevich issues an executive order calling for scientific studies of Illinois’ water system, and development of comprehensive state and regional plans to manage the resource. The executive order recognizes that increasing demands on the state’s water resources will create conflicts between multiple water supply users, adversely affect human health and the environment, and stall the economy if nothing is done. The result is the creation of the region’s first-ever Regional Water Supply Planning Group and Illinois’ first step toward developing a comprehensive statewide framework to manage water resources. The planning group is charged with creating policy recommendations and plans for regional water supplies over the next three years. The initiative is launched when Campaign leaders gather with Ill. Sen. Susan Garrett (D-Highwood) for an Earth Day news conference outside the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.
Intense policy initiatives did not mean the Campaign ceased what it did best: educate local officials, many of whom now spoke the language of sensible growth more fluently. The Campaign conducts two TAPs in 2006: the first for the struggling Archer Avenue commercial corridor in the Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, and second in two disinvested neighborhoods in south suburban Chicago Heights . The Campaign is also part of a team of experts working on an MPC-led Community Building Initiative in Blue Island, a small community bordering Chicago's southwest side struggling with downtown disinvestment. The group is asked to offer land-use recommendation and do market analysis to bolster Blue Island's efforts to revitalize three critical areas, including the downtown.
A major educational accomplishment for the Campaign is the release of Planning 1-2-3: a Step-by-Step Workbook for Writing a Comprehensive Plan in Illinois , the sequel to Sensible Tools . The workbook would receive top honors at the Publicity Club of Chicago’s annual Golden Trumpet Awards, for excellence in brochures, booklets or books.
Publications: Troubled Waters : Meeting Future Water Needs in Illinois ; Archer Avenue/Bridgeport TAP ; Chicago Heights TAP ; Planning 1-2-3: a Step-by-step Workbook for Writing a Comprehensive Plan in Illinois
2007. A Job Well Done: After nine years, the Campaign declares success
This is a year of celebration for the Campaign as core initiatives turned into successes.
The Campaign is a leading advocate for legislation – formerly Senate Bill 1201 – to provide dedicated funding and authority to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), a bill that institutionalizes sensible growth around the region.
The coalition advocates tirelessly for a transit funding bill that prevents harmful service cutes and fare hikes to the region's critical transit system, comprised of the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra, and Pace. Though a capital bill to pay for system maintenance and improvements remains elusive, Pace Metra and the CTA secure sufficient funding to run day-to-day operations for the next several years.
Also on the legislative front, Gov. Blagojevich signs the Campaign-led LEED-ND legislation – Senate Bill 135, the Green Neighborhood Award Act Retail 1-2-3: A Workbook for Local Officials and Community Leaders, a collaborative project with coalition partners Metropolitan Planning Council, Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, and International Council of Shopping Centers. The workbook provides information on retail development from the perspective of both communities and retailers, and is the third in a series of Campaign workbooks created to help Illinois communities achieve balanced growth. A fourth workbook on housing, co-sponsored by the Illinois Housing Council, MPC, CMAP, and Metropolitan Mayors Caucus is scheduled for a 2008 release.
Technical assistance remains the coalition hallmark. The Campaign and partners conduct a workshop on economic development, using Retail 1-2-3 as a guide, at a series of events around the region that feature speakers from the public and private sectors. The year’s only TAP occurs in the Pilsen neighborhood of the Chicago, where the Campaign and ULI–Chicago worked with the Chicago Depts. of Cultural Affairs and Planning and Development to convene a stellar panel on the viability of a creative industries district in an historic industrial section of Pilsen along Cermak Road and the south branch of the Chicago River.
The Campaign’s final event is a fitting one: a December gathering of sensible growth supporters from across the region to listen to Reid Ewing – a former Arizona state legislator now professor at the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland — discuss his provocative and groundbreaking study, Growing Cooler: the Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, due for publication by the Urban Land Institute in March 2008. Ewing concludes that energy-efficient cars and low-carbon fuel technologies alone are not enough to reverse the deleterious effects of climate change. Instead, the oft-overlooked but critical third component — uncoordinated growth ? is the missing link in public discourse to permanently reduce carbon emission levels. In other words: we need to confront the land use patterns that create fossil fuel dependency.
Publications: CMAP Legislation – SB 1201 ; the Green Neighborhood Award Act; Retail 1-2-3: a Workbook for Local Officials and Community Leaders ; Pilsen/Cermak Road TAP
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While the issues of sensible growth and development are far from resolved, the partners that make up the Campaign agree that better communication mechanisms, stronger organizational infrastructure, and an improved legislative and policy platform in Illinois combine to create a great jumping off point for new initiatives and collaborations. Even though they decide to dissolve the Campaign for Sensible Growth as a formal coalition, the relationships established through the Campaign will continue to flourish and improve livability, economic development, and environmental stewardship in the Chicago region.