Metro 2020

Chicago Metropolis 2020 is an independent study set up by the business community aiming to come up with a plan to improve the area as a whole, in terms of city planning. This channels the famous Plan of Chicago of 1909 (better known as the Burnham Plan after Daniel Burnham). However, times have changed and thus the focus of the plan has also changed. Whereas the Burnham Plan was centered on creating a "great city" this plan is centered on creating a city that is a good place to live for all its inhabitants, including its most destitute. A focal point of the plan is to redevelop areas that have been left behind in the cycle of suburbanization, urban decay and gentrification. This is an area which Chicago could very much benefit from as a cursory look through the south and west sides would find many ailing neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are suffering from the hand of the past, as unfavorable zoning codes and de facto segregation have created belts of poverty (whose inhabitants' biggest disadvantage is the color of their skin) that have only recently begun to shrink...only to be redistributed across city limits into poorer suburbs, particularly south of the city.

But I digress, Metropolis 2020 calls for a more sensible approach to city planning. Such an approach would focus partly on transit-oriented development (which would necessitate more transit than is currently in place), call for a reevaluation of segregationist practices that still endure, a new emphasis on parkland and other open spaces, and low-income housing subsidized by employers among other ideas. They are very much infant ideas in this report but perhaps some of them will be implemented in CMAP's new Go To 2040 program which was recently announced.