Episode 13: Planning for Equitable Neighborhood Development

Thriving neighborhoods where residents have access to essential services, amenities, and jobs are vital to creating an equitable and prosperous Chicago region. As part of the Trust’s efforts to address disinvestment, we are supporting opportunities that lead to resident-driven neighborhood revitalization.

Through our Flexible Funding Program, the Trust has has supported planning initiatives, ranging from neighborhood plans to zoning assessments, that help create environments in neighborhoods where investment can take place. These planning efforts also play an instrumental role in incorporating resident voices into the development process to ensure their needs are being meet. 

In this episode of Trust Talks, we will explore the role of planning in neighborhood development, current efforts to increase investment in Chicago neighborhoods, and the importance of elevating resident voice in the process. 

Production by Juneteenth Productions. The podcast was recorded at the Sound Foundation.

Transcript

Edwin Tobar: Welcome to episode 13 of Trust Talks. My name is Edwin Tobar, Program Manager for the Catalyzing Neighborhood Investment Team, and your host for today. The Trust Catalyzing Neighborhood Investment Team works to build an environment for increased investment in neighborhoods that will allow all residents to have access to the services and amenities they need: grocery stores, parks, transit system, restaurants, and more.

To make that happen, urban planning is essential. Planning weaves together the community's environmental, social, and economic goals, with the intent of creating areas of work, play, and living that are essential for wealth building. Including residents in the planning processes allows for more equitable development, increased trust between community and government, and a better sense of ownership within a community.

That is why through our Flexible Funding Program, the Trust has provided capacity-building support to neighborhood organizations to lead the community engagement, real estate analysis, and design work necessary to create these plans. Our conversation today will explore neighborhood planning in Chicago, how to bring plans to fruition, and the importance of elevating resident voices. We have three illustrious guests today. Please take a moment to introduce yourselves.

Abraham Lacy: Sure, hi. My name is Abraham Lacy. I am the President of The Far South Community Development Corporation. We are located on Chicago's far south side in the West Pullman neighborhood, but we service majority of the far south side to the city limits, and into the south suburbs to I-80.

Our primary focus has been on three things. One is business services, where we help small business, we do procurement. We're actually an Illinois Procurement Technical Assistance Center. We do housing services, so we are a HUD-certified housing counseling agency, where we've reached a milestone over the last five years, and where we reached 10,000 residents in counseling and services.

Our last is regional planning and development, which we have been doing numerous plans. I think we've been a part of and led more than 15 plans in the neighborhood. First and largest one that we're doing is the Morgan Park Commons.

Christina Harris: My name is Christina Harris. I'm a Senior Director at the Metropolitan Planning Council, which is a nonprofit planning and policy organization based in Chicago, but with a regional focus. The organization will be 90 years old in 2024, and we focus mainly on building equity in the built environment to work on water resources, transportation, housing and community development, and then also land use and planning. My work specifically focuses on land use and planning.

Dawveed Scully: My name is Dawveed Scully. I am Managing Deputy Commissioner at the City of Chicago's Department of Planning and Development. Essentially, I lead the Planning and Design Bureau, which is a little over 30 staff that really focus on the city's in its entirety, from project managing, zoning applications, plan developments, as well as a number of neighborhood and community plans.

Last year, we have either finished, initiated, and started about 35 neighborhood plans, and we look to continue to build on that community planning and design focus. Before coming to the city, I spent about 14 years at the architecture firm at Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill. I'm a licensed architect and licensed urban planner.

ET: Thank you all of you for joining me today. Let's kick off the conversation with you, Abraham. Far South Community Development Corporation is known for using planning as a tool to promote increased investment in development in the Roseland and Pullman neighborhoods. Why do you think planning is so important in creating thriving neighborhoods?

AL: For the longest neighborhoods that have experienced decades of disinvestment and poor planning, time, especially with the increase in investments we're seeing from the federal government, state and local, it is important for us to plan these things out. Just look at the red line extensions coming through. That has been talked about for decades. I've been advocating for the red line extension for more than 10 years. The same thing with the Roseland Medical District.

One of the challenges has always been, especially in predominantly black neighborhoods, is we have a need. We have identified what that need is, but there's not a plan to go about it. When we say that we need investment, what does that mean? When we say that we need healthcare services, what does that mean? If I come to the city or if I come to any funder, and I'm going to say, "Well, I need," the first thing you're going to say is, "What do you want," and I don't have anything to show you.

We spent a lot of time and efforts, and I know that my colleagues in the neighborhood are going to say, "Well, there's a lot of planning now. There's so many plans going on, will it ever get funded?" I would always say, it's better to have a plan than not to have one at all. We spent a lot of time, the Trust, thanks to the city, the city helped funded the Roseland Medical District plan. Without that, we would not have been able to get the $25 million in seed funding in order to get the Roseland Medical District on campus started.

That's what we're starting to do now, in getting those things in terms of land acquisition, in terms of site assembly, in terms of permitting and zoning, we're starting that process now. Why? Because we need a plan to do it. If we continue to go about always asking and saying, "Give us something," without having a detailed strategy on how we're going to do it, [inaudible 00:07:10] to fail.

That's what's been happening for many years. I'm so glad now that over the past since I've been in working in this organization, that we have been, along with so many others, have put together a plan and several plans. We've layered plans on top of plans, to the point where it's nauseating to most residents now because of so many plans. It's incredibly necessary. Think about it, the fact that you do a plan, that gets out. That gets out to not only locally but regionally.

When you start to highlight, "Hey, there's adequate transportation, there's adequate terms of the Metra, and the CTA, and the Pace Pulse," you start identifying that, you start to get people excited, like residents who want to live near public transit. You start getting investors excited. To me, there's always going to be a nauseam about planning. However, it's incredibly necessary to do so.

I think it's worth the time, and it gives the residents a chance to voice their opinions so that they're not being forced upon, the development's not forced upon. To me, it's a long process, but it's necessary.

ET: That's great. Thank you so much. I remember recently, actually, that our team helped fund the 103rd Street red line exception work that you're doing. That's probably a plan that you'll be working on moving forward.

AL: For the 103rd Street plan that the Trust is funding, there's, between Halsted and Michigan, there's three dollars stores. Three. Now, I don't know about you, but there's got to be some variety. When we don't plan our corridors, somebody else will. That's been the biggest issue is who's getting access? On Halsted Street, we're actually doing another plan, forgive me, it's another one, but we're doing a master plan for the Special Service Area district, which is 103rd and on Halsted Street.

One of the things that broke my heart was we were planning what we call a Jackie Robinson district, which the Trust funded some of the funding on that in terms of pre-development. The Jackie Robinson district is around 107th and Halsted. That corner on the northwest corner was supposed to be mixed use housing. We lost it to a gas station, another one. There was one across the street. There's about a few blocks down, there's another four. You go on the southern end direction, there's another four.

We're like, "How much gas do we have to have?" We lost it. Why? There was no plan for that 107th until we came along, and we tried everything. I called the fuel company in Joliet and said, "What do you want?" Then they wanted too much. They put the price out of range, which they normally do out here, and we said we couldn't do it, and then boom, another gas station goes up. Why is that important?

They're just as prolific as our dollar stores. Our kids eat from there, they get their snacks from there, and many people get their nutrition from gas stations. Well, you don't have anything else.

ET: As you talk about planning, I hear often residents saying, "Okay, are we done planning? When is it actually going to happen?" Can you talk more about those types of hurdles?

AL: The community is always involved, especially when you're an organization. The community is always involved, especially with these plans, because it's required. You got to get out there and do stakeholder interviews, and public meetings and everything. The biggest hurdle we have is getting, whether it's the city, whether it's the county, whether it's the state, to actually care about it.

Part of the problem that we have, and I've been saying this for years, is whenever it's time for implement, we'll do the plan, which is great. We get everyone excited about it. Everyone's cheering and being happy about it. The problem comes in is, "Oh, well there's not enough money to do it." We say, "Well, there's not enough money to do it, but then we turn in cranes and there's $7 billion going to one neighborhood. We're going to spend all this money on one neighborhood."

The rest of us is kind of saying, "Well, are we not part of the city's growth plan?" For the longest, it feels like when we're down here on the far south side, every time there's a project, it's a charity. "Oh, we're going to give back." No one says, "Fulton Market, this is a charity," but when it comes to the far south, "Oh, we're going to give back. We're going to try to do a little bit here. You get one, you get one, you get one," and then we're all supposed to be going to over market it, and we're going to be happy.

When it comes to other neighborhoods, they get full development. Everything comes in one package. The hurdle is, do you actually care about the people that are down here, that are paying taxes, that have been asking for this for the longest? I've always said that when we're doing these plans, it's like we're living in an urban apartheid. There's no way on earth why in 2023, why we having food deserts, medical deserts, pharmacy deserts in the third-largest city in the country. That is the hurdle is to recognize who matters. If we're not A Tale of Two Cities, prove it.

ET: You make some really valid points, Abraham. I'm going to go ahead and actually open this up to the bigger group. Is there something that any of you can point out when it comes to the implementation of these plans? I go back to the residents who start to wonder if anything is actually going to happen. Can any of you speak about the hurdles that specifically are related to the community involvement component of planning?

DS: Resident input is extremely important. There's, many times in my experience, I've gotten to work all over the country, there is no amount of research and data that you can pull that's going to match the input and the experience of someone who's lived in a neighborhood for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. They understand the stories, they've seen it at its best.

They remember, and they wonder, why can't we have that again, and why can't we have better? You need that input as someone who is then bringing their own expertise around economic development, expertise around construction, and architecture, and urban design and planning to the table, to then align with their overall vision.

Bring the conversation to the table, because there's things that they may not have seen that you can say, "Hey, well, I know you talked about this, but this is a way that this can happen, and that has happened in other places. Maybe that's something we can try here. Here's a financial tool that is new and that the federal government just rolled out that we need to exploit or try and understand to really find a pathway forward to implement."

It creates a dialogue and a movement that then allows you to then codify and capture that into the document. The strength of the plan is the document. Having that thing that you can hand to somebody when they say, "What do you want?" "This is what we want." That clarifies the whole thing. It gives the residents, because when I was a consultant, you only have so much scope and time to be there to work with folks. Then once that's done, you have to step away.

That document is something that they can then take forward to their elected officials, to their fellow residents who may be living their lives and didn't know anything about the plan, or didn't have time to come to that six o'clock meeting. It gives them a way to create that sort of dialogue and momentum on their own, to then start to move that forward in the future.

CH: I agree with all of that. I would just add that I think equity has to be one of the foundational principles of any type of resident and community engagement, meaning it should be bringing everyone to the table, so not just the usual suspects, which can happen, show up, and provide their input, so that people who are unable to attend a meeting, or might be outside what you think of is as the scope of the project are also involved and can also participate, and leave their fingerprints on the plan itself too.

Residents know their neighborhoods better than anyone else, and they know what the needs are typically, as long as I think it's rooted in equity, better than anyone else. They're going to be the champions for implementation long after the planners have left. I think their input is just super critical to any process.

AL: I would add to that is community members know when a plan is just performative. They know when it's just another plan, and they're just like, "Yay," because there's a high to it. Everyone gets excited, everyone gets around the table, there's like a bonfire moment. Then you're just kind of like, "All right, what's next?" I think that we get hit with that a lot when it comes to pulling people together.

When it came to the red line, when it came to the Medical District, those were some very hard meetings. You go to West Pullman back in 2014, we did the Corridor Plan for 119th, and that was one of the hardest meetings. Even now, when we're going back into, because the city's up-funding the pre-development for the West Pullman site, it was some very hard meetings. We're just getting into it.

10 years ago, we were doing this plan, and the residents were complaining about the environmental conditions of West Pullman, and how some of their loved ones lost their lives to cancer because of all the environmental issues that are still there today. When you do these plans, the hardest part is the implementation. The hardest part to have that conversation about the implementation, because they'll come up to me and say, "Well, when is it going to happen? We're suffering now."

When I go to the hospital, The Roseland Hospital, and it's a safety-net hospital, and I meet, when I talk with some of the parents, or we do stakeholder interviews with some of the residents, and they're saying, "Well, that's great, but my child just got strung out. Where's the substance abuse center for it?" Or their child was pre-termed, "Where do we go for that?" The idea is after that plan, you say, "Well, what's the sense of urgency that happens when after you do this plan?"

ET: I think that's such an important point that you bring up. When done well, planning can really be a tool to help bring forward that community voice and help the developer really understand, if I come and bring this project, I'm going to have automatic buy-in from the community, and I'm going to be bringing something that's going to be successful. The developer also needs that buy-in from the communities to make that development successful. I want to transition now and provide some context to our audience.

In February, 2023, the Chicago Plan Commission unanimously approved the We Will Chicago plan, marking the city's first comprehensive planning effort in nearly 60 years. I want to turn now to Christina. The Metropolitan Planning Council has been involved with this process basically since the beginning. Could you elaborate a little bit on what We Will Chicago is, and why it's so important?

CH: Yeah, you stole my thunder a bit by saying it was the first citywide plan in more than 50 years. Since the 1960s, the city hasn't had a citywide plan. These are things that are commonly done in other places, places like Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, you can go on and on. They're really valuable, because they help align topic areas like water resources, transportation, housing and neighborhood development, economic development, into objectives and goals that the city then can work on reaching together.

It allows for departments to come together across the city, and to integrate with communities and residents to plan for that vision together. We Will Chicago, the citywide plan, had the underlying values of equity and resiliency as the two driving factors of it. Because of that, it became a plan that really focused on, I would say, diverse community engagement practices. It had surveys, it had outreach events that were in person.

It was trying to really align across the city around the type of vision folks had for Chicago, and what the objectives and goals we should be moving towards, in things like housing, and things like the environment, climate, and energy, which are a couple of its pillars. That's really crucial. I think Abraham mentioned several times that without a plan, someone's going to plan for you. The question is, who's planning for us if we're not planning for ourselves?

That was a step the city hadn't taken for a very long time, and it was just really exciting to see that get off the ground, and get completed and then pass by the Plan Commission. Since it was passed by the Plan Commission, that means we are now on a trajectory to update that plan every 10 years, which means it gets folded into the planning apparatus of our city. Now, we are planning for ourselves altogether.

ET: Great thing you bring that up. I think there's definitely an environment now in the city where planning is starting to become more and more important, and people are starting to see the value in it. I also want to highlight that the Metropolitan Planning Council has been doing some more work than just getting the plan going.

You guys have been doing these Zoning Assessment as part of your continuing work. Can you provide some details as to what the reason for the Zoning Assessment is, and what is coming out of it?

CH: Yeah, so taking a step back, really great that we have a citywide plan now, but a citywide plan is not a comprehensive plan. Typically, when a comprehensive plan is done, it takes your priorities and your policies, and then it aligns what changes need to occur across land use, and then zoning, so that you can actually implement a lot of the goals that you have across development in specific neighborhoods.

After the planning process was complete, we kind of wanted to take a step back and consider how this could apply then to land uses and zoning, then the city. For folks who don't know what zoning is, so land use is everything you see in your neighborhood. It's when you're walking down the street and you see housing, you see a park, you see commercial development. It makes up all the places you go typically in your neighborhood.

Zoning is really the legal regulations that say whether or not something can be built there, and then the density requirements, also parking requirements, to a certain extent, as well. It's really important, because it controls the type of development you have in your neighborhood. We wanted to really understand what the equity public health and sustainability implications are around zoning in different neighborhoods.

There have been a lot of work that's been done over time, looking at how zoning impacts things like affordable housing, and how zoning impacts things like, especially in the industrial corridors, like public health. We wanted to be able to combine all of these things into one assessment, and really start looking at what the impacts are across areas like mobility and housing, because we think that's central, but also the environment and environmental health as well.

That's kind of why we're doing the assessment. We want to understand comprehensively the impact zoning is having, and then be able to make recommendations to change it to have a more equitable impact across the city and on residents, and then really understand if zoning isn't the thing that's causing the problem, what is the thing that's causing the problem, so that we can also change those policies and practices too.

We're not just solely focused on zoning as the key to unlock all of the potential of the city, and make sure that everyone has the type of neighborhood where they can access good jobs, and have affordable housing, and have access to transportation, and all of these other things that we want for people.

ET: Yeah. If I could say, I've been part of the conversations with the Zoning Assessment, it's great that you guys have resident voices, you have community organizations, you have people from the city all involved in this topic. You're not just going to the typical players that you would see. You're really starting it from the ground up, and from community.

Like you all said, the community's the one prescribing what they need, and they're going to be able to give you the best understanding of what each neighborhood needs. I turned to you, now, Dawveed. Planning has often been kind of semi-ambiguous topic that Chicago residents know exists, but don't often understand directly how it affects them. Will you explain what the role of the Planning Department is, and how the work you guys are doing is impacting residents?

DS: Let me start with bifurcating this a little bit. I think they're sort of planning as the tool, and as an entity, and how it's been used or not used historically in the city of Chicago. I think the relationship that folk have with planning can be two-fold. It either can be that there hasn't been enough planning, so their development just happens. People don't learn about things until it's under construction, and they feel uninformed, honestly just not respected.

A lot of the work needs to come in to address that. Then there's the opposite end of the spectrum, where there's places that have gone through five, 10 plans, and nothing's happened over the last 30 years. That sort of planning fatigue, that can really drain folks' belief in what the plan can do, and the power of what it can bring to a neighborhood. Again, it comes back to really respect, and how are you respecting the time, and the input, and the energy that people are putting into the plan, and how the city moving that forward.

In the department's role in planning, so the department has sort of a function, both as the regulatory entity, so we control review zoning, any zoning changes come through the department, historic preservation, land marking, and that sort of thing also come through the department. We have a Financial Incentive Division who really focuses on how to leverage the financial tools that we have at hand to facilitate development.

Everything is not perfect, but it's something that we want to continue to do and facilitate development in an equitable way. Then the Planning Design Bureau, which I lead, focuses on leading neighborhood plans. We often work collaboratively with the Citywide Bureau on city land sales. City has over 10,000 parcels that were torn down through urban renewal and that sort of thing over the decades, how to really bring those back into productive use.

I think, like a lot of cities around the country, departments have been staffed down so that you don't have necessarily the resources internally to do the neighborhood planning and do the community engagement like you need to do. That's something that's been really scaling up, I think, all over the country. That's something I've seen in a lot of places, bringing more things internally, and then having that capacity to go out and do, like they did with We Will, which is like they went out to not just downtown, but to all sorts of neighborhoods.

Were part of neighborhood fairs and community events, and weren't just saying, "Hey, come over here to this separate meeting that you have on top of your local school council and your all dramatic meetings. We're not adding anything to your schedule. Come here to the arts fair, or to the Pullman Taste, or that sort of thing, and we're just going to be here to listen to you." The one other thing I'll add is Christina mentioned it in her comments about We Will going through the city Plan Commission to be adopted.

The step of adoption by the City Plan Commission is a critical step in allowing that document to then have the power to be looked at when development comes. An adopted document means that when we then get a development application for a site, we can then say, "Oh, does this go form with that plan? Oh, it doesn't? Okay, well now we have to have a conversation, and we can negotiate or work through what that means."

Without the plan and without the adoption, we have to rely on does it comply with zoning? Does it comply with the site plan approval rules? Has it gone through its various steps? I think that's a critical step, that having that more refined adopted plan approach really helps to provide everybody with tools to then measure, and to say, "Hey, yes, we want this. This aligns with what we've talked about," or, "No, you know what? This actually doesn't. Let's go back to the drawing board."

ET: That's actually great to hear. Thank you, Dawveed. It seems like what you're saying is that there's a disconnect between planning and what has been happening in the neighborhoods. Is there an environment where those things are moving closer together and we could get more codified plans in the city, or do you think there's work that has been done to get us there?

DS: I think some people think we're somehow omniscient, and we're not. There'll be neighborhood groups that do plans, and we have no idea about them until they're released. We're happy to collaborate. We're happy to just be part of the process, leading it just to be in the room, and support, and to provide knowledge, especially around the implementation, because zoning and land use, and all of the regulations, it can be tricky.

They're built up over years and years and years of people, all the people, city council, state regulations, federal regulations, all those things coming into play. It takes sometimes a little bit of like, "Hey, you know what? Oh, that thing that we want to do, we actually need to coordinate with CDAP, because that is more of actually a street scape thing." "Oh, you know what, let's talk to Department of Housing, because I know we want to do affordable housing here, but is this the right location, or is this an area where that makes sense?"

We can kind of have more robust conversations with folks just being at the table. As much as we can get brought in, that's helpful, and then we can start to move things through that sort of process with Plan Commission. One of the things I'm really interested in is starting to just catalog a lot of these neighborhood and community-led plans, so that we all have, we know what's going on, we know the work that's been done, because that's work.

We don't want to disrespect that sort of input, and interest, and energy that people put into those plans, and start to really understand what the ecosystem of planning is in Chicago today, and then how that overlaps with those future land use changes, and future zoning changes, that may want to come from the other efforts that are... Those all sort of need to overlap and interconnect.

AL: Can I add something to that? This is why I think the We Will Chicago is so important, because sometimes when you're doing plans, it's going to change when a new administration comes in. If there's not a goalpost, if there's not a foundation to where you can say, "Okay, we're going back to this," therefore, if there's a new administration that comes in and says, "Nope, we're not doing that anymore."

Well, there's already something that's already in the works that we can all point to and say, "Yes, I understand there's a new administration, but there is a larger plan that was passed by the Plan Commission that we have to do something about." Otherwise, it's like what we feel in sometime in the neighborhoods, we're just like, "Oh, my God. We got to start over again? There's no more of this program, so now [inaudible 00:29:49] is getting expanded?"

I was at the latter part of Daly, I think, but it was Emmanuel, Lightfoot, and now Johnson. It's just, it's not that the plans change all too much, the names do, but the focus changes. At one point, there's heavy on retail. Next minute, it's heavy on affordable housing. The things that you've been working on for the last eight years doesn't apply anymore over here. There's always good to have that centralized plan that you can say, "Okay, this is our guiding star here."

If there is a new administration, whether it's aldermanic, state reps, whatever they want to come into and say, "Hey, we're going to do this," it's like, "Okay. Does this align with the central foundation plan?"

CH: I would just add that I actually think the Department of Planning and Development has started to do a really good job reviewing past plans to see what they can take from it as they're starting, I would say, a revised, or updated, or a new planning effort. That was one of the things that was done with the citywide plan, We Will.

They cataloged all the existing plans, and I thought that was really important. I know that they're doing that whenever they start new initiatives at that point, and I think that's really great.

ET: One final question. Is there any specific planning effort that you want to point to in the city that you're excited about, or you think is important to highlight?

DS: There's definitely multiple happening. Chicago's Central Area Plan, this is the first update that we've done. I think the last time, it was 20 years ago. We're in that process right now. The team has done a really amazing job of making sure to get input from a wide group of people. This is the first phase of that effort, really focusing on existing conditions, what's been built from the last Central Area plan, like what's happened? Has it been effective or not?

We're moving into next year to do phase two, which will really focus around really visioning for that next 20 years of Central City investment. Then there are definitely two more: 95th Street ETOD Plan, which we're doing with Far South and a larger sort of team. MPC has been amazingly supportive in that effort, and getting a federal grant of $800,000.

Then we matched it with an additional 200 to really focus on 95th Street from Halsted to Cottage Grove, and the Milwaukee Special Character District, which is really an overlay, trying to understand almost a middle ground between a full preservation district. Some things don't always rise to that occasion, but sometimes you want to preserve the character of an area without having to go through the regulatory hurdles.

Trying to find a way to do that. The team's been working on that with the alderperson and focusing on the Milwaukee Avenue on Logan Square.

CH: Since 2016, MPC has been working with partners like the Friends of the Chicago River, and the city, so Department of Planning Development and others, CDOT, MWRD, I just dropped a lot of acronyms. On implementing this vision for Our Great Rivers in 2016, there was a plan release to help make the river system more inviting, living, and productive. Since then, a bunch of civic partners, community-based partners, and then also city partners have been working together to actually change policies and practices to improve the river and river fronts.

Coming out of this work, there's a update to the Calumet Design Guidelines and the Calumet Land Use Plan that Department of Planning development is going to be leading, that MPC is going to be supporting along with the Southeast Environmental Task Force, The Alliance for the Great Lakes, Friends of the Chicago River, and then also The Calumet Collaborative. We're pretty excited about this.

The Southeast Environmental Task Force in particular has been advocating for many years to do an update to the design guidelines and the land uses, in particularly the Industrial Corridor or in the Calumet, to take more into account, things like public health, in what is going on there for development. We're at the point that it's officially starting. These are some guiding documents that really haven't been updated for 20 years.

I don't know about you, but a lot has changed in the city in the past 20 years. The fact that this project is really kicking off in 2024 is just a lot of work that's coming together over the past few years, and we're pretty excited about it.

AL: Yeah, and I'll have to echo that, because I sit on the Calumet Collaborative Board, and that's really exciting to me, because I'm always a big fan of if the Chicago River Walk can be designed really well, so can the Calumet River Walk can be designed really well. Plus, it has so many things that connects to Calumet River area that I'm excited about. You mentioned the 95th Street Corridor Plan, which I think is great, which ties into Chicago State and what they're doing, which has always been a big push for me.

You have a university in your neighborhood, so you want to make the most out of that. I'm excited about just what the red line extension, because even though that's going to be the main artery that runs through the neighborhood, look at what's going to spur from it. You look at 115th Street, you look at 130th Street, you look at 103rd Street, you look at 95th Street, and you look at all these sort of exciting things that's being spurred off of this, that I think is going to help build up the far South Side.

ET: I'd like to thank all of you for joining me today. This has been such a great and insightful conversation, and I think it really comes to show that planning is starting to become important tool that residents can use to really create their own neighborhoods in their image and what they think is best for them. I would like to thank my guests for joining me today, and hopefully this conversation is the first of many that we're able to have.