American Planning Association

Despite a storied planning history, Chicago is no longer a city that plans with confidence and vision. Chicago lacks a city department with the name "planning" in its title. Instead, this essential municipal function is now largely focused on immediate zoning matters with long range and strategic planning in a secondary role and largely replaced with piecemeal, ad hoc, and volunteer planning efforts – often funded and focused on disconnected Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts. The city had great success in the 1950s and 1960s in crafting strong central area plans and path-breaking comprehensive plans that laid the groundwork for a major commercial and residential revival. In the most recent decade however major planning initiatives have been largely unimplemented and replaced by deal-making, site-specific and one-off projects. Systematic, coordinated, long-range efforts have been difficult to initiate or sustain. Drawing on their new APA Planners Press book Planning Chicago, authors Jon B. DeVries, AI