At a critical time, our booming region faces choices

Chicago has reinvented itself various times over, showing the world its determination and spirit. It is time to do it again.

This Regional Progress Report shows our region entering the new century with many reasons to be proud. The economy is strong. Wages are up. Crime is down. We’ve reduced infant mortality, improved the quality of our streams and increased the use of public transit.

But warning signs of stagnation abound: Traffic is strangling the highways as employees travel unprecedented miles to work. Businesses face shortages of skilled labor. Success in our schools remains uneven, particularly among African-American and Latino students. Eleven percent of the region’s residents still live below the self-sufficiency threshold. Large segments of the population lack health insurance. In five of our six counties, the number of new families “at risk” is growing. Farmland and open space are disappearing at alarming speed. Highly visible corporations, once icons of Chicago’s stability, are now headquartered elsewhere.

The pressures of growth
Our region has the potential for significant growth in population and employment over the next 20 years. Forecasts by the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC) predict that the six-county region, between 1995 and 2020, will add about 1.5 million new residents and 1.2 million jobs. Over the same period, the region’s retired population is projected to grow by 40 percent, from about 1.1 million today to 1.5 million, according to the Metropolitan Chicago Information Center.

The region can benefit from this growth — if it is prepared to do so. It can use the influx of residents and jobs to reshape itself into a more efficient metropolis that will continue to attract investment and new ideas. That will require active efforts to manage the growth, create supportive public policies and reinvest in the region’s mature areas.

• Traffic. The region’s residents have endured more hours of automobile delay every year since 1990. If current trends continue, the majority of new houses and workplaces will be built far from rail transit, putting hundreds of thousands of additional cars on our roads. Inefficient transportation systems are also a brake on regional economic growth because they slow the pace of commerce, constrain worker mobility and limit productivity. What housing policies and transit strategies can reduce the traffic burden?

• Education. The Latino population is expected to grow 141% over the 30 years from 1990 to 2020, to more than 2 million. The African-American population will also rise to 2 million, according to NIPC forecasts. These groups represent our future, yet we have done little to reverse low academic achievement and high dropout rates. What must we do to guarantee a high quality education for all residents of the region?

• Green space. The region has increased the amount of protected open space to more than 21 acres per 1,000 residents, a total area larger than the City of Chicago. But as our region adds more than one million new residents, we will have to protect 25,000 more acres to maintain the current ratio. What land should we protect?

Thinking as one region
Chicago Metropolis 2020 believes the region can successfully confront these challenges. But it will require us to change the way we work together and make decisions. It will require regional thinking.

Three out of four residents in the Chicago Metropolis 2020 survey believe that what happens in other parts of the Chicago region affects their local community. A similar number think the region will be weakened if some residents are “left behind” in terms of access to jobs. Residents recognize the need for regional thinking and support ideas that could make the region stronger. But they are hesitant to execute the regional solutions and personal lifestyle choices that could help our metropolis succeed.

For instance, nearly 80% of the region’s residents want less separation of residents by race and income. Yet, current housing and development patterns reinforce the separation. Residents would like to see high levels of public transit use and more walkable communities. But habits tend toward the private automobile and subdivision living.

Adopting a regional perspective does not require communities to lose their individuality or decision- making powers. It means recognizing interconnections among communities and creating solutions that work for both local communities and the region. Thinking regionally means addressing issues that span political and geographic boundaries, including education, environment, housing and the economy. Consider these scenarios:

• Not enough skilled workers. Parents in a healthy school district might believe that poor school performance elsewhere won’t affect their children’s opportunities. But that district alone can’t produce enough graduates to meet the needs of employers. Without a sufficient supply of educated workers —from machinists to programmers — businesses may reduce operations or move away. The region will become less attractive to new industries and even to the graduates of that healthy school district. After completing their education, they might look to other parts of the country for employment.

• Environmental basics. Pollution of air and water — and time lost in traffic — is a burden shared across the region. Some families choose pedestrian-friendly environments where they can walk to the market or to a transit station easily and safely. Making those choices can improve conditions for everyone in the region by cutting back the number of motor vehicles on the road and improving the environment. But air and water pollution do not respect political or geographic boundaries.

Economics, geography and race
One of the founding premises of Chicago Metropolis 2020 was that a healthy future depends on reducing separation among people living in the Chicago region.

Our region remains divided racially and is becoming increasingly segregated by income. Although our history is rich with examples of mixed-income communities, the number of residents who live in communities of predominantly high-income households has more than quintupled since 1980. There has been a reduction in the number of concentrated low-income areas, but the economic separation remains stark. The charts in this report show repeatedly that challenges with school performance, personal health, income and safety are disproportionately concentrated in the same communities.

Breaking these patterns will be difficult. Just as few residents will trade a 45-minute auto commute for a two-hour journey on bus and train, it is not realistic to ask residents to shoulder real personal costs in exchange for perceived regional benefits.

Instead, the region must demonstrate, on issues from housing choice to transportation to education, that a regional approach can create solutions and ways of living that are more effective and more desirable —just plain better — than what we enjoy today.