Good news for TOD in Chicago

There has been some talk about Chicago doing a bad job in promoting TOD (transit-oriented development). I think there are still areas of improvement, but when I visited www.newcommunities.org I was impressed. I think Chicago has worked very hard with individual communities to come up with a community plan. We all know that downtown and the north side are, for the most part, one giant TOD. But in that website, if you check out the pdf documents of community plans for several south, west, and southwest side communities, there are more TOD's planned. For example, shopping and the Kennedy-King College are planned near the 63rd and Halsted stop of the Green Line. Also, TOD is planned within a quarter to half-mile of the 63rd and Ashland stop of the Green Line. Another TOD with sidewalk improvements and retail are planned, with a prominent corner, on the 63rd and Cottage Grove stop of the Green line. If you look under the development plan for East Garfield Park, you'll see that the California and Kedzie stops are other sites slated for TOD. West Madison St (in East Garfield Park) is also slated to become a retail/mixed-use Main St. I have only touched the tip of the iceberg on that website and have many more neighborhoods' plans to look at, but what I have seen so far is quite impressive. While many of us won't believe it until we see it, I think the fact that there is a development plan in place for these long ago forgotten areas is a HUGE first step. I look forward to seeing what pops up in these and other locations in the future.>