Chicago’s ETOD efforts provide lessons for the Washington region

This article is part of a limited series exploring the history, current policies, and initiatives to create equitable transit-oriented development in the region. The complete series is available here. And then learn more by tuning into the series’ companion webinar, moderated by George Kevin Jordan, GGWash’s editor-in-chief.

Floods ripped through Chicago in early September, triggered by rainfall so intense that some of the city’s infrastructure buckled. Abandoned cars were left partially submerged under bridges, water and sewage overwhelmed basements — geysers even erupted, shooting skyward from burst pipes.

It was a reminder that the effects of climate change are increasingly present, and for Roberto Requejo, executive director of Elevated Chicago, a diverse coalition of organizations working on a variety of community-development initiatives, it was proof that equitable, transit-oriented development is more vital than ever.

“Building equitably near transit, building developments that are community-driven, that respond to the needs of the people in the community, that are accessible to all, and are connected to transit and walkable — that has always been really important. But it has become more and more evident in the past couple of years where we have seen this convergence of multiple crises affecting our cities,” said Requejo in reference to the pandemic, climate change, and a volatile economy.

TOD, as it’s known for short, refers to dense, mixed-use spaces built around transit hubs where people have everything they need within a short walk — their home, grocery stores, restaurants, gyms, and of course transit, so it’s easy to get around without a car. It’s become popular in many cities, including those in the Washington region, as it grapples with its longstanding housing shortage. WMATA has delivered (or is working on) 55 joint development projects at 30 metro stations since the 1970s and intends to accelerate these efforts, per its 2022 strategic TOD plan.

There’s good reason for TOD’s expansion. In Chicago, the city found there are 1.73 times more jobs in areas with transit-oriented development. Research shows it has a host of benefits for residents, including improving their physical and mental health, and saving them money on housing and transportation costs. It’s also much more sustainable than an environment built around cars.

“In addition to that economic case, there is also a survival case to it. Climate change is gonna get worse and if we keep building single-family homes with three car garages isolated from transit and with a ton of car-oriented uses around them, we’re gonna arrive to that doom scenario of no return a lot quicker,” said Requejo.

Projected demand for housing in transit zones in 10 US transit regions

In 2019, only about 5% of American workers commuted by public transportation — part of why cars are one of the country’s biggest carbon-emitters. One study found that in Chicago, emissions of households within a half mile of public transportation were 43% lower than the regional average.

“I think most people want to live in a neighborhood that is walkable, that feels safe, that has a variety of business options and housing options that connects us to what we need and has access to transit. On a personal level, ETOD is the kind of neighborhood that I want to live in,” said Juan Sebastian Arias, First Deputy of Policy at the Chicago Mayor’s Office.

Chicago has become a leader in the practice, first passing an Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (ETOD) policy plan in June 2021, which set out an action plan to better support ETOD and integrate it into the city’s planning process. It then passed the Connected Communities Ordinance in 2022 in an effort to implement many of the plan’s recommendations.

Given the Washington region’s (and many other cities’) historic failure to develop public transportation and housing that serves, rather than displaces, its residents, Chicago’s attempts to rectify similar mistakes could serve as a guide for the District.

Equity a new focus

A distinct focus on equity in these projects is relatively new for the city. While Chicago’s TOD policy goes back to 2013, the city evaluated the projects it spurred and found that 90% of them occurred in the mostly wealthy neighborhoods in the north of the city, completely excluding the city’s southside. It further found that these projects brought a flood of new white residents and displaced residents of color.

“There was no equity lens, it was developed as a race-neutral policy,” said Arias.

Like in many American cities, inequality is carved along geographic lines in Chicago, with poverty regulated mostly in the city’s south and west. Chicago has the largest gap in life expectancy in the US, with a 30-year difference in life expectancy between some neighborhoods.

The Connected Communities Ordinance did a variety of things to begin disrupting the lopsided impact of these new developments, including removing mandates to build parking spaces for apartments near transit (spots that increase the cost of apartments for lower-income people without cars and often go unused anyway) and limiting the parking spots developers could build at all. It also ensured that TOD incentives extended to all neighborhoods within a 10-minute radius of public transportation stations — not just the ones determined to be pedestrian-friendly, which were concentrated on the North Side. It includes measures to make the streets around rail stations safer for pedestrians and requires that buildings getting TOD incentives build more affordable apartments and adopt measures to protect existing affordable housing.

The ordinance is already starting to bear fruit, including through the city’s 11 ETOD pilot projects, which were selected to jumpstart ETOD in historically disinvested parts of the city. This program provides select community-based ETOD initiatives with an initial $135,000 grant as well as fundraising help and other technical assistance through a partnership with Elevated Chicago and the city.

The Washington region is also grappling with the fact that TOD has generally not been built in predominantly Black neighborhoods — and when it has, it has often spurred similar kinds of displacement. This is slowly changing. For in example, in DC, several projects in the historically disinvested neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River are getting off the ground, including the Congress Heights Metro station project. Still, residents have ongoing concerns about how to center equity in the type of projects that have a history of supercharging displacement.

In Chicago in May of this year, ribbons were cut on the Lucy Gonzalez Parsons Apartments, named after the city’s famed labor organizer and radical Socialist (and some say a dig aimed at the anti-union developers who opposed the project). The development was built on top of an underused parking lot and consists of 100 apartment units. All of them are affordable, with half earmarked for families at or below 60% of the median area income and the other half for families who are part of Chicago’s low-income housing voucher system.

The apartments are adjacent to the city’s Logan Square Blue Line Station and a market, cafe, and other shops. The city is developing a new public plaza across from the apartments and redesigning the streets to make them safer. One of the ETOD pilot projects to receive a grant from the city and Elevated Chicago will be an art installation celebrating the neighborhood’s Latino community that will serve as a central gathering point in the plaza.

Another one of the pilot projects is the first of what organizers hope will be a series of grocery stores functioning as worker-owned cooperatives adjacent to the city’s 95th Street Red Line station — an effort to mitigate both the city’s food deserts and its racial wealth gap. This station is the southernmost stop in the city — an emblem in itself of how inequitable transportation in Chicago is.

“Chicago doesn’t end at 95th Street, Chicago goes all the way to 130th Street, that’s the city limit, yet people who live at 103, 110th, 115th, 130th, have to get up at ungodly hours to catch a number of buses just to get to the 95th street station and begin their day, wherever they need to go,” said Melvin Thompson, the executive director of the nonprofit Endeleo Institute and Elevated Chicago Steering Committee member. “That inequity has been forever.”

The 95th Street station was redeveloped in 2019. Thompson sees the failure to get community input, or build anything that serves the community around the station, as an example of the ways these new developments fail communities.

“We’ve never been at the table,” he added.

Building a more equitable city

The Chicago Transit Authority is proposing a multibillion-dollar extension of the Red Line, which Thompson sees as a prime opportunity to ensure that genuine ETOD reaches the South Side — and a test of the city’s commitment to ETOD.

“We’re not gonna just check the boxes, we’re gonna make sure that what goes along 95th Street is from us, for us, and by us,” Thompson said.

Thompson says the community would like to see stations where people can linger and relax and developments that deliver on a vision of the southside where people don’t have to get into their cars and travel to other parts of the city to live their lives.

Requejo says that while he’s hesitant to offer specific advice about how the region might make similar strides on ETOD as Chicago has in recent years (every city is different, after all,) he underlined the importance of listening to communities and creating spaces where genuine, diverse, and widespread grassroots collaboration can thrive.

“Knowledge, lived experience, and expertise comes from communities,” said Requejo.

Thompson and Requejo say that while the crises of this moment are overwhelming, they’re also an opportunity for redesigning cities for the communities that call them home.

“Who could have foreseen George Floyd, the pandemic, economic meltdown, racial equity — but for all these catastrophes and bad things that are happening, a new path is being formed, and we’re not going to fall back on those old things,” said Thompson. “It’s important to not let this moment be fleeting.”

This article is part of a limited series exploring equitable transit-oriented development, made possible with a grant from Amazon. Greater Greater Washington’s editorial department maintains editorial control and independence in accordance with our editorial policy. Our journalists follow the ethics guidelines of the Society of Professional Journalists.