City officials released the second draft of Envision Evanston 2045, a comprehensive — and controversial — plan that outlines sweeping changes to land use and development over the next 20 years on Friday.
The first draft was published in November and received waves of criticism during City Council and Land Use Commission meetings in January. In the new draft’s introduction Mayor Daniel Biss acknowledged the feedback, stating that the new draft reflects “the invaluable input received from community members.”
The Land Use Commission will discuss the new draft Feb. 26, although commissioners decided in their Jan. 30 meeting that they would not be prepared to hold a final vote. This would push back the original timeline for City Council to vote on Envision Evanston’s comprehensive plan, which was initially scheduled ahead of the April 1 election.
The 155-page document includes completely new chapters, such as “Community Systems,” which discusses the city’s engagement with nonprofits and neighborhood groups, and “Health and Wellbeing,” a section dedicated to increasing healthcare access.
The latest draft notably includes two new chapters: “Evanston Today” and “Evanston Tomorrow.” These sections appreciate the city’s history and construct a thread between the state of Envision Evanston goals.
One of the most contentious proposals in the original draft regarded residential areas: the housing section pushed for higher-density development to accommodate population growth and create more affordable housing.
However, adding units to single-family neighborhoods as a method of increasing affordable housing drew brickbats from residents during City Council and Land Use Commission meetings.
Ultimately, the specifics of rezoning will largely take place separately from the comprehensive plan. City Council separated the two elements in January after an uproar by upset residents over Envision Evanston’s speed and scale.
The new land use map has simplified categories: “Residential” is one of six land use groupings, rather than the former separation of “low impact residential,” “moderate size residential” and “neighborhood pocket.”
The updated map also increased the ambiguity of “mixed use” areas in the land use map, slashing the designations of “urban living” and “urban mixed use.”
Both documents explain the process of creating the comprehensive plan, which included gathering community input through surveys and focus groups. The new draft highlights key takeaways more in-depth, with each category expanding into bullet points.
Climate change was identified as a main theme in the first draft but is now replaced by environment and sustainability. The new draft also identifies the elderly population as a key takeaway from the survey, which was not mentioned in the themes of the previous draft.
From a visual perspective, the latest draft is more robust. Most pages have graphics or pictures of Evanston and different chapters are easily identified with colored font. The images in November’s draft were Adobe Stock photos, most of which did not depict Evanston.
Email: claramartinez2028@u.northwestern.edu
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