T. R. Goldman writes at Politico that downtown Evanston, Illinois—a sturdy, tree-lined Victorian city wedged neatly between Lake Michigan and Chicago's northern border, is missing one thing — cars.
Or, more accurately, it's missing a lot of cars. Thanks to concerted planning, new developments are rising within a 10-minute walk of two rail lines and half-a-dozen bus routes and the local automobile ownership rate is nearly half that of the surrounding area.
According to Goldman, the whole point of the suburbs, reinforced by decades of local zoning laws and developers' plans for a car-centric lifestyle, was that you weren't supposed to live on top of your neighbor, that there was supposed to be plenty of parking everywhere you went and that you weren't supposed to walk anywhere.
"But Evanston had a different idea: What if a suburban downtown became a place where pedestrians ruled and cars were actively discouraged?" writes Goldman.
"Beginning in 1986, a new plan for Evanston embraced the idea of a '24/7' downtown, pouring resources into increasing the density of its downtown—a density that also meant decreasing residents' reliance on automobiles.
As a compact city, Evanston couldn't compete with the vast sprawling parking spots of the Old Orchard Mall. It had to build a different sort of appeal."
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