Longtime residents are at the center of a transit-based revitalization in Chicago neighborhoods with an equitable approach.
From her porch, Trinisa Williams marvels at how her neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side is flourishing. Vacant lots, which have symbolized disinvestment in Black neighborhoods for decades, are now blooming with community gardens, parks, affordable housing, local businesses, and pedestrian activity.
“Oh my gosh, it is definitely changing,” said Williams, a lifelong resident of Garfield Park and a pastry chef. Williams is part of a new generation of business owners and entrepreneurs in the neighborhood. Most notably for Williams, people are enjoying themselves outdoors, including playing in parks, riding bikes, and jogging together in running clubs.
Increasingly, the transformation is being driven by residents like Williams and community organizations in partnership with the City of Chicago and developers. It is a collaboration that fosters walkable neighborhoods of homes, businesses, parks, grocery stores, and other public amenities clustered around transit stations. And the change is occurring beyond the West Side.
Opened in October 2023 next to the Green Line Performing Arts Center and CTA station at Garfield Boulevard, the Arts Lawn is nearly one acre of green space that exemplifies equitable transit-oriented development. Credit: Natasha Moustache
Chicago is becoming a leader in these transformations, known as equitable transit-oriented development, or ETOD. Getting there, however, took time.
A zoning policy introduced in 2013 did spur transit-oriented development, but a 2019 analysis found that 90 percent of projects materialized in areas that were already robust economically and less racially mixed. Equally troubling, the development—some of it at the luxury level—aggravated displacement of longtime Black and Latine residents in some areas.
In response, the city in 2020 overhauled its policy with an eye toward equity. The change led to a city ordinance advancing equitable development, tax credits for low-income housing, and millions of dollars in grants and technical assistance for ETOD.
Chicago is becoming a leader in these transformations, known as equitable transit-oriented development.
“It's so important to have the E in ETOD,” said Juan Sebastian Arias, executive director of Elevated Chicago, a collaborative that promotes equitable development of public space and helped draft the new policy. “Without that equity lens, it’s only going to exacerbate inequalities that currently exist.”
Sunflowers in Vacant Lots
Elevated Chicago identifies neighborhoods with more than a dozen traits of ETOD, including affordable homes, walkable station areas, urban agriculture, green infrastructure, small locally owned businesses, health clinics, and public art such as murals and sculptures.
The group brings together a coalition of community-based organizations, policy and research entities, city departments, funders, developers, and artists to center residents in decisions about development.
Kuumba Lynx, an urban arts youth development organization, presented a performance at the Arts Lawn opening. Credit: Anjali Pinto.
“We can easily build around transit stops, but it's really about engaging the community, making sure that those individuals who benefit from the new development are existing community members who live there now,” said Michael Brown, interim deputy of planning at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.
The infrastructure-oriented regional planning agency, which works with an array of organizations, governments, and agencies in northeast Illinois, has collaborated with Elevated Chicago on plans around several transit hubs on the South and Northwest Sides.
With momentum building over the past five years, successes include the Lucy Gonzalez Parsons Apartments, an affordable housing redevelopment in Logan Square, where rapid gentrification has displaced longtime residents and businesses.
The building site, near a CTA Blue Line “L” station, had been a little-used, city-owned parking lot. Its ownership allowed Chicago officials to require the developer to make all 100 units affordable in return for city financial support and other incentives.
“It is gorgeous, it's beautifully built,” said Marly Schott, manager at Elevated Chicago, which advocated for the project. “It is built from the idea that affordable housing should still be high quality and have things like a rooftop deck, easily accessible laundry, and extra bike storage.”
“It is built from the idea that affordable housing should still be high quality.”
Most importantly, Schott said, developers gave serious consideration to community needs, including larger unit sizes to accommodate families who are long-time Logan Square residents.
Victories like these can take years. Meanwhile, Elevated Chicago also supports what it calls the “activation” of some of the city’s more than 40,000 vacant lots, concentrated in communities of color.
In the Washington Park community, for instance, Elevated Chicago worked with Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative to mobilize residents to fill empty lots with towering sunflowers. Passers-by stop to take selfies and pick flowers. They stare in wonder from passing trains.
Besides the beauty, the plantings help with environmental remediation needed before redevelopment can occur.
“One resident was really emotional about it,” Schott said. “She was like, ‘This makes me feel like somebody cares about my community. Somebody did something beautiful in my community.’”
Watching with Pride
The most visible successes so far are in Garfield Park, where one collaborator, Garfield Park Community Council, has facilitated more than $50 million in investments since 2005.
Chief among them is The Hatchery, a food business incubator with a shared kitchen that helped Williams launch a business, Trini’s Tasty Pastries, after years of limited success while she worked a day job. Known in the community for her handmade biscuits and preserves, Williams sells her breakfast pastries, brownies, and cookies at cafés, community events, and the outdoor Garfield Park Neighborhood Market, another vibrant community hub that the Council brought to life.
The Hatchery Chicago, a nonprofit food and beverage business incubator on Chicago's West Side, is accessible by two CTA rail lines, a Metra line and CTA bus service. Credit: The Hatchery Chicago.
Williams also is in talks with another new, mixed-use development with an eye toward opening her own café 30 years after earning her culinary degree.
Other neighborhood plans include a biodiverse, environmentally sustainable orchard, nature play space, and grocery store in an area lacking access to affordable, healthy food. Most importantly, the streets are alive and welcoming, Williams said.
Even the annual Bank of America Half Marathon now weaves through Garfield Park. And when runners make their way down neighborhood streets, Williams watches from her porch with pride.
“It’s like ooh, all eyes are on us, and it’s not because of the crime, not because of the drugs or things like that,” she said. “It's because there is something that is creative, something that is healthy, something that is fun and different happening in our neighborhood.”
Since 2018, MacArthur has awarded $1.3 million to Elevated Chicago through the Chicago Community Foundation in support of community outreach, engagement, and ownership in Equitable Transit-Oriented Development near Chicago Transit Authority stations across the city. MacArthur has provided $1.75 million to Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning since 2008 to address regional transportation, housing, economic development, the environment, and other quality of life issues.
