CMAP conducts community assistance that provides tools, programs, and opportunities to help communities and organizations build capacity, improve quality of life, and participate in the regional planning process. The agency works cooperatively with municipalities, counties, and development organizations whose decisions determine how land is used.
CMAP's technical outreach activities fall into two broad categories: Community Planning Tools and Assistance Programs, which are described in more detail below. Click here for a brochure (3.4 MB PDF) that similarly describes CMAP's community assistance programs. For more information, please call deputy executive director Bola Delano at 312-386-8690.
Community Planning Tools
Centers Toolkit
The Centers Toolkit helps communities identify the characteristics desirable for their community centers and then select the associated features they would like to implement in their areas. The toolkit provides a brief introduction, list of potential benefits, typical implementation approaches, and relevant case studies. Participants are able to evaluate the features they select to support desired characteristics. At the end of the exercise, participants will have a list of planning priorities for their center, along with a set of implementation tools and strategies to help them achieve their goals. This can serve as a foundation for future planning efforts.
Plan Builder
Plan Builder helps local communities evaluate their preferred development scenarios against many of the features that were chosen using the Centers Toolkit. Plan Builder uses various indicators to evaluate how the “painted” scenario impacts the indicators associated with the features. Using this GIS-based tool allows participants to digitally “paint” various developments within the center and the surrounding area. At the end of the painting, the tool provides a set of indicators that can be used to evaluate the “painted future” and to check its desirability against chosen goals. The indicators provide the participants a clearer picture of what might be the potential cumulative impact of a community’s land use decisions.
Full Circle
Full Circle is a mapping and planning tool that enables communities to collect, evaluate, map, and disseminate parcel-by-parcel information like land use, property values, building condition and business types in order to support local planning initiatives. It is part of CMAP’s effort to build the capacities of local municipalities and neighborhood organizations to collect and disseminate real-time and accurate information to community stakeholders so that they can make informed decisions about their goals, needs, and priorities. The tool can be employed in different development projects, including neighborhood/corridor revitalization, downtown redevelopment, housing development, retail attraction/retention, transit-oriented development (TOD), environmental/green initiatives, workforce development, vacant properties inventory, community health and public safety projects, as well assessing imbalances in the local economy. It gives communities the ability to inventory infrastructure, assets and amenities; detect changes; assess public moods; predict future patterns through scenario modeling and mapping; detect development opportunities and flag issues of concern.
Assistance Programs
Local Economic Impact Analysis
CMAP has software designed to assess the economic impacts of any major development within a community. This can provide practitioners with crucial information that enables them to better understand the likely outcome of their decisions before committing to a plan, and guide the development of wise local planning and economic strategies.
Economic and Community Development Resources
CMAP provides a variety of resources for municipalities, economic development practitioners, developers, and non-profit organizations. This includes the Community and Economic Development Funding Resource Guide, a comprehensive list of development consultants, and watershed best practices which are available online. On special request, detailed maps can be provided that reveal development engines within the region, as well as maps highlighting the links between transportation, land use planning, economic development, and other pertinent indices. Such resources help local or regional professionals better understand the region as they work to attract and implement sustainable development in their communities.
Target Industry Analysis/Cluster Analysis
Regional cluster reports are designed to identify existing industry and business clusters in the region, as well as reveal those clusters that are emerging. These reports help municipalities, counties, and businesses better understand trends in the regional economy, and assist in their individual efforts to develop sound local planning and economic strategies.
Summits and Roundtables
CMAP facilitates and coordinates leadership meetings, summits, and roundtables with private and community sectors throughout the region. These events bring together economic and community development practitioners, transportation and land use planners, private businessmen and public officials to discuss and coordinate efforts in economic and community development. On February 6, 2007, CMAP hosted its first Innovation + Integration Summit on the economic impact of linking jobs, housing and transportation planning. The all-day event -- which sold out, with over 250 registered attendees -- featured national and local presenters, including keynote speaker Mike Moskow, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Earlier, on August 17, 2006, over 120 business and community leaders attended a CMAP economic and community development summit to provide input in helping to define our role in this focus area. Click here for a report on the summit, or read the executive summary.
Technical Assistance and Information Clearinghouse
CMAP is developing a web-based “one-stop shop” for information on technical assistance resources provided for local communities in the region by CMAP and its partners. This clearinghouse will guide users to information relevant to their individual needs, providing explanations of technical assistance services and details about past projects, as well as contact information. Additionally, guidance for grant assistance that may be available to communities for specific projects will be available. It will feature information on best practices as well as stories on successful collaborations between communities and technical service providers.
Collaborative Greenways, Open Space and Trail Planning
CMAP coordinates planning for trails and greenways in the region. The officially adopted Regional Greenways and Trails Plan is used extensively by local and county governments, trail users, environmental agencies and organizations, and corridor councils. The map and plan serve as a basis for planning and programming funding for greenways and trails, as a framework and guide for making connections between communities and other greenways and trails, and as a consideration in major infrastructure investment decisions.
Watershed Technical Assistance
Supportive of sustainable development, a watershed approach to planning gives municipal decision makers and other interested parties a forum to better understand their shared natural resources, address common concerns and protect common interests. Decision makers have the opportunity to get ahead of the curve if they participate in watershed planning to take advantage of its economic, environmental, and social benefits. CMAP works with government and non-government entities alike in crafting watershed plans that are integrated with other plans to more fully address the more pressing land use and development issues that face local stakeholders. Watershed planning addresses quality of life issues that people depend on and also expect their elected officials to protect.
Issues Identification and Decision Support Technology
CMAP can assist communities with creating workshops designed to capture the thinking of participants in an interactive, activity-based environment. Using keypad polling and other facilitation techniques, CMAP can help your community quickly identify its areas for future focus and gain consensus in meeting important planning challenges.
Planning Commissioner Training
Using resources developed in conjunction with its partner agencies, CMAP is designing training sessions to equip planning commissions and other officials with guidance and structure for making better land use decisions.
Plan Review
CMAP is able to provide a third-party, neutral review of your community’s drafted plans, bringing its expertise to bear on the implications for the larger region. We can also connect local efforts to others doing similar work to help share ideas and learn from exemplary models.
GIS Training
CMAP offers a low-cost introductory two day, hands-on workshop focusing on ArcGIS9x. The workshop uses customized databases designed by CMAP staff which introduces participants to basic GIS vocabulary and project components. Groups are limited to five participants and all receive a workbook and sample CMAP data to practice on at home.