CMAP funding:  We need your help.  It's still vitally important to keep the Comprehensive Regional Planning Fund on the radar for Governor Quinn, leaders of the General Assembly, and locally elected officials here and in Springfield.  Please see and use our "call to action" fact sheet, or a new one-page version, a revised sample letter, and list of contacts. 

GO TO 2040 "Invent the Future" kickoff.  Thanks to our many partners who attended the GO TO 2040 "Invent the Future" kickoff event this past Wednesday at the Chicago Botanic Garden.  It was a great opportunity for us to hear from you, and hopefully for you to hear from us about the opportunities for residents to weigh in this summer about how they want the future region to look.  Our partners can play a crucial role by helping to host an Invent the Future community workshop, by driving people to our website, by hosting a kiosk (see below), and other fun ways to have your say.

Starting right now, the web tools that we developed with MetroQuest (and support from The Chicago Community Trust) are available at the redesigned www.goto2040.org.  I encourage you to give them a try, and invent your own scenario of the future.  In today's spirit of "narrow-casting," we have several versions that let users dip their toes in or dive deeply into our scenario materials.

Invent the Future workshops. The first of our 50 workshops will be held on Thursday, June 4, 2009, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. at Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple, 875 Lake Street, in Oak Park. CMAP's co-hosts include Landmarks Illinois, the Pleasant Home Foundation, and the Village of Oak Park.  Refreshments will be served. Register online, email, or call 312-386-8814. The second will be co-hosted by the Lake County Planning Department on Tuesday, June 9, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the College of Lake County, Southlake Campus 1120 S. Milwaukee Ave., in Vernon Hills.  If you need special accommodations or more information, please contact Joey-Lin Silberhorn at 312-386-8814 or jsilberhorn@cmap.illinois.gov.   

Kiosks and community-design displays.  This morning we flipped the switch on the first of our GO TO 2040 kiosks, which will be in dozens of high-traffic locations across the region.  It's in the Sears Tower lobby on Franklin Street, along with three nice displays with images from the community design workshops that CMAP convened with the Congress for New Urbanism.  Here are images from the first three (Barrington, Sugar Grove, and Winfield) of those communities, all of which worked with urban designers whose firms made them available pro bono to develop visualizations of how their neighborhoods might look in 2040.  Click here for photos of the first kiosk and display.  (Please note that, if your organization would like to host a kiosk, they have a very small footprint that doesn't require anything close to the space that Sears Tower made available.  Contact Joey-Lin Silberhorn at 312-386-8814 or jsilberhorn@cmap.illinois.gov.)

Bold Ideas. On Monday from 12:15 to 1:15 p.m., CMAP and UNO Veteran's Memorial High School (4248 W. 47th Street, Chicago 60632) will present awards to recognize student entries in the school'sBold Ideas photo essay contest.  page and the UNO school's Bold Ideas page on the site:

Bold Ideas contests are part of our effort to engage youth in thinking about the region's future.  Please contact Diana Torres (312-386-8774 or dtorres@cmap.illinois.gov). Students competing in the contest this week at Bolingbrook High School got a well-deserved mention in the Sun Newspapers.  I'd like to thank CMAP Board member Roger Claar and The Chicago Community Trust for their contributions of prizes for the kids, and BHS assistant principal Pat Claar for helping to make that event happen. 

The News Hour.  Last night the PBS national telecast of Jim Lehrer's News Hour ran a version of Elizabeth Brackett's recent story (with clip of her interview with me) about how stimulus funding is helping to put people to work in metropolitan Chicago.  Click here to view the Lehrer segment.

Rethinking growth workshop.  "Rethinking Growth: The Economic Benefits of Conservation-Based Development and Highway Corridor Redevelopment" is a June 22 workshop to be held by Randall Arendt, a leading authority on conservation design.  It focuses on practical steps for local governments to take to achieve high-quality conservation subdivisions and to redevelop vacant or underutilized commercial highway strip developments. How the conservation design process can be integrated into the local regulatory framework through the comprehensive plan, zoning ordinances, and subdivision regulations will be discussed. The workshop is geared toward elected and appointed officials, planning commissioners, city and village managers and administrators, civic leaders, public sector transportation and urban planners, and landscape architects. It is funded by the Chicago Wilderness Sustainable Watershed Action Team and sponsored by Lake County Department of Planning, Building, and Development and CMAP. The workshop is at Prairie Crossing near Grayslake, IL from 8:15 am to 4:00 pm on June 22. Instructions for registration can be found here.

Sustainable Streets for Chicagoland.  The Chicago Department of Transportation and the Center for Neighborhood Technology invite you to learn about Chicago's innovative integrated design practices from Green Alleys to photocatalytic cements. Expert practitioners will explore how transportation projects can incorporate sustainable lighting, stormwater, and material development, with numerous opportunities for questions and discussions.  The event will be held at CMAP (Suite 800, Sears Tower, 233 S. Wacker Drive, Chicago) on Wednesday, June 17, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.  RSVP to Divya Sundar (dsundar@cnt.org or 773-269-4004).  Click here for details.

Health summit reminder.  Don't forget that the Regional Health Care Safety Net Summit will be held on Tuesday, June 23, 2009 at the University of Illinois at Chicago Student Center West.  CMAP supports this summit, hosted by the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group and the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration to strengthen the health care safety net for uninsured, Medicaid, and vulnerable residents in the region.  Please contact Janna Stansell (jstansell@hmprg.org) or visit http://www.hmprg.org.

Housing event reminder.  The Center for Housing Policy and the National Housing Conference are sponsoring Solutions for Working Families: 2009 Learning Conference on State and Local Housing Policy in Chicago, June 28-30, 2009. The conference is a forum for state and local leaders to share information on proven housing policies-foreclosure prevention, rental housing preservation, green building, workforce housing, and more. Registration is open until June 10.

Blog entry.  In the GO TO 2040 blog, Anne Holub writes about our Sears Tower kiosk.  Click here for info about other locations planned so far.