21st Century (2000–present)

Chicago GO TO 2040 / ON TO 2050

2010/2018 · United States · North America · Regional & polycentric planning · Planned by CMAP
GO TO 2040 map of fiscally constrained major capital projects across the seven-county CMAP region: new highways, managed and multimodal corridors, rapid-transit and commuter-rail investments numbered 1–18.
GO TO 2040 map of fiscally constrained major capital projects across the seven-county CMAP region: new highways, managed and multimodal corridors, rapid-transit and commuter-rail investments numbered 1–18. · © Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning — used with credit · Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), GO TO 2040 Comprehensive Regional Plan (full version, October 2010), Figure 57

Core idea

Integrated land use/transport/economy

Why it matters

Contemporary US regionalism

Description

GO TO 2040, adopted in 2010, and its successor ON TO 2050, adopted in 2018, are the comprehensive regional plans for the seven-county Chicago metropolitan area prepared by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP). They integrate land use, transportation, economic development, environment and governance, promoting reinvestment in existing communities, transit modernisation and coordinated infrastructure investment, and they steer federal transportation funding through the region's project prioritisation.

Significance

The plans are leading examples of contemporary American metropolitan regionalism, notable because CMAP was created in 2005 to unify land-use and transport planning in a region famous for Burnham and Bennett's 1909 Plan of Chicago. They demonstrate both the potential and the limits of consensus-based regional planning in fragmented US governance, where the agency persuades rather than compels hundreds of municipalities. ON TO 2050's emphasis on inclusive growth and climate resilience reflects the evolving agenda of US regional plans.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.