Existing Plans. City of Chicago. Management Essay.

GEOG 251 Fall 2019
Term Project Assignment 3 & 4: Specific Planning Issues
Assignment: Your task for the last two assignments is to write a short 2-3 page (500-750 word) summaryof a specific planning issue in your metro area. You will address 2 separate issues; one for Assignment 3 andone for Assignment 4. There are lots of directions these assignments can go. As a general rule, the planningpriorities you discovered during Assignment 2 will be a good place to start in determining which planningissues you should address in these papers. For each assignment, you should select an issue from thefollowing list. Please be clear which topic you are addressing in the title of each essay.
Potential Topics:HousingTransportationEnvironmental PlanningPlanning for Climate ChangeNatural DisastersEconomic DevelopmentSocial JusticePoverty & HomelessnessOpen/Green SpacesAnother topic approved by me in advancePlease note: There is the potential for overlap among some of these issues. Be sure that your twoassignments cover two distinct issues that are clearly separate from each other. This means that they shouldreference separate plans and library sources and expand your understanding of planning in your regionrather than duplicate what you have already done.
Deliverable: Upload your document in Word Document format through the link in Blackboard as a Worddocument only. Remember the penalty for late work. It is more important for your assignment to be on timethan it is for you to turn in a perfect paper.
Sources: Unlike previous assignments, providing specific sources isn’t something that is likely to be helpfulfor this assignment. You should start by looking at the planning departments of the cities in your metroarea. You already did some of this for Assignment 2. Now you’ll go deeper on 2 of the priorities youidentified in that assignment. In addition, searching for peer-reviewed literature and academic books onissues in your area may yield fruitful results. If you select Environmental Planning” you might search forbroad terms like “environment” as well as specific terms like “sprawl” or “impervious surfaces” or “aginginfrastructure” and some other variations on this theme. Be sure to focus on the most important issues foryour area. As with all assignments in my class, web sources from official government or news agencies are fine, but Wikipedia and other encyclopedias and other less reputable sources are not permitted. You shouldcite at least 5 sources per essay. At least 3 of those sources should be government documents and/orlibrary sources such as peer-reviewed journal articles or books.
Note: All citations MUST be properly formatted. All in-text citations must exist for both quotes andparaphrased material, and MUST be parenthetical (see APA style for in-text citations @https://towson.libguides.com/apastyle7/intext). Sources listed in your Lit. Cited section MUST conform toAPA standard style for citations. See my guide on citations and research for additional detail.
Prompts1) Within your broad category (e.g. Environmental Planning, Transportation, etc.), which specificissues are most important to your metro area. According to whom? Cite your sources and be criticalin your evaluation. Simply because Greenpeace or ACORN says something is a pressing issue foryour community doesn’t mean the community agrees. Be sure to think about who is framing theseissues and why.
2) What attempts to address these issues have been tried in the past and/or are ongoing? Who isacting? Planning agencies? Citizen activist groups? Industrial interest groups? Individual concernedcitizens? Advocacy groups? Etc.
3) How well have those efforts addressed the environmental concern to date? Why?
4) What other approaches are planned, or might be informed by the approaches that other cities havetaken?
5) Be sure to highlight historical forces responsible for current problems (or advantages) in your topicarea. For instance, if your essay is on housing, problems may include issues like redlining,blockbusting, urban renewal, or gentrification and displacement. Advantages may include efforts toreduce the impacts of these problems, for instance through incentives to invest in disenfranchisedcommunities or rent control laws aimed at mitigating displacement in gentrify