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Tour Chicago's TOD Apartment Sites This Saturday

By Rachel Cromidas in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 9, 2015 9:40PM

The folks at Streetsblog Chicago want to take you on a tour of the future of housing in Chicago. It’s a future, as some developers see it, with fewer cars and more “parking-lite,” transit-oriented developments with minimal parking spaces.

The Chicago-based transportation blogmet their fundraising goal necessary to keep operating, but you can still join its editors and several local transportation and real estate leaders for a fundraising bike tour of Chicago’s transit-oriented developments (also called TODs) this Saturday, April 11.

The tour, which kicks off at 1 p.m. at Daley Plaza, will hit nine developed and proposed TOD sites, mostly on the city's Northwest Side. Cost of admission is $20.

These TOD sites are significant because unlike most new residential projects, they will not require developers to build a parking spot for every apartment unit. A city ordinance paved the way for TODs in 2013 by eliminating the 1:1 parking requirement at certain sites around the city with particularly good public transit.

TODs have to be near a CTA train station and developers are eyeing Logan Square and Noble Square in particular for having the right combination of public transit accessibility, retail destinations and available land. TODs have the potential to bring more paying customers to local businesses in their neighborhoods without increasing congestion, but plenty of neighborhood groups have expressed fears that the high-end rental apartments will attract fixie-riding hipster-types and price out working-class families.