A.1 Methodology

Appendix

A.1 Methodology

A team of nine students in the Master’s of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago worked together to produce this strategic energy plan for the City of Blue Island, Illinois as a class assignment. The guidelines for this assignment were to develop a strategic energy plan for Blue Island with resiliency, sustainability, and equity as part of the plan’s critical pillars.

After a study of the current conditions and land use patterns of Blue Island, the team identified a study area that satisfactorily reflects the whole of Blue Island. The study area was chosen because of the variety of land use patterns, including economic corridors, residential, and industrial corridors.

The study area also contains the Uptown Transit Oriented Development (UTOD), representing Blue Island’s own vision for its future. Additionally, residents of the study area have similar demographic measures compared to the whole of Blue Island. By developing a plan for a study area, the team identified three additional criteria: implementation, efficiency, and scalability. These criteria were identified in order to ensure that the contents of this plan, while curated for the study area, can be applied elsewhere in Blue Island.

This discussion resulted in the following definitions for our six criteria of equity, sustainability, resiliency, implementation, efficiency, scalability. Equity - Who will bear the burdens of our recommendations? Will our plan benefit everyone, or only a select few?

Sustainability - Do future generations have a voice in our assessments?

Resiliency - Will our community be stronger? Will they be prepared for the future?

Implementation - Will the government agree to it? Do they have the capacity? Will it be easy to undertake?

Efficiency - What about cost? Do we have the resources?

Scalability - Can this be expanded to all of Blue Island?

Based on extensive research of the current conditions in Blue Island, the team worked through various iterations of the plan’s vision for Blue Island. The team identified housing, transportation, and economy as key areas for policy intervention, as well as how the criteria will be applied to Blue Island.

The team completed the drafting of policy interventions by separating into two teams the Housing, Population, and Economy Team and the Transportation, Infrastructure, and Land Use Team. Each team pursued policy interventions and communicated regularly to identify opportunities for collaboration. After a list of policy interventions was constructed, each policy intervention was evaluated based on each criteria to assign a “high, medium, or low” impact.