Since 2015, Evanston basked in the sobriquet “the suburb that killed the car,” promoting an image of an imminent car-free utopia. From environmental nonprofits to editorial pages, we heard that Evanstonians were making different “transportation choices” warranting overhauling our zoning. By summer 2023, City Council was mulling wholesale reduction of parking requirements for new developments in an expanded radius, up to 1/2 mile, from train stations, or even putting a cap on allowed parking, to force those “choices.” The theory: development and greater density in transit-rich Evanston would spark abandonment of vehicle ownership. This has been a refrain in current citywide planning ongoing. Yet data specific to Evanston supporting those policy assumptions was scant to nonexistent. Now, information obtained through FOIA provides some answers.

One of Evanston’s hidden treasures, the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian at 3001 Central Street, Evanston (the northwest corner of Central St. & Central Park Ave.), will host a Family Day this Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. The daylong celebration will feature Ecology Center staff and live animals at 10:30, an all-ages clay turtle art workshop led by an Oneida Nation artist at 12:15, a 2:00 pm workshop on making birchbark and porcupine quill earrings.

While weather extremes have hammered many parts of America this spring, many of the systems have moderated by the time they reach the Chicago area, and we've experienced a pattern of rain and then sun more like springs of the past than the long, cold, wet of many recent years. This has produced, as far as I can see, a bumper year for spring wildflowers.