EVANSTON ON ROAD TO HIGH-SPEED DATA

As Mom shops for groceries and Dad chats with his alderman, Sis gets an update on her high school homework assignments and her brother orders a library book. But nobody leaves home, because they’re all wired to a high-speed data net.

It’s a computer nerd’s dream, and the goal of a group that wants to remake Evanston into the Chicago area’s first totally wired community, or “Technopolis.”

Made up of officials of Northwestern University and the City of Evanston, the group has solicited proposals from a half-dozen companies to wire up every residence in town with high-speed connections.

And though it may sound pie-in-the-sky, high-speed information infrastructure will become as essential to a community’s economic well-being in the near future as streets and sewers are now, according to Chicago regional planners.

A study to be released by the Metropolitan Planning Council Wednesday suggests that municipal officials should embrace digital infrastructure as ardently as zoning. The study represents a new direction for the planning group, which traditionally has focused more on transportation and land-use issues.

While high-speed data networks will be mostly built and used by private enterprises, local governments can make strategic moves to nudge their construction in ways that will achieve local planning goals, said Scott Goldstein, regional development director of the MPC.

The planning council tries to give local officials guidance on policy matters, said Goldstein, and it has concluded that many need perspective on digital data networks.

“When you talk about information infrastructure, most mayors think of cell phone towers or cable television,” said Goldstein. “They know all about those issues because local residents have strong opinions. We’re trying to expand the thinking beyond the question of how to hide a cell-phone tower.”

The new report, called “The Digital Network Infrastructure and Metropolitan Chicago,” notes that electronic commerce will be a key factor in the next century and suggests that Chicago can be as much at the center of information services as it has been at the center of traditional transportation technology.

Like Evanston’s Technopolis proposal, the report is the product of Northwestern’s information technology office. Planners say that if Technopolis succeeds in Evanston, it can be used as a model by other Chicago-area communities.

While it’s new for planners to look at information pipes in the same way as other infrastructure, the notion isn’t exclusive to Chicago planners. On Monday, Ameritech Corp. announced a deal with the University of Michigan to wire up 20,000 residences in Ann Arbor so that students and faculty could have high-speed connections to the University’s computer network beginning next semester.

There have been many tests of broadband data networks in various cities, but if Evanston succeeds in its goal, it would be the nation’s first community to become completely wired for high-speed communication.

Northwestern has a similar network in place on campus, and the notion of hooking residences into it plays a part in Evanston’s Technopolis proposal.

Under this grand vision, the residents of Technopolis would not need separate lines for telephones, cable and TV and computers. Instead, such services would be delivered via miles of broadband cable–a single large-capacity cable that does it all and at a speed light years ahead of most of what we use today.

The cable would be strung or buried along city streets along with the water mains, gas lines and electric wires for connection to individual houses and apartment buildings, offices and businesses. And instead of waiting to be hooked up, each user would always be connected.

The idea was formulated first by Mort Rahimi, Northwestern’s vice president for information technologies and a professor of computer science.

It was a logical outgrowth of the university’s own system that links buildings, libraries and student dorm rooms with each other and even with other campuses.

And, Rahimi thought, why stop with the university, why not bring the same capability to all citizens?

“The notion is that if Evanston could build its own Internet, using advanced technologies, and make it available to schools and homes and businesses . . . Evanston would be a very attractive place,” Rahimi said. “It would be good for the city and for the university.”

In the year since, a task force of nearly two dozen civic and business leaders has embraced the concept and is hoping to get it off the ground by the year 2000.

The new regional planning report suggests that municipalities, schools and colleges band together to leverage buying power. A co-author of the report, Patricia Widmayer, who is also a Technopolis backer, cited another Northwestern project to support this point.

Northwestern has joined with other universities and colleges in Chicago to order a high-speed network.

The group selected TCI Network Solutions to create a high-speed private data network connecting campuses in Chicago and in northern suburbs using cable television lines, Widmayer said.

“This will be financed by the participants in the network,” she said. “By coming together, something that would be prohibitively expensive to any one school will be affordable to all.”

More Top Picks How To Dim Screens To Reduce Eye Pain

The report suggests that municipalities target upgrades of public safety 911 systems to promote high-speed data networks in their towns.

“We’re trying to provide models of how to get these networks built,” said Widmayer. “We want other communities to have examples of how to expand broadband networks. Municipalities don’t have a lot of money to spend, but what they do spend should be used strategically to further planning goals.”

Municipal authorities may dedicate unused capacity in 911 public safety networks to supply high-speed data connections to businesses, the report suggests.

Raymond Romero, a member of the MPC’s telecommunications working group, said that in Chicago itself, some older buildings located near the Loop that have been abandoned as factories and warehouses are finding new uses as space for software developers. Proximity to high-speed data networks makes these buildings attractive to high-tech businesses, Romero said.

“We want municipal leaders in the suburbs to be aware of how network infrastructure can be used as an asset,” Romero said. “We’re already seeing some of the older surburbs losing their tax base as businesses move out to newer locations. What we’re saying is that if you have a broadband 911 running to a firehouse near an industrial park, maybe you could run it a few more blocks to make that park more attractive.”

While MPC’s new report can only make suggestions, Goldstein said he hopes the stength of the arguments will persuade municipal leaders to listen. The report, which includes a forward by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), follows a seminar promoting technology in Illinois hosted by Durbin last January.

Despite their enthusiasm for promoting information technology, the planners acknowledge they face formidable hurdles. One of them is that the city’s government must change the way it does business and join the computer world.

“We’re way behind as an institution,” task force member Ed Moran, 6th Ward alderman, noted wryly. “We don’t even have voice mail yet.”