If you waited in mobs of people or traffic to get home from Grant Park after the fireworks, you may have fantasized about living in downtown Chicago. Just a short walk from your convenient city condo, you'd have world class museums, dining, entertainment -- and fireworks.

How nice would that be?

Many of us empty nesters have the dream -- and in increasing numbers, we're making that dream come true. Empty nesters and young professionals have turned around Chicago's downtown. It is no longer just a place to work or play; you can live here, too.

Between 2000 and 2007, the population of the Central Area, defined roughly as south of North Avenue and north of I-55, has increased by 54,000. It's now around 165,500. In 11 years, by 2020, it is projected to reach 215,000 to 230,000.

The city has recently revised a 2003 downtown plan to include updated goals based on a host of factors, including the fact that people have been moving downtown in greater numbers than expected six years ago, even given the economic turndown.

At a recent symposium, Benet Haller, Director of the city's department of zoning and planning, showed urban wonks the newer draft of the plan with more specific ideas and how much it will cost to make them happen.

If every wish came true, it would be a happy new world in 2020, with high-speed rail and additional transportation lines with hubs in the central city, with a park built over a portion of the Kennedy expressway so that it joined together, rather than divided neighborhoods. Commercial areas near housing would provide essential goods and services, such as those in the University Village area around Roosevelt Road. Bicycling would be safer, transit easier, housing more affordable, and both natural areas and historic structures would be protected. It would have open spaces, green places, and smiling faces untroubled by road rage or yard work.

Haller is shopping the plan around to communities within the downtown area, hoping for enough buy-in that it will get approved by the Plan Commission, perhaps as early as this month.

Once it's approved, that's the end of the process. "It's a guide, not a law," says Haller, who likes to equate the grand plan to those of Daniel Burnham. "A lot of things in the Burnham plan never happened. Our success or failure is not in how many projects are implemented but in thinking about ways to improve our transit system and creating stronger open spaces."

So, how much might all this cost? Something like $15.5 billion, but spread out over the next 11 years it will just look daunting, not backbreaking. The plan lays out a cost breakdown and prioritizes the projects. It also suggests some financing solutions, not the least of which would be getting the Olympics here in 2016.

Foreclosing neighbors

You won't find out why your neighbors defaulted, but you can find out if they did at yet another Web site for foreclosure information.

I was alerted to this one by a Twitter follower who read a previous column on how to find out if your neighbors are foreclosing. The site, www.RentalForeclosure.com, is designed to be a service for tenants who want to find out if their landlord is getting foreclosed on. It has been all-too-common scenario in this economic downturn: Renters who have always paid their rent on time are turned out of their apartment because the landlord is in default.

However, those who are searching for information about owner-occupied properties can use RentalForeclosures.com, too. Its search results do not distinguish between rental properties and owner occupied properties. It's designed to search for specific addresses, not to do broad searches.