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Monday, August 28, 2006

Environment - Scant land forces creative thinking for new parks

The Chicago Tribune has an interesting story today by Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah. Some quotes:

Building parks once meant claiming meadows, digging lagoons and plunking down benches.

But like most major cities today, Chicago faces increased pressure on land and an insatiable hunger for recreational areas, breaks in the dense fabric of urban life.

That has pushed park planners to get creative. Often it means taking advantage of neighborhood changes, cobbling together tax-delinquent properties to carve out a park or transforming abandoned industrial parcels. Waterfront plots are especially valued, but unused railroad rights-of-way or even old landfills offer opportunities.

"The urban park movement today is really not about conserving land," said Peter Harnik, director of the Washington-based Center for City Park Excellence with the non-profit Trust for Public Land. "It's about revitalizing or reworking lands that have been used for something else."

And while planners work with what's available, they have also learned to exercise their imaginations about what some of these humble plots might offer, from history to sledding to new ways to see the city.

From approved plans to ideas that are just beyond a gleam in the eye, here are a few of the proposals under development at the Chicago Park District:

Here s the one that caught my attention:
On Chicago's Southeast Side, the USX mill was once one of the country's largest steel plants, employing more than 20,000 people. Changes in the industry led to the plant's closing in the early 1980s. The mill was demolished, and the land is overgrown with weeds.

City officials hope to redevelop the 500 acres into housing, hotels and retail and park space. Because it's prime lakefront land, acreage abutting the lake will be turned into green space and trails. Park officials also hope to build a marina.

But what gets Chicagoans most excited is the prospect that this property and another recently acquired lakefront site in Rogers Park now means that 24 of the 28 miles of Chicago lakefront are publicly owned. Daniel Burnham, whose 1909 Plan of Chicago envisioned public parks all along the city's lakefront, would have approved.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 28, 2006 02:45 PM
Posted to Environment