In 1963 famed Morton Arboretum naturalist May Theilgaard Watts wrote a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune. “We are human beings,” she wrote. “We walk upright on two feet. We need a footpath. Right now there is a chance for Chicago and its suburbs to have a footpath, a long one.” Her visionary and poetic letter led to the creation of the Illinois Prairie Path and marked the beginning of the rails-to-trails movement.

Until the interstate highway program in the 1950s, the world’s best-engineered rights-of-way were railroad corridors. Hills and cliffs were excavated, valleys filled, curves softened, tunnels dug, bridges built, all to provide routes of exquisitely smooth gentleness with little or no cross-traffic. They were also extraordinarily well routed from, to, and through the centers of activity–cities. Today, 130,000 miles of these marvelous linear connections have been abandoned. Already, 1,500 segments totaling 15,000 miles have been turned into trails for biking, skiing, skating, running, and walking. Most are rural but the urban ones almost invariably become the spines of city biking networks that also include on-road bike lanes and other feeder-collector routes. Rail trails have become focal points for nonmotorized transportation and recreation in Seattle; Washington, D.C.; Boston; Indianapolis; Dallas; Cincinnati; Spokane; Milwaukee; St. Petersburg; Albany, New York; Arlington, Virginia; Barrington, Rhode Island; and scores of other cities and towns. And there are still abandoned corridors available for conversion into trails.

The Stone Arch Bridge portion of the St. Anthony Falls Heritage Trail going towards Minneapolis. Credit: Brian Monberg, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

Minneapolis shows the multiple types of rail trails and their power to affect a city’s park, recreation, and transportation systems. Most dramatic is the Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi, built by railroad baron James J. Hill for his Great Northern route to Seattle. Opened in 1883, it was in rail service until 1978. Rescued from demolition, the bridge was refurbished for non-motorized use through a variety of federal, state, and local funds and ultimately turned over to the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. Today it is the keystone of the bicycle/pedestrian network in both Minneapolis and St. Paul.

A few blocks away is the Midtown Greenway, created from a former Milwaukee Road track that maintained separation from traffic by being sunk in a box-shaped trench below street level. The 5.5-mile trail today serves several thousand bicyclists, runners, and skaters per day; in the future it will also host an extension of the light-rail system on a parallel track in the same trench. The corridor was bought for $10 million by the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority. Trail engineering and construction, which cost $25 million, was paid from a variety of local, regional, state, and federal sources. Annual maintenance, which includes lighting and snow plowing, comes to about $500,000 a year.

A couple of miles north, a different set of tracks has been converted into the Cedar Lake Park and Trail. This isn’t a rail-to-trail, it’s a rail-with-trail. When the Burlington Northern Railroad decided to divest itself of an underutilized freight yard, it kept one track for through service and sold the rest to the Park Board. The Board erected a fence and converted the wide industrial facility into a model nature habitat with three meandering, parallel treadways–two one-way paths for cyclists and skaters, and one soft-surface path for walkers and runners. With an extraordinary amount of community support, volunteerism, and sweat-equity, the 48-acre project cost only $3.5 million to acquire and develop, and it was finished in a record six years.

Six years is a record? Well, yes. Creating a rail trail, candidly, is not easy. The land ownership issues are confusing. Legal and regulatory complexities stretch from the local level to the state capital to Washington, D.C. A review of years-to-complete-a-trail validates the difficulty: for the Capital Crescent Trail in Washington, D.C., eleven years from conception to ribbon-cutting; for the Pinellas Trail in St. Petersburg, fifteen years; for the Minuteman Trail in Arlington, Massachusetts, eighteen years; for the Metropolitan Branch Trail in Washington, D.C., twenty-two years and (as of this writing) counting.

But the final results justify the heartache: These are truly “million-dollar trails.” Other than on a former railroad track, it is simply not possible in an existing built-up community to create a new pathway that is long, straight, wide, continuous, sheathed in vegetation, and almost entirely separated from traffic. And the annual usership numbers reveal the pent-up desire lines: 2 million on the Minuteman Trail outside of Boston; 3 million on the Washington and Old Dominion Trail outside of Washington, D.C.; 1.7 million on the Baltimore and Annapolis Trail; 1.1 million on the East Bay Bicycle Path outside of Providence, Rhode Island; and 1 million on the Capital Crescent Trail in Washington, D.C.

Many park directors initially shy away from taking on the challenge of a rail-trail. This is a serious mistake. In addition to all the connectivity and usership values, rail trails often have ecological and historical values very much in keeping with an urban park system’s mission. With corridor widths of 60 to 100 feet, or even more in the West, they frequently harbor interesting, unusual, and rare plant species on their margins, as well as having bridges, tunnels, and stations. Moreover, trails are so popular that they have radically increased the support base for virtually every park agency that has ever taken one on.

The reality is that creating one of these trails is so tough that it virtually requires a partnership between a park department (or sometimes a public works or transportation department) and the private sector (usually a citizen group, sometimes a foundation or corporation). The financial and legal issues are too much for a group of volunteers to handle alone, while the political issues are too intense for a government agency without citizen support. Some of these conversions are so difficult that a national organization, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, formed specifically to provide technical, legal, financial, and political assistance to communities around the country. The Trust for Public Land is another national organization that has been unusually active with creating urban rail trails.

More than that, trail advocates are fierce in their commitment to these facilities–many see them literally as “do or die” opportunities. In Seattle, when the Post-Intelligencer newspaper reported that the Burlington Northern Railroad had secretly sold off a piece of track that had been slated for a continuation of the Burke-Gilman Trail, cyclists were so outraged that they chained their bikes across the entranceway of Burlington Northern’s Seattle headquarters and began a vehement protest that stayed on the front pages for two months. (The railroad, which had sold the land to an out-of-state tycoon for a place to dock his yacht, found a way to rescind the deal and the corridor is now the trail extension.)

The Capital Crescent Trail as it enters Bethesda, Maryland, 7 miles from its starting point in Washington, D.C. Credit: Barbara Richey, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

In Washington, D.C., when the National Park Service was unable to get a quick congressional appropriation to save the Georgetown Branch from being developed by CSX Railroad into a string of million-dollar homes through a national park, land developer Kingdon Gould III loaned $12 million of his own money and held the land for a year until Congress acted. (The corridor is today the Capital Crescent Trail, centerpiece of what will eventually be a 20-mile “bicycle beltway” within the nation’s capital.)

The latest innovation is the overhead or trestle trail. Influenced by the creation in Paris, France, of the Promenade Plantée (“Planted Walkway”), activists in New York, Chicago, and St. Louis have all discovered abandoned rail trestles and launched campaigns to bring them back as trails. First to open, in 2009, was New York’s High Line, a sensational tour de force in the now-chic former meatpacking district. The walkway (which from day one was so crowded with pedestrians that bicycles were not permitted) includes sophisticated plantings, architectural landscaping reminiscent of railroad tracks, artistic benches and chaise longues, a viewing gallery with picture window overlooking 10th Avenue traffic, a large wall of glass panes dyed every hue of the Hudson River, food carts, seating areas, and more.

A bit less upscale but considerably longer and designed for cyclists as well as walkers, Chicago’s Bloomingdale Trail is expected to open in segments as funds for the $45-million conversion are found. The Bloomingdale Trail should serve recreational cyclists as well as purposeful commuters since one day it could join an interconnected trailway linking all the way from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River. St. Louis’s Iron Horse Trestle will also prove helpful to cyclists, runners, and walkers of all stripes since it passes over busy Interstate 70 and leads toward the popular Riverfront Trail along the Mississippi River.

July’s Frontline Parks are known for keeping patrons cool and for their unique water conservation technology.

Grapeland Water Park

Grapeland Water Park is the first public water destination attraction within the City of Miami.  With four pools that include slide play structures, a lazy river and recreation pool, the facility has brought splashy fun to the backyard of a community.  The bright and colorful environment was designed by acclaimed international artist Romero Britto.  A popular destination for families and groups, the park is located adjacent to an exit off a major highway in Miami, making it accessible for those who live in the neighborhood and surrounding counties.  During the summer, it’s common for the park to hit peak capacity several times a day.  The combination of innovative water conservation technology, creative design and fitness/recreation programs for people of all ages and abilities make Grapeland a wonderful warm weather neighborhood attraction.  Site furnishings in Grapeland Water Park were manufactured by DuMor, Inc.

Mary Bartelme Park

Occupying the site of a former infirmary, Mary Bartelme Park combines a sense of history with modern, innovative design elements.  This uniquely designed green space in the West Loop serves a community that has experienced tremendous growth over the last 10 years.  The Chicago Park District worked with the local elected officials, community members and nonprofit organizations to create a park that specifically caters to the neighborhood.  The size and amenities in this park give it the feel of a local space, but the unique design and location make it an appealing regional destination.  Innovation abounds in this park, from using pieces of the original infirmary building in seat walls to capturing and storing all storm water with permeable paver paths.  But one of the most popular features manages to conserve water and keep park patrons comfortable at the same time.  Using only three gallons a minute, each of the five stainless steel fountain gates emit a fine mist of vaporized water on hot Chicago days, cooling off families while immersing the area in a cloud.

Frontline Parks is generously supported by DuMor, Inc.  and  PlayCore.

Do you park in your park? Does it seem to be a parking lot more than a park, a lot?

Urban park advocates struggle mightily to create new green space through a precious parcel here and an irreplaceable acre there. But a large swath of existing parkland is given over to the prosaic task of automobile storage, complete with its side impacts–impermeable surface, water runoff and erosion, oil drippings, heat island effect, displacement of trees and meadows, and loss of playing area.

A 2007 study by the Center for City Park Excellence of 70 major city parks in the United States revealed that, collectively, they devote a total of 529 acres to the very technology that many people seek to escape when they head into their local patch of nature. That’s an area larger than Schenley Park in Pittsburgh, City Park in Denver, Lake Harriet Park in Minneapolis, or Franklin Park in Boston. In Chicago, where the city spent $475 million to create 24-acre Millennium Park, almost twice that much land–46 acres–is given over to auto storage within nearby Lincoln Park.

Hard to find parking spaces in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Credit: Google Earth.

On average, CCPE found that signature urban parks provide slightly more than one auto space for every acre of parkland. The range is from almost zero spaces in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park to more than 6,000 in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, more than 7,000 in St. Louis’s Forest Park, and 10,000 in Flushing Meadow/Corona Park in New York.

Storing an unused car requires approximately 330 square feet (.008 acres), according to Donald Shoup, professor of Urban Planning at University of California at Los Angeles and author of The High Cost of Free Parking. This factors in the actual surface area of the auto plus the extra space for aisles required to maneuver in and out of an enclosure. For a 500-car lot, that comes to four acres. Of course, Americans assume they have the right to drive, one person per car, from home to a space directly next to a tennis court, rose garden, or picnic table–at least until it’s pointed out that 100 percent auto access means 0 percent park.

Despite the popular assumption, auto storage doesn’t correlate directly with visitation. The nation’s most heavily used park, Central Park in New York, has only 130 parking spaces yet gets 25 million visits per year. Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, receives 6 million visits while providing only forty spaces for skaters at Wollman Rink–and that lot is open only periodically. On the other hand, in Houston, about 15 of Hermann Park’s 445 acres are devoted to 2,000 spaces for automobile storage. Interestingly, although it gets about 2.3 million visits per year, Hermann is less heavily used than Riverside Park in New York, which has almost no auto storage.

“On about fifty days per year there is no possible way to meet the demand, and on another fifty we’re right at the limit for capacity,” says Rick Dewees, administrator of Hermann Park. Nevertheless, he points out, “It’s hard to add spaces when the lots are empty three-fourths of the time.” Dewees has been forced to become a bit thick-skinned about the issue: “You’re always going to have people complaining there isn’t enough parking during peak times,” he says.

Parks surrounded by low-density housing with little or no mass transportation and filled with high-intensity sports facilities are under relentless pressure to provide large amounts of space for cars. But not every park is held hostage by the automobile. Parks with many people living or working in close proximity and a range of good transit options nearby are able to succeed with little or no car storage.

Of the nation’s big-city signature parks, Atlanta’s Piedmont Park is relatively small, making an internal auto repository particularly undesirable. Not only is there no open-air lot, there aren’t even curbside spaces, since the city closed all Piedmont’s internal roadways to cars in 1983. The park is fairly well-served by transit, but overflow autos end up in the surrounding neighborhood. Also in Piedmont Park is the Atlanta Botanical Garden which has the same automobile problem. The Garden’s original proposal to construct a multilevel garage in an underused portion of the park generated shock and opposition, but gradually a broad compromise was crafted, and in 2008 an 800-car garage was built relatively inconspicuously in a steep, wooded hillside. In return, the Piedmont Park Conservancy removed the existing open-air lot and also added more park entrances for walkers and cyclists. Serving both Botanical Garden visitors and Piedmont Park users (with the Garden covering the costs of construction and operation), the garage charges $1.75 per hour.

There are three ways to reduce the problem of car storage in city parks. By far the simplest and most effective is to charge a parking fee. Storing a car in a park is a service with value. Doing so also places many human and environmental costs on the park system. With an equation like that, a payment should work.

Most of the high-population-density cities rely on residents to walk, use transit or bikes, or pay to use private garages nearby. Most of the low-density cities don’t necessarily get enough usership in any one park for it to be an overwhelming problem. It is in the mid-density cities that the issue often comes to a head. Minneapolis has taken the lead in charging for cars. After a failed 10-year experiment with an honor system in the busiest of its six regional parks, the Park Board installed meters, charging between 50 cents and $1.25 per hour, depending upon demand. Because the Park Board receives all the meter revenue, it can determine how the money ($795,000 in 2005) is used, with some of the funds going to park maintenance and some to youth athletics.

Aerial shot of Hermann Park looking south with light-rail in the foreground. Credit: David J. Schmoll.

The flip side of the coin, of course, is to provide park users with transit options. Eight of the ten most heavily used city parks have subway or light-rail access within one-quarter mile, and all of them have bus service that comes even closer. Outside of New York City (where almost all parks have subway service), among the parks best-served by rail are Boston Common, Forest Park in St. Louis, Grant Park in Chicago, Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Naturally, instituting transit service, especially rail, to major parks is expensive. But it is not out of the question. In Houston, the city’s first light-rail line, opened in January 2004, features two stops in Hermann Park.

At Washington Park in Portland, Oregon, home to the popular Rose and Japanese Gardens, cars and buses regularly exceed the auto storage capacity from May through September. The city is unwilling to add to the 86 spaces (though it is unwilling to charge for them, either). In response to the crunch, Tri-Met, the regional transit agency, has added a peak-season bus that shuttles between eight stops within the 130-acre park and the closest MAX light-rail stop. The service, which runs every 15 minutes and costs $1.70 (or is free with a transfer) is aggressively advertised by the park department, Tri-Met and by event promoters. The route gets about 500 riders per day on weekends and 420 on weekdays.

Which leads to the third way of reducing auto storage problems in parks: increasing population density nearby. For every person who lives within walking distance of a park, one fewer needs to drive and deal with a car when he or she gets there. Comparison in point: New York’s Riverside Park and Fresno’s Woodward Park. Both are approximately the same size (325 and 300 acres, respectively) but Riverside has only 120 parking spaces while Woodward has 2,500. The difference is in the surrounding neighborhoods. Riverside has the Hudson River on one side and a solid row of twelve- and sixteen-story buildings on the other. Woodward is bordered by single-family homes, most of which have lots large enough for pools, on cul-de-sac street layouts. The residential population density around Woodward is about 6.5 persons per acre, virtually guaranteeing heavy reliance on autos to get to the park. The density around Riverside Park is about 150 persons per acre, and most users of the park walk from within about four blocks.

Obviously, adding residential (or commercial) density around parks is not a short-term project. Nor is it noncontroversial. People who live in single-family homes on large lots around parks enjoy their quality of life and understandably want to maintain it. However, a case can be made that increasing density unlocks a great deal of value for the benefit of the whole city, including more property tax revenue, the likelihood of healthier citizens because of park views and use, and the ability to reduce the presence of stored automobiles in parks.

Schoolyards are large, flat, centrally located open spaces with a mandate to serve the recreational needs of schoolchildren. Great schoolyards–the rare ones that have healthy grass, big trees, a playground, and sports equipment–seem a lot like parks. But they aren’t. For one thing, most have fences and locks. For another, they are closed to the general public. Schoolyards are parks for only a limited constituency. But they have terrific potential to be more than that. Even less-than-great schoolyards (those that are merely expanses of asphalt with few amenities) represent sizable opportunities in key locations. To many observers, schoolyards seem the best, most obvious source of park-like land to supplement the park systems of overcrowded cities. And they are–even if upgrading them into schoolyard parks is more difficult than it might seem.

“Schoolyard park” in this context means a space reserved for schoolchildren during school hours and used by the whole community at other times. In a few cities–New York, Chicago, and Phoenix–schoolyard parks are run cooperatively by the board of education and the parks department. In others, the parks department has no formal role at all.

The pockmarked and cracked asphalt lot before it was developed into I.S. 62-The Ditmas School playground in Brooklyn, NY. Credit: Julieth Rivera.

Most schoolyards originally had grass and trees. But without proper design, construction, and maintenance, grass can’t survive daily trampling by hundreds of little feet. And small trees can’t handle that much swinging and climbing without becoming spindly skeletons. After a few years of frustration with dust, mud, and dead trees, school principals begin to think that laying down asphalt might be a superior solution (and barely any worse ecologically). It’s also a lot easier to sweep up broken glass from asphalt than from dirt and weeds. Then, this being America, the expanse of asphalt starts to attract automobiles; in no time the former school park has a set of parallel white lines and a row of oil stains. Keeping a schoolyard green, clean, car-free, and environmentally productive can be more difficult than operating a regular neighborhood park.

Maintenance can also be thorny. Most school districts are either unable or unwilling to keep schoolyards up to the standards that parks require. After all, money spent on horticulture for the community-at-large is money not spent on the education of children. But school districts also generally balk at turning the maintenance responsibility over to the park department. They worry about losing control over their children’s space.

There are successful programs to refurbish school lands in both Boston (the Boston Schoolyard Initiative) and Denver (Learning Landscapes). Both programs are fully under the direction and control of the school system with no involvement of the park department. The schoolyards are open to the general community except during school hours; they are all fenced. Converting each former space in Denver from what one administrator called “scorched earth that resembled a prison yard” into an irrigated and drained Learning Landscape with a field, two play structures, a hard-surface court and a “community gateway” (an archway that invites the public both symbolically and physically) costs about $450,000. Boston schoolyards, which are considerably smaller, cost about $320,000 each for a new drainage system, plantings, hard surface area, play equipment, fences, decorative art, and an “outdoor classroom” with a micro-meadow, -woodland, and -garden.

As with so many other innovative ideas about the use of urban space, conflicts have arisen about cars. At one Boston site, a bitter battle broke out when some parents proposed converting a school parking lot into a soccer field; ultimately the soccer moms raised $200,000 in private funds and got their way.

Another successful program is Spark (School Park Program) in Houston, where the facilities are called Spark Parks. The program is run by a nonprofit in close cooperation with the mayor’s office. It works only with Houston-area school boards, not with any park department, but it has a strict requirement that the public must have access to the Spark parks after school hours and on weekends. The average Spark park costs between $75,000 and $100,000 and consists of modular play equipment, picnic tables, benches, an outdoor classroom (concrete steps and stage), a butterfly garden, a paved or crushed granite trail, and native trees. Founded in 1983, Spark created 203 parks in its first 25 years. Since 1990 the Spark program has put special emphasis on artwork, often murals or mosaics that the children help with. “It has become extremely popular,” said Spark Director Kathleen Ownby. “We’ve become one of the largest providers of outdoor art in the Houston area.”

The primary users of schoolyards are schoolchildren whose needs predominate. Because of the children, schoolyards are generally locked during school hours. While theoretically a minor issue, locks can cause unending problems, particularly if there is no park attendant or custodian on the premises. The central issue is: Who’s in charge? If the school system, the grounds are likely to be more tightly monitored but not as well maintained. If the park department controls and if the schoolyard is truly open as a neighborhood space, upkeep may be better but oversight of the children might be slightly compromised–there have been complaints of young early-morning users sometimes finding drug and sex paraphernalia in school parks that were open to the community the night before. (Others claim that the increased community use makes them safer than if they are locked.)

Many joint-use agreements break down over what seems to be an issue of legal liability but in fact is a smokescreen for more subjective factors of personality, power, and control. In Houston, the liability issue was resolved when the state of Texas agreed to indemnify schools and cities from certain incidents that occur on public grounds (aside from those due to inadequate maintenance). But in Philadelphia agreement over liability was never reached because there was no higher authority to force deadlocked negotiations to continue. (Until 2009, neither the Board of Education nor the Fairmount Park Commission was under the control of the mayor.) Creating a multiagency urban schoolyard park program succeeds more frequently when all the agencies are under the control of the mayor.

Chicago and New York are among the few cities where, because of mayoral interest, a partnership operates successfully between the board of education and the department of parks. In Chicago, in 1996, Mayor Richard M. Daley set an ambitious goal of converting 100 asphalt schoolyards into small parks. Called the Campus Park Program, it included playgrounds, baseball fields, basketball and tennis courts, and running tracks on a total of 150 acres. It was completed in four years at a cost of $43 million–$20 million each from the school system and the city, plus $3 million from the park district. Design was handled by the park district, construction by the Public Buildings Commission, and the process included community organizations. Ongoing maintenance is handled by the school district with as-needed assistance from the park district for larger properties.

The colorful new school and community playground at I.S. 62-The Ditmas School on opening day in Brooklyn, NY. Credit: Julieth Rivera.

New York City has taken the concept the furthest. There, with the blessing of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, The Trust for Public Land entered into a partnership with the Department of Education, the Department of Parks and Recreation and private funders (including MetLife, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation) to convert scores of decrepit and uninviting schoolyards into showcase parks. The program is simple in concept, complex in practice. The school recreation grounds are owned by the Department of Education, but the renovation work is overseen by the Department of Parks and TPL. Many decisions are made by the principal, the parent-teacher association, and the community. Proposals can be killed by teachers who don’t want to lose parking spaces, by custodians who don’t want to handle park maintenance, or by communities that don’t want kids out late playing basketball.

“This program is community-run,” says Mary Alice Lee, director of TPL’s New York City Playground Program. While all properties are fenced and have locks, in some places it’s the school custodial staff that has the only key, while in others it’s held by the neighborhood sponsoring organization or a block association. A few of the parks are left permanently unlocked. Also, each community sets its own hours. Most common is a schedule of 8 a.m. to dusk seven days a week except when school is in session. In some tougher neighborhoods the community wants the park closed earlier; the most restrictive schedule is 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays, and closed on Sundays.

Designing the space itself is a delicate balancing act that can take up to three months. The children themselves are the lead designers, responding to a set of questions and opportunities posed by TPL, but of course there are a bevy of realities that also affect decisions, including liability, equipment breakability, horticultural survivability, cost, and life lessons from previous play-parks. The children learn how to innovate, compromise, and reach a consensus when their initial ideas turn out to be too expensive or require too much space.

“Because of the kids,” says Lee, “we’ve created murals and mosaics, a hair-braiding area, a jump-rope zone, planting gardens, performance stages, outdoor classrooms, rain gardens, and bowling lanes–as well as the usual soccer fields, running tracks, basketball and tennis courts, and play equipment.”

Maintenance is the responsibility of the school custodial staff. Often they turn down a particular piece of equipment; in some cases they have nixed the playground entirely. As for natural grass, it has proven impossible to maintain under intense usage, and TPL now uses only artificial turf for the play-parks’ ballfields. Houston’s Spark program, in contrast, forbids artificial turf and uses only natural grass.

Mayor Daley (left) at the grand opening of Millennium Park. Credit: City of Chicago

As Mayor Richard M. Daley’s 21-year reign over the city of Chicago comes to a close, multiple publications are evaluating his impact and legacy – from a comprehensive assessment of a variety of issues in the New York Times to a laundry list of unfinished business in the Chicago Tribune. Many organizations have recognized Daley for his part in greening the city – the Urban Land Institute (ULI) recently awarded him the J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. Deeming the Mayor an “Urban Artist,” ULI asserts that Mayor Daley has “transformed this Rustbelt city into a revitalized international metropolis, bringing together the built and natural environments to make the city more sustainable, livable, and lively.” The U.S. Green Building Council recently created the Mayor Richard M. Daley Legacy Award for Global Leadership in Creating Sustainable Cities – and this year’s winner…Richard M. Daley.

On Citiwire.net, Neal Peirce notes the Mayor’s substantive green achievements:

• 88 Chicago buildings claimed LEED certification (as of late 2009);
• A 20,300-square-foot green roof was built atop City Hall;
• More than 600 rooftop gardens and green roofs covering more than seven million square feet that have been constructed or underway on top of public or private buildings around Chicago;
• 1,300 acres of new open space has been added to the City since 1998; and
• Chicago has planted more than 600,000 trees and constructed more than 85 miles of landscaped medians.

It is an impressive list of accomplishments for a city that was once an emblem of the Rustbelt’s decay. While city coffers filled with the spoils of the late 90′s economic boom and concomitant real estate speculation, Daley guided Chicago’s green urban renewal. He had a vision for the city – his vision – and public greenspaces were an essential component.

Millennium Park is the crown jewel of Daley’s tenure in office. Opened in 2004, the 24.5-acre park ingeniously covers the old Illinois Central railroad tracks (now a parking garage) and has become the city’s top tourist destination. It is a stunning public space and now a centerpiece of the Chicago experience.

But as Lynn Becker of the Chicago Reader warned at the park’s opening, “Millennium Park needs to be remembered as an object lesson in how not to do such a project.” Millennium Park was 4 years late and $300 million over-budget due to building setbacks, contractor lawsuits, and budget shortfalls. $95 million of the total cost was diverted from a tax increment financing (TIF) district to which Millennium Park did not belong – money which could have been utilized to bolster schools, other parks, and a city budget in the red. (For more on TIFs, the Chicago Way, see Ben Joravsky’s Go On, Smash It). However, the project did succeed at harnessing the generosity of Chicago’s wealthy benefactors. Over $200 million of private contributions made Millennium Park – a public greenspace – a reality.

Other public space projects generated a more mixed public reaction and are representative of Daley’s unilateral style of leadership. Meigs Field, situated on Northerly Island, had served as a small-plane airport since the late 1940s. For years, the Mayor had sought to close the airport for park space – indeed, Northerly Island had been designated park land in the original Burnham Plan. Finally, in the middle of a March night back in 2003, Daley ordered bulldozers to dig up portions of runway, stranding planes on the airfield and preventing landings. Although there were no immediate threats to the city, Daley argued that Chicago was overlooked in national terrorism prevention efforts, and eliminating the airfield was a measure of protection. The City was sued and fined by the FAA, but Daley had his way. Northerly Island is currently home to a concert venue, but plans are in the works to fully develop the island as a nature park.

Daley made other big changes. Prior to his arrival on the scene, the Chicago Park District was heavy on patronage and bureaucracy and light on park maintenance and planning. Years of mismanagement left the district in an untenable financial state and subject to a court order to reduce race-based inequities. In 1993, Daley began the process of overhauling the district. Led by Forrest Claypool, the district hired a private firm to audit the parks and compile a master repairs list. With an objective assessment in hand, the district went to work: parks got a facelift, from newly planted trees to wrought-iron fences; staff was reduced by 33 percent; much-needed repairs were made; and district efforts were refocused on park and recreation activities.

On the other hand, for a mayor who worked to end park inequities, the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid threatened to place significant burdens on parks in predominantly African-American neighborhoods. Though the mayor promised that no public funds would be used for the Olympic bid, public lands were offered for the cause. The mayor and the Olympic committee, with the unanimous support of the city council, targeted Washington, Jackson, and Douglas Parks as major stadium venues, which would have deprived residents of park use for two or more years. And while development plans were in the works for the lots surrounding the historic Olmstead-designed parks, there were concerns as to who would benefit the most from those plans. Chicago eventually lost the Olympic bid.

Blair Kamin, the Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic, aptly describes the mayor as ruling with a “green thumb and an iron fist.” That description encapsulates the legacy of the mayor – he has been both a strong advocate for a green city with ample public space and a unilateralist who pushed through large-scale projects with strong-armed tactics. Daley will leave the city with world-class greenspaces. He will also leave it with a $655-million deficit. Only time will tell if the “Urban Artist’s” efforts to realize his green vision are sustainable.

Th article indicates that a rush to get into classes was happening in “thousands of homes across the city Monday, as parents frantically attempted to get their children into the 10-week spring classes including gymnastics ($47), basketball ($20) and children’s theater ($12) offered at bargain prices compared to those charged by private gyms and activity centers.”

According to the park officials, the popularity of park programs is at an all-time high, with some classes filling up a second after on-line registration begins — something only otherwise seen in the sale of hot musical act tickets.

The article reports that 40,000 kids enrolling in programs at 228 city parks each season. One parent notes that “the Park District program is so worth it, and it’s the only thing we can afford,” going on to say that a $28 swim class is a lot better than $200 at DePaul University.

This is exactly the great kind of economic value that city parks provide to residents, and in turn allow for a healthier citizenry. In Chicago, this is something deeply rooted in the city’s history, partly through Jane Addams Hull House and a strong recreation program. Aside from the financial benefit provided through these affordable programs, they allow kids to be more physically active. With obesity at an alarming rate, the success of the Chicago programs may be one thing to look at more in depth.

In recent weeks, scores of walkers, joggers, bicyclists and others have discovered the riverwalk that just opened on the Chicago River’s south bank. Stretching from east of the Michigan Avenue Bridge to Wabash Avenue, with an extension to State Street due to wrap up in early July, the handsome, people-friendly public space marks the latest step in Mayor Richard Daley’s ambitious drive to make the riverfront a prime public space downtown and in the city’s outlying neighborhoods.

Think of it as a new lakefront. A completed riverwalk would offer much-needed open space for tens of thousands of office workers and downtown apartment dwellers. And it would let you do along the riverfront what you can do along most of the lakefront: walk, bike or jog without interruption, enjoying the water along the way.

The High Line offers a retreat from street life, a bucolic space floating 30 feet in the air with Hudson River views. Yet it retains many elements of its gritty past: graffiti is prevalent on the buildings it wends through, and some of the rails have been restored in the park. That the park — which grew from an idea hatched 10 years ago into a $170 million project —is being built at all is a marvel. “When we first started people thought it was crazy,” said Robert Hammond, a co-founder of Friends of the High Line, the community group that pushed for the park.

No longer. The first section of the park will open to the public this spring, but it has already transformed the area near its 22-block stretch near the river, prompting some of the most ambitious development in the city in years.

The park in the sky is attracting several new developments, including offices and buildings along its stretch. Th benefits of turning former industrial rail viaducts into parks is exciting and evident. Other cities are doing the same thing.

In Chicago, the Bloomingdale trail contains an elevated rail segment. Here’s some more info on that project. And then there’s another segment in St. Louis that the Great Rivers Greenway District is developing. We hope to post more on both of these projects more in depth.

Gateway Arch, St. Louis - Wall Street Journal

Whatever the result of today’s election, its worth noting the remarkable amount of people that have visited city parks for mostly Barack Obama rallies this fall. Portland’s Tom McCall Waterfront Park saw 72,000 people this summer, and in recent weeks we’ve seen: 100,000 at the Gateway Arch park in St. Louis, 100,000 at Denver’s Civic Center Park and 25,000 in Des Moines’ Gateway Park. Most eye-popping may be tonight, when the Obama campaign is holding its election night festivities in Chicago’s Grant Park – with perhaps 1 million people expected, as predicted by Mayor Daley. (The linked article from Bloomberg also describes the protests from the 1968 Democratic convention.)

Park agencies and cities put a lot of work and sometimes money into these events – security measures involving utilities and police presence, redirecting traffic and closing streets and the maintenance issues created by thousands of feet and equipment converging on park grounds. In Chicago, because of the enormous amount of people expected and the highprofile-ness of the event, the Obama campaign is reportedly sending the city a check to pay for some or most of the costs. According to the Denver Post, the Obama campaign paid workers to clean up after the event there.

In any case, city parks are getting a lot of exposure through these rallies. If you tune in to the election night activities in Chicago – think of all those city and Park District people making the event possible – to have a city park front and central on one of the biggest election nights in recent memory.