Jason Schumer
Comic by Katie Hill
Sites for Leisure, Sites of Danger
Artists and activists discuss reclaiming parkland as a public space
Courtesy South Side Home Movie Project
When L. Anton Seals, Jr. was growing up in South Shore, he and his family would often spend weekend nights camped out in Chicago’s public parks. Back then, he said, his family and friends took the Chicago Park District’s 11pm closing time as a suggestion, not a rule: “[We were like], how the park gon’ close at 11 o’clock?… Who gives you the right to close the earth?”
Growing Neighborhoods
An art exhibit connects local goals and larger climate problems
Courtesy of Jenny Kendler
Garden for a Changing Climate,” the traveling public art project by artist Jenny Kendler, has grown as organically as one of its mobile planters.
Leisure at a Price
A new history showcases Black Chicagoans’ complex relationship with nature
Brian McCammack wants to push against the idea that the history of African Americans’ use of public space in and around Chicago can be summed up simply.
SSW Radio: Flooding in Chatham
Lori Burns' rain garden
This week on SSW Radio, we learned about flooding relief in Chatham.
Stewards For the Land
Some of the farmers behind the city’s newer generation of cooperative farms
Siena Fite
Instead of being rural and vast, these farms are a couple-acre lots enclosed by major streets and railway lines. Instead of shipping produce long distances, these farms serve their local, South Side communities. Instead of owning the land, these farmers tend to it with their community in mind. Instead of using a top-down structure of organization, these farms are cooperative, owned equally by the farmers themselves and the City of Chicago. These are cooperative farms, the new crop of urban agriculture on the South Side.
Exploring Empathy and Entitlement in Ecology
Bridget Gamble
Under the current administration, national parks face massive budget cuts. Protected U.S. monuments are shrinking, and as the budget for national parks decreases, admission costs are rising. Next year, entry to parks like Yosemite could cost as much as admission to Six Flags.
Ramping Up at Big Marsh
A Southeast Side slag field reborn
Christopher Good
When you reduce 11599 S. Stony Island to its individual components, it’s simple enough: wood, mulch, concrete, clods of dirt. But the Bike Park at Big Marsh, like any good bike park, is more than the sum of its parts. Since its opening last November, the park’s stairs, ramps, curves, and jumps have become a two-wheeled proving ground—and the only space of its kind on Chicago’s South Side.
When a Park Becomes a Destination
Around Jackson Park with Jackson Park Watch’s Brenda Nelms
Jason Schumer
Last week, I asked the founders of Jackson Park Watch (JPW) to take me on a guided tour of Jackson Park. Headed by two women, Brenda Nelms and Margaret Schmid, JPW has been an undeniable community force for just over a year in demanding more transparency and public input regarding the changes coming to the park, including the Obama Presidential Center, the proposed golf course redesign, and a revamped Wooded Island.
Greener Pastures
What the history of Jackson Park tells us about its uncertain future
Within a year of the World’s Columbian Exhibition’s closure, a large fire razed most of the buildings, which gave Olmsted the opportunity in 1895 to create this revised general plan for Jackson Park—a waterway system that would connect Jackson Park through a canal running down the Midway to Washington Park. (New York Public Library)
Parks are for people,” Frances Vandervoort told me. A board member and Committee Chairman of the Hyde Park Historical Society, she holds a similar position on the Jackson Park Advisory Council (JPAC), a watchdog organization for the South Side park of the same name. That’s what I’ve come to talk with Vandervoort about: the changes that will soon come to Jackson Park. The first signs of these changes are visible even today—a nonprofit called Project 120 Chicago, in partnership with the Chicago Park District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), has partially underwritten a series of revitalization projects taking place in the park since 2013. These are forerunners of more significant changes to come: the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) is slotted to open in Jackson Park in 2021, and the Tiger Woods–designed revitalization of the Jackson Park and South Shore Golf Courses—which will combine them into one PGA-grade course, and will be financed through a public-private partnership—is expected to be completed by 2020. Both projects have been sources of controversy.