Advocacy
Parkland in Illinois is dedicated in trust for the enjoyment and benefit of the public. Friends of the Parks’ Public Trust and Policy Program is established to shape public policy to protect, expand and connect Chicago’s scarce public park lands, including neighborhood parks and the lakefront. This program seeks to assure responsible stewardship by the governmental bodies entrusted with the preservation and management of these public lands, as well as to promote citizen involvement in decisions affecting Chicago’s parks.
Chicago, while the 3rd largest city in the U.S., ranks 18th out of the major cities in the number of park acres per thousand population. The CitySpace Plan, adopted by the Chicago Plan Commission in 1998, documents the personal and social importance to human well-being of open green space and the need for additional public parkland in Chicago. Due to the vision of early Chicago planners like Daniel Burnham, much of the Lake Michigan shoreline has been restored or converted to public park, giving the illusion of vast distances of parkland.
Despite this shortage of valuable open space, Chicago’s parks in the last year have become a “land bank” for other city agencies, who perceive parkland as available for schools, Department of Aging Senior Centers, in clear violation of their obligation to protect Public Trust property. and private institutions. In addition, opportunities for park enhancement are sometimes lost because of inertia, bureaucracy and lack of appreciation for Chicago as a tremendous repository of biodiversity.
Friends of the Parks will work with environmental and park advisory councils to implement a strategy to stop the piecemeal transfer of public park land to other agencies and groups.
