Friends of the Parks 

America’s Great Outdoors Campaign

Chicago’s parks, playgrounds, lakefront park system and forest preserves provide spaces where Chicagoans exercise and play for health and fitness.

We know that physical activity is an important factor in healthy children and adults.  Studies have shown where there are neighborhood parks and trails in close proximity, residents increase their frequency of exercise.  Conversely, the same studies show that where there are no parks, residents often go without exercise.  In dense urban environments, particularly in low income neighborhoods, parks, playgrounds, greenways and trails are often the only spaces for children and adults to engage in play and fitness activities.   In these low-income communities, people do not have access to nor can afford health club memberships.

Chicago does not have adequate park space to serve its population.  Fifty-five of Chicago’s seventy-seven community areas do not have a basic 2 acres of parks per 1000 population.  The national standard of the National Recreation and Parks Association for a healthy community calls for 10 park acres per 1,000 population.   According to a 2007 Center for Disease Control study, Illinois ranks 10^th in the nation for the percentage of children aged 10-17 who are overweight.  Illinois ranks 4^th behind Mississippi, Georgia and Kentucky in childhood obesity. 

The cost in dollars alone is astronomical, $117 billion according to a 2000 study by the U.S. Surgeon General.  It is now recognized that the number of people who die prematurely from obesity is greater than the number who die from smoking. 

The America’s Great Outdoors Campaign should include the following:

•  Federal funding for urban parks through the Urban Parks and Recreation Recovery Program, the Land and Water Conservation Program and the Livable Communities Program. 
• Federal “Get Active” campaign adopted by the U.S. Surgeon General’s office similar to the “Stop Smoking” campaign.  This should be a national strategy to increase individual’s participation in exercise programs.
• Federal guidelines and programs that reduce our sedentary lifestyle behaviors by eliminating the barriers to physical activity.
• Federal policy or guidelines with incentives that reward and support the use of local and state agency land for parks and greenways and trails (via transfer, intergovernmental agreements, permitting programs).
• Federal incentives for transfer of abandoned rail lines to municipalities for greenways. 
• Environmental policies to incentivize urban municipalities to provide new neighborhood parks, recreation facilities and walking and biking trails.  Neighborhood parks and greenways also serve to reduce our carbon footprint, clean the air and water and assist with climate change. 
• Additional incentives for federal programs directed toward the restoration and improvement of Great Lakes (Lake Michigan) coastal ecosystem to include public beaches and parks. Lakefront parks and beaches not only provide open space for recreation but also have important environmental benefits:  erosion protection, contribution to clean air and water, creation of habitat. 

In Chicago, Friends of the Parks supports the following specific policies and/or projects:

•  Development of new parks in the 55 of 77 community areas that do not meet a basic two-acre park standard.
• Renovation of 400 outdated children’s playgrounds in Chicago.
• Completion of the city’s lakefront park system.  Twenty-six miles of Chicago’s 30-mile Lake Michigan shoreline have been developed as public parks.  Public parks on two miles on the Chicago’s north side and two miles on the city’s south side have not been completed.  The completion of the Last Four Miles would provide a park greenway system along Lake Michigan to connect with the suburbs to the north and to Indiana to the south.
• Development of the ERA Trail, a 2-mile abandoned rail line as a public park in the Englewood community.
• Development of the Bloomingdale Trail as a 2-mile public park in the Logan Square community.
• Acquisition of 6,000 acres of forest preserves to achieve the statutory land limit.
• Federal matching funding to spur land acquisition for parks throughout the city. 
• Funding for additional quality recreation staff for innovative recreation and fitness programs primarily for Chicago’s youth.