March 27, 2008

UIC PUBLISHES 'GREEN SCHEMES' FOR URBAN DESIGN

The University of Illinois at Chicago's City Design Center has produced
a 96-page electronic publication illustrating ideas for green
development in East Garfield Park as a case study for use by Chicago
neighborhoods and individuals.

"Green Schemes: Sustainable Urbanism in Garfield Park" presents 80
concepts such as filtration gardens, narrowed roadways, and an elevated
bikeway adjacent to the Green Line tracks. Graduate students and
faculty in urban planning, architecture and landscape architecture
conceived the schemes in five studios taught at UIC's City Design
Center.

Their designs for urban agriculture, public ways, building technology,
manufacturing, transportation and other planning elements address four
scales of development: building, street, neighborhood, and the
two-square-mile community.

The designers chose East Garfield Park as a mixed-income neighborhood
with many underused properties. They describe the area's current and
potential assets, including winding boulevards, Victorian housing, a
business district primed for revitalization, industrial buildings, a
rapid transit line, the City of Chicago's Center for Green Technology,
and Garfield Park -- one of the city's largest parks, featuring a
restored botanical conservatory.

A steering committee drawn from UIC, the Chicago Park District and the
Chicago departments of environment, housing, planning/development and
transportation oversaw the process.

"Green Schemes" shows that planners, architects and landscape
architects can make green design feasible by collaborating, said
Susanne Schnell, research assistant professor in the City Design
Center.

"We generated ideas that we call 'park-centric' by working with
landscape architecture faculty from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign," Schnell said. "Some ideas might be demonstrated in
pilot projects with city departments, and all are intended to inspire
greater dialogue about green design in Chicago neighborhoods."

The studios, taught throughout the 2006-07 academic year, received
funding from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and Shaw Environmental
and Infrastructure Inc.

"Green Schemes" in PDF format will be available as a free download from
the website of the Chicago Department of Environment. A limited number
of printed copies will be distributed to local officials and planners.

Twenty concepts from "Green Schemes" will be on view through April 20
in "Green Architecture," an exhibition at the Lubeznik Center for the
Arts in Michigan City, Ind., said Dan Wheeler, associate professor of
architecture and a member of the steering committee.