Parks putting cities in the green

CHICAGO — Grimy, dark, foreboding — underscored by urban flight and chilling film scenes, America's cities suffered negative images through much of the late 20th century.

But there's a new, green urban alchemy. And it's on spectacular display in Chicago this spring. Reflecting Mayor Richard M. Daley's intent to make his city the "greenest in America," downtown is filled with beds of flowers and blossoming pots hung from new street lamps. More than 70 miles of green roadway medians stretch out into the neighborhoods.

The biggest splash by far is the new Millennium Park, $475 million worth of greenery, sculpture, fountain, grass and plantings between Michigan Avenue and the lakefront, including a stunningly designed outdoor music facility that provides 50 free concerts each summer.

Since Millennium's 2004 opening, Chicagoans and visitors have poured in, close to 4 million yearly, a kaleidoscope of races, ages and classes. But the park is also a perfect fit for the new green metaphor: Its exquisite plantings have replaced an open pit of railroad tracks, ugly trusses holding up railroad electric lines, and a dusty surface parking lot.

"Welcome to a park junkie's paradise," Alderman Mary Ann Smith told an Urban Park and Recreation Summit of directors and advocates from major cities, gathering in Chicago this month. Since the late 1980s, she said, Chicago's new and remade parks, its flowers and public art have begun to turn around many blighted, crime-ridden neighborhoods. "We're creating places people want to be, not places people want to flee."

One result: hundreds of millions of dollars invested in new housing, America's most dramatic "back to the city" movement. Real-estate values around Millennium Park alone have increased by at least $1.2 billion. Greenery has helped Chicago expand its visitor and convention industry to $9 billion in value a year.

And the phenomenon isn't Chicago's alone. Across the U.S., "there's a growing momentum — confidence that parks are no longer just a pretty face, but can drive economic development," Trust for Public Land President Will Rogers told the parks summit.

Well-maintained parks, said John Crompton, a parks expert from Texas A&M University, "are a city's 'wow' factor — everyone loves greenery around them." City councils that cut corners in park maintenance need a wake-up call, he suggested, because there's evidence that from the founding of New York's Central Park in the 1850s onward, parks have raised surrounding property values well above the cost of their construction.

And, Crompton said, the payoff continues. Highly educated, professional workers — the economic gold of these times — gravitate to places with high quality of life, parks and recreation included. Indeed, firms in less attractive places have to struggle with "disamenity compensation" — premium pay to draw talent.

And economics is just one reason to fight budget cuts and mobilize support for parks, the Chicago conferees proclaimed in a national "Call to Action" drawn up by the National Recreation and Park Association.

First, there's health — fostering wellness and combating today's scourges of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. People enjoy and keep returning to quality parks with their greenery and natural beauty, attractive pathways for walking, running and biking, and sports fields.

Second, tree-studded city parks provide natural filtration for stormwater runoff, reduce carbon dioxide/greenhouse-gas impacts and act as natural city air conditioners in summertime, mitigating urban "heat island" impacts.

Third, parks matter immensely for youth — outdoor play fosters children's physical and mental growth, pulling them away from a deadened life of television and video games. Among teenagers and young adults, well-run parks clearly blunt crime levels.

Yet, sadly, low-income neighborhoods, with their heavy minority and immigrant populations, are seriously park-poor — especially in cities such as Atlanta, Los Angeles and Dallas, reports Peter Harnik of the Trust for Public Land.

Will Chicago's green alchemy and focus on parks sprout across the continent? The case is compelling. But it's also a wonderful human opportunity, says Chicago's Alderman Smith — creating and fostering better parks as "safe places for children to just lie around and watch the clouds."

Neal Peirce's column appears alternate Mondays on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com