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Architects: Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture
Client: City of Chicago, Office of the Alderman, 43rd Ward
Energy Services and Consulting Company: PositivEnergy Practice

The architects envision a Lincoln Park community that is a Chicago leader in neighborhood-based sustainability: a community that provides a safe and healthy quality of life for residents, visitors and business owners. The plan envisions a neighborhood where our children can walk and bike safely to school and to playgrounds; a neighborhood where business owners feel their investment in the community will be returned.  

Using the Chicago flag as the inspiration, the architects organized the Lincoln Park Sustainability Roadmap around four themes, each represented by a star on the flag.  The architects believe a key aspect of communicating sustainable concepts at the neighborhood level is the clarity of the message.  The four stars is a memorable way to link Chicago’s neighborhoods to a clear and simple sustainable framework. The four themes for the Roadmap are:  Sustainable Economics; Transportation + Infrastructure; Nature + Open Space; and Living Sustainably.

Neighborhood-based sustainable planning should support and advance the “2015 Sustainable Chicago Action Agenda,” released by the Office of the Mayor in 2012.  This document outlined significant city-wide initiatives in seven areas of focus: Economic Development and Job Creation; Energy Efficiency and Clean Energy; Transportation Options; Water and Wastewater; Parks, Open Space and Healthy Food; Waste and Recycling, and Climate Change.

The 2015 Sustainable Chicago Action Agenda sets 24 achievable goals for the City and identifies specific strategies for achieving them. The document stresses large-scale, systems-based initiatives that will fundamentally alter Chicago in the near future and beyond.

The intent of the Lincoln Park Sustainability Roadmap is to complement this visionary document.  Therefore, rather than duplicate the seven themes articulated in the City vision, this Roadmap economizes the City’s concerns into four themes that have local applicability to neighborhoods:  Economic Development; Transportation, Open Space, and Living Sustainably.

The hope is that The Lincoln Park Sustainability Roadmap can serve as a model for the translation of sustainable policy from the City level to the scale of the blocks, buildings, roadways, and parks that comprise our neighborhoods. The document is specific in its recommendations, and is based on significant resident and business-owner feedback regarding current issues facing our neighborhood.