Depave programs work with communities to replace unused and abandoned paved areas (such as underutilized parking lots, paved school grounds, and empty sidewalks) with community gardens, pocket forests, street trees, pollinator and habitat gardens, and natural-play spaces. Depave Chicago is collaborative and hands-on. Everyone can participate in some way—by participating in the site design, volunte
ering during depaving and planting days, and/or contributing in other ways such as through financial support or materials for projects. Depave Chicago will be part of a network across the U.S., Canada, UK, and France, trained by Depave in Portland, Oregon. The Depave Chicago start-up is supported by a Resilient by Nature RxN grant from the Walder Foundation. Between 25-30% of Chicago’s urban land is covered with asphalt. That pavement pollutes waterways through stormwater run-off, contributes to flooding in neighborhoods, and increases the urban heat island effect. Excess pavement also means reduced space for gardens, parks, urban forests, and other public green spaces. Currently only 10% of Chicago is designated as parks, while climate research suggests that 30-50% of land should be in some form of protected or conserved status. Policies to restore nature in cities on that scale seem challenging, but they are achievable if accompanied by strategies for where and how to make incremental transformation. Depaving places like abandoned parking lots, school lots, and underutilized commercial lots and streets are key to this process. And in that change, where there is a subtraction, there is also space for addition! Reductions in imperviousness provide an opportunity to address needs by shifting land-use and land-cover toward needed parkland, public space, and conservation areas. Climate adaptation and resilience don’t mean that communities just adapt and get used to increased heat and flooding. Adaptation means we act to change the conditions that are contributing to those issues. Depave Chicago is key to that action plan. WHERE SHOULD WE DEPAVE CHICAGO? Parking lots and paved areas exist in all shapes and sizes throughout the Chicago region. Large paved areas are concentrated around industrial and commercial sites and along our waterways, while smaller paved areas exist in school grounds and church parking lots. All of these are great sites for depaving! Depave projects get started by identifying good candidate sites. Where in your community do you see a better use for an old parking lot? How might taking out part of an existing parking lot improve your neighborhood environment? Depave Chicago will work with communities and site owners to explore new desired uses for proposed spaces and will create a process to depave part or all of the site to meet your vision and goals. No site is too small to make an impact. We welcome communities to contact us with proposed project sites.
