Free Republic

Barack Obama’s Obama Presidential Center, a three-building complex designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien on Chicago’s South Side, has made its intention to embrace its neighborhood very clear—specifically Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance, the historic Frederick Law Olmsted–designed greenways that have hosted, among other things, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, a.k.a. the “White City.” But what the Center hasn’t made as clear is that the complex’s footprint is growing, with its leaders recently proposing an aboveground parking garage that could take up about five acres of the Midway. The library’s concession for eating into this space is a...

You may recently have come to accept that lawns are bad for the planet. But urban green space is good, right? According to a recent (and recently corrected) University of California at Irvine study, they're not. The study found that urban green space generated, through fertilizers and gas-powered mowers, three times more greenhouse gas emissions than they stored in the grass and soil. Athletic fields stored just 10 percent of the emissions that their upkeep generated, because the constant rough-and-tumble that they support reduces their ability to hold carbon. Is the study a shot to the heart of urban green...

Announces goal of creating community gardens at each USDA facility worldwide WASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 2009 -- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today "broke pavement" on the inaugural USDA The People's Garden during a ceremony on the grounds of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) commemorating the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. The Secretary declared the stretch of pavement permanently closed and returned back to green, and encouraged other Administration officials and the general public to join in to protect the Chesapeake watershed. "It is essential for the federal government to lead the way in enhancing and conserving our land and water...