Captain Plan→it

Cramped Chicago: Half of the city’s 2.7 million people live in park-poor areas; lakefront’s parkland disguises severe shortage in many inland neighborhoods

 Many of these areas have so little parkland that it is no exaggeration to call them “park deserts,” a name that suggests a similarity to “food deserts,” where healthy, affordable food is hard to obtain.

Indeed, the park deserts extract a comparable human toll, denying children and adults a place to exercise, cutting them off from contact with nature, and robbing them of a chance to form bonds of community.

In Brighton Park, just south of the industrial corridor along the Stevenson Expressway, 45,368 people share just 10.6 acres of open space. By comparison, northwest suburban Buffalo Grove, population 41,496, has more than 400 acres of parks, playgrounds, sports fields, bicycle trails and picnic areas.

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Because of the lack of room, she said, boys put basketball hoops in the street and play there. Or kids turn to other things, not all of them positive.

“Sometimes they will engage in risky sex practices because they don’t have anything to do,” Samuels said. “Sometimes they dabble in drugs. Sometimes they’ll dabble into the gangs. Sometimes they’ll dabble into crime.” Or the kids stay at home “and do nothing. They watch TV and they eat Oreos and that’s it.”

(via the Chicago Tribune)