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"In the years following the wildly popular&amp;nbsp;1893 Chicago World\u2019s Fair,&amp;nbsp;planner and architect&amp;nbsp;Daniel Burnham had a vision to build a manmade island along Chicago\u2019s lakefront. Part of his grand \u201CPlan of Chicago,\u201D Northerly Island was to be a thriving park, a lush, green oasis to balance his only partially realized scheme to overhaul the city with gridded streets and regional highways. The 91-acre stretch, connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, was completed in 1925, but 10 years later, the synthetic parkscape become something its maker had never intended: an airport. Now, Burnham\u2019s idyllic vision will return to Northerly Island, as the first phase of the Northerly Island Framework Plan, a proposal to redevelop the abandoned airplane landing strip into an ecologically diverse natural habitat, has been approved.In 2010, MacArthur Genius Grant winner Jeanne Gang and her firm Studio Gang Architects teamed up with local landscape architecture firm JJR to develop the Framework Plan, which combines heavily researched ecological programs \u2014 including new reefs and protected lagoons and savannahs \u2014 with more familiar features of the 21st&amp;nbsp;century urban park, such as an amphitheatre. The entire scheme, which functions more like a flexible road map than an exacting blueprint, anticipates 20 to 25 years of fundraising, planning, and construction.The first phase, soon to be initiated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Chicago Park District, focuses on transforming the flat former airplane runway into a variegated topography containing six different ecosystems. Details include a 4.1-acre pond fenced in to protect its inhabitants from invasive species like Asian carp (an issue Gang tackles in her latest book \u201CReverse Effect.\u201D) Surrounding the pond will be elevated dry-mesic and wet prairies, intended to attract mice, snakes, and small birds. Environmentalists hope that the habitat will provide new nesting areas for over 300 species of birds, luring the animals away from the mainland where they frequently crash into the city\u2019s high-rises.\u201CTo me it\u2019s like a picture of what the city was like before the city was built,\u201D said Jeanne Gang about the first phase in the Chicago Tribune, daring to imagine a pre-Burnham landscape. But as in Burnham\u2019s original vision for Northerly Island, the snapshot of a more primitive past is intended to lure city dwellers as well as natural wildlife and become what Gang calls \u201Ca Millennium Park of nature.\u201D Speculative plans for underwater observation cameras, an imported sunken ship, and a designated area for swimming, canoeing, and kayaking point to the island\u2019s true nature, as an extension of a changing city.[content:advertisement-center]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/819998/a-millennium-park-of-nature-architect-jeanne-gangs-vision-for>