Englewood Agro-Eco District Village Plaza Plan

A foundational, community-led plan to develop the Englewood Village Plaza, a vacant lot that remained dormant for over three decades, into a new addition to the growing public spaces across the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. The project is lead by Grow Greater Englewood and serves as the future entry point for the 1.75-mile Englewood Nature Trail, which will be the focal point of the nation’s first Agro-Eco District.

The Englewood Village Plaza is a transformative endeavor rooting justice through collective landscape strategies into Chicago’s South Side. Local leaders from Grow Greater Englewood partnered with the Chicago Planning Department, the Master in Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at Illinois Institute of Technology, and Botanical City to bring the plan and vision to fruition. The work at this space is the intentional design guided by community voices to heal and empower the land and the people. The Englewood Village Plaza is a growing urban landscape where agriculture is culture, and the reconnection with the land contributes to healing long endured inequities in Englewood, one of Chicago’s most emblematic Black neighborhoods.