A thriving, sustainable, and climate-resilient 40-acre urban park is envisioned to unite natural systems and communities to fight and mitigate climate change. The mission is to advocate for, design, and implement productive systems that will transform the Kennedy Expressway between Van Buren Street and Wayman Street with a new cap supporting self-sufficient and sustainable park. The park is organized around four major strategies: nursery production, water harvesting, increasing biodiversity, and community engagement.

Learn, Grow, Play follows a planting succession model where it will change over time and potentially hold different plants and plant combinations which will depend on the most suitable selection for each cycle and vary based on the severity of climate change and environmental needs. In that sense, a cycle may range from thirty to fifty years. Having plant nurseries and production sites as part of the park decreases the carbon footprint of relocating trees and other vegetation. Production sites and nurseries vary in their levels of accessibility to the public. Visitors to the park get a sense of the cycle in which the park is in, when the plants are relocated to the publicly accessible part of the urban park and users are exposed to them. The form and function of the park takes inspiration from nursery production facilities and Chicago’s existing urban grid system. This is contrasted with a curvilinear elevated pathway system. From this, the public can also overlook at the private plant nurseries like an audience in a movie theater.