Open space is an integral part of any city to provide people with a connection to nature and local wildlife with a healthy home. Agency is collaborating with the City of Burlington, VT to ensure that all Burlingtonians have fair access to high-quality and diverse open spaces and that ecologically important areas are preserved for the thriving, regionally-significant wildlife population — especially amidst a changing climate and growing population.
Burlington benefits from an abundance of open space totaling almost half of its geographic area. It includes not just parks and natural areas, but also working lands, privately-owned land, and other green spaces. These are interwoven into the fabric of the city, from edge to edge, river to lake. Burlingtonians have a long legacy of caring for these places, first codifying their care with the 2000 Open Space Protection Plan. After two amendments, the City is updating it again in 2025.
This updated Plan will record the city’s open spaces, set new goals, and create a clear roadmap for future improvements. It will build on and expand the previous plans by:
- Connecting it with other city plans, like the Urban Forestry Plan.
- Working across City departments to make sure the Plan is both visionary and feasible.
- Partnering with private owners to expand stewardship to more than City-owned land.
- Finding more ways to not just conserve open space but expand it as well.
- Incorporating the community’s vision for their future of open space.
Agency, leading the project with open space and climate resilience planning, is working closely with Chapman EcoLandscape, who is focusing on ecological design and planning. The City has also contracted the University of Vermont’s Spatial Analysis Laboratory for geospatial land cover analysis to understand the landscape as it exists today and what it could look like. As this Plan focuses not just on enjoyable open space but also on the overall health of the urban ecosystem, these three components of planning, ecology, and data are crucial to bring together in a Plan that is uniquely Burlington. The beautiful art included in these materials was created by Christine Tyler Hill, an artist, Burlington resident, and local champion of open space.
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