Climate Ready Oak Park Plan

The Oak Park community is committed to doing their part to overcome climate change and its effect on our environment, social fabric, and economy. In 2021, along with GRAEF and ERG, they began looking at ways to incorporate triple bottom line approaches into the Village’s first-ever Climate Action Plan. Using ERG’s greenhouse gas inventory and forecasting, GRAEF provided the Village with detailed actions to achieve neutral emissions by 2050 while bridging gaps in social equity through “Climate Ready Oak Park."

Understanding that climate inequity and social inequity are inextricably linked, the Village and GRAEF staff created a custom community engagement process to learn from diverse stakeholders their most pressing social and environmental issues. Meetings were flexibly designed to accommodate varying preferences for in-person or virtual conversations amidst changing pandemic activity. Community input, gathered through Affinity Group meetings, Human Centered Design sessions, community-wide events like WinterFest, and interactive mapping, underpin the implementation plan.

GRAEF also developed a DIY Meeting Kit for individual community members to host conversations with friends and family about climate issues and share feedback with the Village. The “Climate Ready Oak Park” Plan was officially published and adopted in 2022 in ArcGIS StoryMaps so that plan actions are easily reachable through an interactive platform on the Village’s website. This innovative delivery of climate actions allows Village staff to transparently maintain and update the Climate Action Plan while sharing real-time progress with the community.