Press Room

Museum Exhibits, TV, Radio, Video

• Free Spirit Media, “Prairie Crossing at Twenty: From Pioneering Design to Vibrant Community” (2015)
• Brushwood Center Award for Leadership in Nature, “Victoria & George Ranney“ (2015)
• Growing a Greener World PBS Series, appearing on national public television – “Greening of Suburbia” with Joe Lamp’l (2014)
• Vital Lands Illinois, “Prairie Crossing” (2011)
• Go Green Illinois, “Prairie Crossing” (2010)
• National Building Museum (Washington D.C.) – award-winning “Green Community” exhibition (2008-2009)
• WGN News at Nine – “Illinois community exemplifies better way of life” (September 14, 2009)
• Animal Planet Backyard Habitat – “Green Herons & Muskrats”, season 2, episode 15 featuring the Halvorsen family (2006)
• Animal Planet Backyard Habitat – “Great Spangled Frittilaries, Leopard Frogs & Voles”, season 2, episode 16 featuring the Coonan family (2006)
• Millennium Park (Chicago) – Revealing Chicago: An Aerial Portrait exhibition by Terry Evans (Jun. 10 – Oct. 10, 2005)
• CNN – “Prairie Crossing” – scroll down to find Prairie Crossing segment in the transcript (2002)
• National Public Radio
• WTTW Public Television

National Media

• Stormwater – “Developers Go Green for Suburban Stormwater Management” by Margaret Buranen
• New York Times – “Farm-to-Table Living Takes Root” by Kate Murphy
• Shareable – “12 Agrihoods Taking Farm-to-Table Living Mainstream” by Beth Buczynski
• Wall Street Journal – “An Apple Grows in Suburbia: The Hot Trend in the Suburbs is to Mix Homes and Agriculture” by Stephanie Simon
• Center for Humans & Nature – “Civic Agriculture in Chicago” by Gavin Van Horn
• Grist – “Prairie Crossing in Illinois: The ‘Urban’ Farm of the Future?” by Breaking Through Concrete team
• Grist – “Farming the Burbs” by Ariana Reguzzoni
• Mother Earth Living – “America’s Top 10 Best Green-Built Neighborhoods” by Olivia Blanco Mullins and Stephanie Nelson
• Rodale Institute – “A Different Kind of Community-Supported Farm” by Laura Sayre
• Wall Street Journal – “For Sale: Condo with Chicken Coop” by Sara Schaefer Muñoz
• New York Times – “Developing an Illinois Suburb with Principles” by David W. Dunlap
• Landscape Architecture – “Prairie flower: an ecologically conscious housing development begins to mature west of Chicago” by Rene C. Kane
• The New York Times
• The Wall Street Journal
• The National Geographic
• Country Living
• Midwest Living
• Better Homes and Garden’s Perennials

Regional Media

• Edible Chicago – “Prairie Crossing, at a Junction: Saving Farmland and Building Community” by Amelia Levin
• Chicago Tribune – “Fish get fighting chance: sanctuary’s aim is to help threatened species” by Casey Bukrow
• University of Chicago Magazine – “Prairie Lights” by Lydialyle Gibson
• Chicago Tribune – “Serene and Clean” by Genevieve Buck
• The Chicago Tribune
• Crain’s Chicago Business
• The Daily Herald

Books, Case Studies, Dissertations

• Prairie Crossing: Creating An American Conservation Community, John Scott Watson (2016)
• The Sustainability Handbook: The Complete Management Guide to Achieving Social, Economic, and Environmental Responsibility, William Blackburn (revised 2015, original 2007)
• Unsprawl: Remixing Spaces as Places, Simmons B. Buntin with Ken Pirie (revised 2013, original 2001)
• Rosemount and UMore: Sustainable Development: Case Studies and Lessons Learned (2012)
• Designing Healthy Communities, Richard J. Jackson with Stacy Sinclair (2012)
• Urban Food Revolution: Changing the Way We Feed Cities, Peter Ladner (2011)
• A Public Market for the Community of Prairie Crossing: At the Intersection of Local Agriculture and Sustainable Architecture (dissertation), Keith Trotman Kirley (2011).
• Building Communities with Farms, Liberty Prairie Foundation (2010)
• Nature’s Second Chance: Restoring the Ecology of Stone Prairie Farm, Steven Apfelbaum (2010)
• Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America, Joel Sternfeld (2006)
• Revealing Chicago: An Aerial Portrait, Terry Evans (2005)
• Utopia for Sale: Riverside, Park Forest, and Prairie Crossing and the Creation of an Idyllic American Suburbia (dissertation), Patrick J. Leonard (2000).
• The Process of Business/Environmental Collaborations: Partnering for Sustainability, Alissa J. Stern with Tim Hicks (2000)
• Growing Greener: Putting Conservation into Local Plans and Ordinances, Randall Arendt (1999)
• The Ecology of Place: Planning for Environment, Economy, and Community, Timothy Beatley and Kristy Manning (1997)
• Applied Ecological Services – Stormwater Treatment Train™  project summary and case study, hydrograph comparison
• U.S. Department of Energy – Prairie Crossing Homes case study and analysis
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Greenacres: Landscaping with Native Plants

Quotes

Some of the articles featuring Prairie Crossing are no longer available online. Here are a selection of quotes from these articles:

• “‘The egrets come right up there,’ Carol Sonnenschein says, gesturing toward the prairie grasses and sedges that roll into the lake a few feet from her porch. Off to the right, she points to where red-winged blackbirds blanketed a marsh in summer. Geese use the wetlands as a flyaway, she notes proudly, and at night coyotes can be heard baying at the moon…In Prairie Crossing, as the community is known, the environment is king.” New Communities Make It Easy Being Green, Stefan Fatsis, Wall Street Journal, November 10, 1995

• “This experiment in conservation is also an experiment in transportation. That’s because of Prairie Crossing’s unique location, with two commuter railroads crossing just outside of the property. Homes are just a short walk or bike ride from the existing Metra station and a new one that is planned…Chicago’s first suburbs grew up in the 19th Century around rail stops. Now Prairie Crossing is trying to copy that successful pattern of the past.” Experiment on the Prairie: Transportation and conservation separate this development from rest of suburbia, John Handley, Chicago Tribune, September 29, 2002

• “Prairie Crossing…may offer the Midwest’s first contemporary alternative to subdivision planning…Prairie Crossing is…’a stepping-stone model,’ an innovative experiment that bears repeating. Prairie Crossing may indeed provide a national and regional model urban development shaping the commissions of Midwestern planners and designers for years to come.” Riverside Revisited?, Frank Edgerton Martin, Landscape Architecture, August 1995

• “In central Lake County, the development looks like a well edited version of the Midwest, knitting together the best of our small towns, suburbs, farms and open lands all together on some 670 acres. Big suburban houses look out onto restored prairies and wetlands. Kids from those houses can wander into a 150-acre organic farm to pick up some produce for the family. Their parents can walk to the Metra station along old farm hedgerows, listening to the resident birds chatter. The subdivision is at the western end of the 2,500-acre Liberty Prairie Reserve, a quilt of public land and various privately owned conservancy parcels that form a huge swath of preserved semirural land that stretches east to the Des Plaines river… Prairie Crossing’s developers want to demonstrate that open space and land conservation can become selling points.” To Serve and Protect, Dennis Rodkin, Chicago Tribune Magazine, May 23, 1999

• Homeowner Chuck Birch: ‘I don’t look at Prairie Crossing as anything new…It’s a return to creating a community network of support that was part of American culture before World War II.’ At Home in Prairie Crossing, Steve Slack, Midwest Living, April 1998

• “Prairie Crossing unquestionably shows that people and nature can live together… ‘What’s it like living at Prairie Crossing? You really feel like you’re part of a rural community because everyone is so close together,’ homeowner Mike Sands says. ‘There are lots of small park areas where kids can play, so not everyone feels they need to have a backyard. A trail system has separate pedestrian and car circulation systems. And the landscaping just enhances it all, because you constantly have a sense of being outside in a natural area that doesn’t feel managed, even though it is.'” Prairie Crossing Home: Native landscaping is becoming the norm in one Illinois Subdivision, Camille Lefevre, Better Homes and Garden’s Perennials, Summer 2001

Media Inquiries

For media inquiries, contact Nathan(at)libertyprairie.org.