After more than a year of undergoing renovations—with some hiccups along the way—a new and improved Love Park will return with a soft opening in November, just in time to host the Christmas Village once again. The redesign by Hargreaves Associates and KieranTimberlake of the iconic park in the heart of Philly will re-debut with more green space, as well as its renovated midcentury modern Fairmount Park Welcome Center and the spruced up LOVE Sculpture by Robert Indiana. (The aerial photo shows the park’s current status as of early November 2017.)

Mt. Airy’s Lovett Library will re-open late this fall after more than a year of renovations. An adjacent green space called Lovett Library Park will also re-open, serving as a community space with programming and outdoor reading space.

The opening of the Schuylkill River Trail’s South to Christian segment will extend the riverfront path by another 1,400 feet when it opens this December or early spring. In addition to lengthening the popular Schuylkill River Trail, folks will have direct access to the new CHOP research tower’s public plaza via a bridge.

When it opens later this year, the June 5th Memorial Park will serve as a memorial to the 2013 collapse of a building at 2138 Market that injured many and killed six people. The park was designed pro bono by a local team of designers to serve as a healing, contemplative public park that will be preserved from any commercial development in the future.

After breaking ground last fall, the first phase of the Rail Park is expected to finish up construction in early 2018. The $10.3 million project consists of a quarter-mile stretch of the proposed three-mile Rail Park.

The elevated park along an abandoned rail line has been compared to the likes of New York’s High Line and will ultimately connect multiple neighborhoods throughout Philly.

Residents of Queen Village have a long-running goal to improve all of Bainbridge Green, a stretch of median and some green space that runs in the middle of Bainbridge Avenue from 5th to 3rd streets. Since 2013, they have had plans to add 20,000 square feet of green space while eliminating 10 percent of parking. Fundraising is still underway, but this past summer a pop-up park at 5th Street Plaza set up shop, adding some more color and seating to the strip.

After officially breaking ground last December, actual construction work began in June at the future Trolley Portal Gardens site at the 40th Street Trolley Station in University City. The project involves transforming the concrete-heavy trolley station into a more welcoming public space with a restaurant. The public space, designed by Andropogon Associates, will be softened with more generous landscaping and vegetation. It’s expected to open in spring of 2018.

In late October, the city kicked off a $9 million, three-phase renovation of the Rivera Recreation Center and Mann Older Adult Center in Fairhill. The first phase alone, scheduled to reopen in spring 2018, will bring new ADA-approved playgrounds and a sprayground, an updated outdoor basketball court, outdoor fitness equipment, and a community garden for seniors.

After its success of turning the blighted Catharine Park into a community gathering space, Graduate Hospital residents have now set their sights on a vacant lot at 17th and Carpenter streets. The plan is to turn it into a public park with a sprayground, lighting, benches, and a dog-friendly area.

Neighbors have already laid the groundwork by clearing a series of vacant lots, and $175,000 has been raised from a state grant and fundraising. The goal is to break ground by the end of the year and have a spring opening.

One of the five projects part of Civic Commons Philadelphia initiative, the Discovery Center project has been many years in the making. Led by the Philadelphia Outward Bound and Audubon Pennsylvania, the 14,000-square-foot building’s goal is to provide the neighborhood and city with an environmental education center and raise awareness of the wild life and environment surrounding the long-forgotten East Park Reservoir, which will also re-open to the public. After breaking ground in September, it is expected to open next year in fall 2018.

The creation of a 1.3-acre elliptical-shaped public park at One Drexel Plaza will be the first of many public spaces planned for Drexel and Brandywine Realty Trust’s ambitious Schuylkill Yards project. The park will serve as the centerpiece within the 14-acre innovation hub.

After breaking ground this month on the park, Drexel Square, with its 30 soaring Dawn Redwood trees, is expected to open in fall 2018.

Over the past few years, Norris Square residents have rallied together to turn what was once a crime-ridden spot back into a playground and community gathering space. Now, with the help of Urban Roots and Make the World Better, the Waterloo Playground and Recreation Center is on track to undergo a major revitalization. The project will bring more playground equipment like climbing nets, stormwater management, and meadows to the site. The goal is to break ground by the end of this year.

An ambitious plan to cap four acres of I-95 and create an 8-acre park at Penn’s Landing is underway, now that all $225 million has been committed to the project. In addition to the park, construction will include a two-mile on-road section of the Delaware River Trail from Spring Garden Street to Washington Avenue, adding another connection to the planned 750 miles of Circuit Trails throughout the greater Philly region.

Preliminary demo work has already started, and the design process, including permits and construction documents, is expected to wrap up by the end of 2019. Construction is expected to finish by 2021.

Plans to build an 8.2-acre park in Bridesburg are in the works, spearheaded by the Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Department and the Delaware River City Corporation. Final renderings were revealed in December 2015, with plans for a great lawn, a stage, an upper and lower meadow, a rain garden, a boardwalk, an event plaza, picnic pavilions, and a river overlook area. Construction is estimated to take 1 to 2 years.

The North Broad Renaissance has plans to turn this litter-strewn intersection at North Broad and Lehigh into a community green space. It has spent the past few months cleaning the green patch next to the Horace Trumbauer-designed North Broad Street station. With the help of North Philly grassroots organization Urban Creators, it plans to bring programming to the corner—think movie screenings and community events. Executive director Shalimar Thomas says the group is working with the property’s owners on a partnership.

Part of the Master Plan for Central Delaware is the redesign of Festival Pier at Spring Garden Street. In 2015, The Delaware Waterfront Corporation picked Jefferson Apartment Group and Haverford Properties to develop the 11-acre site to include 550 residential units and 30,000 square feet of retail. In addition, landscape architecture firm OLIN’s plans call for a “generous public space oriented around the extension of the Spring Garden Street corridor.”

This $1 billion mixed-use project in University City will eventually be home to multiple towers and two parks: First, a yet-to-be-named park outside of the 14-story 3675 Market Street, which is being envisioned as a connecting link between Penn and Drexel to the residential neighborhoods like Powelton Village.

The other park, dubbed uCity Square and designed by OLIN, will be located on the former site of University City High School and is expected to be the same size as the plaza at Comcast Tower. In the meantime, University City District has designed a pop-up meadow at the construction site.

At 55 acres, Independence National Historical Park has a lot of ground to cover and is consistently working to keep its grounds and structures in tip-top shape. But there are big plans in the works for one of its many smaller gardens, Benjamin Rush Garden at 3rd and Walnut.

NPS and Friends of Independence National Historical Park want to install the Bicentennial Bell, which is five times bigger than the Liberty Bell, in this garden and redesign the space to make it more educational and ADA-friendly. The Bicentennial Bell Project is still in the fundraising stages.

It will take 35 years to implement the full $6.3 billion 30th Street Station District Plan. But when all is said and done, 40 acres of new green space will be added to the neighborhood, from parks to pedestrian-only bridges across the Schuylkill River.

Most recently, Amtrak hosted an open house for its first planned public space Station Plaza, which will wrap around the south- and east-facing sides of 30th Street Station.