Obama defends his presidential library from criticism it ‘gentrifies’ Chicago’s South Side

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Former president Barack Obama defended the decision to choose the Jackson Park neighbourhood of Chicago as a site for his legacy project Obama Presidential Centre ahead of the groundbreaking scheduled for Tuesday. The legal challenge came even as a four-year federal review concluded in February that the new Obama Centre would pose “no significant impact to the human environment”. The federal review, however, found that the centre would diminish Jackson Park’s “overall integrity by altering historic, internal spatial divisions that were designed as a single entity”. "When it came time to plan the Obama Presidential Centre, we wanted to give something back to the place that gave us so much," Michelle Obama said in a video announcement.