10 Principles for Enhancing Equitable Access to Parks
JLP+D President James Lima is honored to have chaired the virtual workshop last fall that helped inform a new report by Urban Land Institute Global's Building Healthy Places program. The report distills lessons from fourteen cities on how leaders across sectors can promote equitable access to parks and work toward healthier communities. Strategies include championing parks as essential, empowering communities as co-creators, and investing in existing assets so that high-quality, welcoming parks are available for all.
Read the full report on the ULI website.
Read James' letter in the Report below.
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only demonstrated that parks are a vital resource for a community’s health but also helped expose inequities in park access. Over the past few years, ULI has been providing technical assistance through Advisory Services panels and national study visits to help cities across the United States increase access to high-quality parks and open spaces, especially in underserved communities. These technical assistance activities addressed longstanding inequities in communities, and now it is more important than ever to learn from how these cities are addressing obstacles to equitable park access.
During a September 2020 ULI workshop, panel participants from across the country convened virtually to distill lessons from these technical assistance activities. Over the course of two days, our conversations, debates, and insights culminated in 10 principles for enhancing equitable access to parks. These principles provide guidance for both the public and private sectors on what they should be considering as they work toward ensuring all people have safe and easy access to a high-quality park. However, the principles do not prescribe solutions, and how the principles play out in each community will vary.
The issues that the principles in this report respond to are urgent, but they are not new. Parks have a vital role to play in mitigating the health, social, and economic impacts of chronic and infectious disease, but research demonstrates that the impacts are inequitably distributed among communities.
During summer 2020, only a few months before the workshop, the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis sparked a global uprising for racial justice. This is one of many instances of structural racism and its consequences for Black people in public space throughout U.S. history. Although the workshop was already designed to focus on equity, this context encouraged us to elevate racial equity as a particular focus. Racism has been embedded in the built environment through redlining and other policies and continues to affect access to and use of parks by Black people and other people of color.
Overcoming decades of disinvestment, violence, and racist policies—both in and out of parks systems—will take commitment and resources at all levels. Addressing inequities related to race, ability, age, income, ethnicity, and more will require long-term dedication to understanding community needs and making parks places that all people can enjoy. To make progress, we must urgently learn from cities and champions for equitable park access across the United States and work toward equity and access in all park systems.
Providing equitable access to parks goes beyond addressing physical barriers. It means looking at how to redirect investments to areas where they are most needed; how to connect economic, social, and cultural assets to one other; how to get agencies to work more holistically and in more coordinated ways; and how to foster community-centered infrastructure to guide the stewardship of parks and open spaces.
Parks have always played a critical role in communities. Now, that is clearer than ever—but so are the inequities in park access. Just as the workshop provided a space for thoughtful conversation on these difficult and entrenched issues, I expect that this report will provide a starting point for further discussion on park access and how to begin making these systems more equitable.
