Changing the Physical and Social Environment: Improving Parks and Other Community Facilities
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WHAT DO WE MEAN BY IMPROVING PARKS AND OTHER COMMUNITY FACILITIES?
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WHY IMPROVE PARKS AND OTHER COMMUNITY FACILITIES?
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WHEN SHOULD YOU TRY TO IMPROVE PARKS AND OTHER COMMUNITY FACILITIES?
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WHO SHOULD BE INVOLVED IN IMPROVING PARKS AND OTHER COMMUNITY FACILITIES?
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HOW DO YOU IMPROVE PARKS AND OTHER COMMUNITY FACILITIES?
I grew up in a working class neighborhood in Boston, on a busy street of apartment houses. In back of that block, however, was a city park of about 15 acres, where my friends and I spent most of our time, starting at about age six or seven. It had a name, but it was never known as anything but “the Park.” There were a baseball diamond, cracked asphalt tennis and basketball courts, and skating in the winter (the city flooded the ball field), but we spent much of our time in the rest of the park, particularly in the heavily wooded area just in back of our houses.
To us, the park, in the midst of one of the city’s most densely populated neighborhoods, was the Wild West, the Sahara Desert, the Himalayas. It was hilly, with chunks of granite bedrock poking through here and there, all of which we named, as generations of children before us had undoubtedly done. The three-meter-high rocks became thousand-foot cliffs that we scaled in order to storm the forts on top, or to plant our mountaineers' flags. We rolled down the hills in summer, and sledded on them when there was snow.
Several blocks away was a commercial district where our parents did most of their shopping. For me, however, its main attraction was the local branch of the Boston Public Library. By the time I started school, I already had a library card, and the library was my second home.
When I was a child, in that prehistoric era before computers, a good part of my life revolved around these two community facilities. They exercised my imagination and my body – I regularly walked the half mile or so home from the library with as many books as my arms would hold – and fueled a love for the outdoors and an enthusiasm for literature and learning, both of which I’ve carried with me all my life.
This section is about the importance of parks and other community facilities in the lives of individuals, families, neighborhoods, and communities. Although they are often considered frills when budgets are tight, they can be just as important as fire and police services to the quality of life in a community. We’ll discuss what characteristics make for good parks and community facilities, and how you can create or restore them in your community.
MacKenzie lives in the English Avenue neighborhood of Atlanta. Sixty percent of the homes there have been abandoned, but the youth have not given up on their community. MacKenzie has been involved in rebuilding the parks in English Avenue and in the Vine Street neighborhood. Video courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY IMPROVING PARKS AND OTHER COMMUNITY FACILITIES?
Community facilities enhance the lives of residents in numerous ways. Parks provide green space and room to move for people in crowded city neighborhoods. Libraries, museums, community centers, and performance spaces open doors to knowledge and ideas, culture, and enjoyment. Medical facilities encourage and safeguard health, and public transportation offers mobility and access to other areas. Without these and other community facilities, life could be colorless and difficult, especially for those who can’t afford to travel or to pay high prices for services.
Most communities, even small rural ones, have at least one public park and some other community facilities – a library, a hospital or clinic, a small museum or historic site. Improving those facilities can mean different things for different communities. For some, the issue may be that adequate parks or facilities simply don’t exist, and need to be created. For others, existing facilities may be old, and speak only to the needs of a community that has long since changed. Still others might find themselves with community facilities that are adequate in some ways, but that have become rundown or dangerous, and need to be revitalized. A less obvious situation is one in which community facilities are in good shape and seem to be adequate, but aren’t being used.
What all these circumstances have in common is that improvement will take some resources and require some work. That, of course, raises the questions of where those resources will come from, and who will do the work. It also raises questions of how much responsibility the community as a whole will take, who will plan the building of new facilities or the restoration or renovation of existing ones, and how to make sure that whatever is created or restored actually meets the needs and desires of the community.
Improving community facilities, then, comes down to determining what the community needs and wants, and working – usually over the long term – to provide those facilities that will enhance the quality of life – socially, intellectually, culturally, economically, politically, and psychologically – for everyone.
Community facilities come in a variety of forms, of which parks are only one. In general, a community facility is a physical feature provided – either by the municipality as a public service, or by a private entity – in the community for the benefit of community members. Depending on the source, the use of the facility may be free, or may involve a charge for users.
PARKS
Parks can range in size from a few hundred square feet – a bench, some flowers, and a 20 by 20 plot of grass on a busy corner – to millions of acres in the Alaskan wilderness. They can serve many purposes as well, often at the same time. They are the lungs of a city, offering green space and fresh air to people who otherwise might seldom experience anything but concrete and exhaust fumes. They can protect open land, extraordinary landscapes, and historic sites, while also functioning as open-air classrooms and laboratories for school children and others. Some common types:
- Urban parks. Urban parks can provide formal plantings, grassy lawns, benches, playgrounds, picnic areas, and/or sports fields (as in Central Park in New York or Golden Gate Park in San Francisco) or an experience of the landscape much as it was before the city existed (as in Forest Park in Portland, Oregon). Parks in large cities often have other community facilities located within them or on their margins: Forest Park in St. Louis, for instance, is home to a zoo; the city’s art, science, and history museums; a public golf course; and a theater, among other attractions. They can vary in size from pocket parks tucked into courtyards or the angles of buildings to the 4,100 connected acres of the main property of Fairmount Park in Philadelphia.
- Small-town parks. Many small towns include a central park area – often, in the Northeast, the former town common – with benches, perhaps a bandstand, and a flagpole: a simple open space for town celebrations and gatherings that may include athletic fields as well.
- County or regional parks. Depending on the setting, these may be similar to urban parks, or may be more like state parks (see below) with outdoor activities and miles of roadless land. They may contain particular attractions – a view, a beach, a gorge – or simply feature a pleasant landscape with little or no recent human intervention.
- State parks. Most state parks highlight the natural environment. They may stress nature in and of itself – as a wilderness area, for instance, or because of an outstanding feature, such as a waterfall – or for its recreational value, with the emphasis on a beach, cross-country ski trail, or campground. Some are historical parks as well.
Historical parks exist to commemorate or dramatize a historic event, place, person, or period. Sites of historical parks may be urban or rural; may be tied to specific historic events (battlefields, for example) or figures (buildings where historic figures were born, lived, or worked); may be meant to demonstrate and illustrate the history of a particular place or time (parks in New England mill towns dedicated to industrial history); may take advantage of the aesthetic, architectural, and educational value of a well-preserved or restored historic building; or may feature buildings or other sites that are historic in themselves simply because of their age and quality, and the history they’ve seen. These parks may also be dedicated to the history or heritage of a particular group – Italian immigrants, Native Americans – that occupied the community in the past or live there today. Historical parks may be local, state or national, or may be administered by private non-profit organizations, foundations, or trusts, depending upon who owns and has developed the historic site.
- National parks and national monuments. National parks are usually large – in the thousands, or even millions of acres – and exist to protect natural areas of significance from development, and to preserve them permanently as wilderness and/or for the enjoyment of the public. National monuments are generally (but not always) smaller than national parks and may serve the same purpose, or they may protect historic or cultural sites.
It may seem that national or state parks don’t belong in a section about community facilities. In fact, these parks may be community facilities for those who live near or in them, or the facility itself creates a community all its own (many large national or state parks include towns on or within their borders.) Acadia National Park in Maine, for example, has an active “Friends of Acadia” group that provides volunteers to perform various tasks within the park (from maintaining trails to guiding nature walks), and raises money to supplement the public park budget. National and state parks, notoriously underfunded, are often more at risk in some ways than local parks. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, for instance, is within a day’s drive of 60% of the population of the United States, and overuse (it hosts nine million visitors a year) is a serious threat to its ecology.
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Other community facilities. While most parks are publicly funded, other facilities may not be. Some, such as hospitals, might be owned either publicly or privately. Others are almost always public, or almost always private.
In the case of private – or even some public – facilities, it can be difficult to decide when cost prevents something from being considered a community facility. The term “community facility” implies a community asset that’s available to all, or most, residents. When the cost of using such an asset makes it unavailable to a large portion of the population, is it still a community facility?
The Public Theater in New York offers free productions in Central Park in the summer, with tickets on a first-come, first-served basis. It’s available to anyone, regardless of income, who’s willing to wait in line at the appropriate time. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, the American Repertory Theater’s (ART) least expensive tickets are nearly $40.00, putting them out of reach for most low-income residents (and many middle-income residents as well). The Public Theater is clearly a community facility: should the ART be considered one as well?
For the purposes of this section, we’ll consider community facilities those that provide services at no or low cost, so that they can be used by virtually everyone in the community.
Some examples of community facilities may include:
- Libraries - in addition to public libraries, many college and university libraries are open for public use (although usually not for borrowing privileges)
- Community centers - these may be publicly funded, or supported by a private organization, such as the YMCA
- Theaters, both stage and cinema
- Museums
- Auditoriums and concert venues
- Hospitals and other health providers, both public and private
- Educational facilities (schools, colleges, etc.)
- Churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious entities
- Local, state, and federal government offices meant to serve the public
- Public and other sports and recreation facilities - these might include both facilities for the use of the general public – ball fields, basketball and tennis courts, etc. – and stadiums for the staging of school and professional contests that the public can watch
- Walking and biking trails. Your community may already have biking or walking trails by public parks. If not, there are organizations like Rails to Trails, which focuses on creating a nationwide network of trails from former rail lines in order to build healthier community spaces for people to enjoy.
- Recycling facilities
- Community gardens
- Community art centers
- Child care facilities
- Playgrounds
- Fountains and city squares
- Public lakes, swimming pools, canals, rivers, and waterfalls
- Boardwalks, beaches, boat houses, and other waterfront attractions
- Transportation - considerations here might cover the extent of service, both in area (Are all parts of the community served?) and in time (Do subways run all night? Are there frequent buses?); the quality of service (comfort, cleanliness, courtesy, on-time percentage); safety and security of vehicles, stations, and waiting areas; cost; accessibility; and ease of use.
More.
Access Checklist, Examples & PowerPoint.