More Inclusive Park Planning

http://www.citylab.com

Man plays with small boy across the bayou from a chemical plant
Houston, Texas
AP Photo/Pat Sullivan
citylab.com

Hello Everyone:

Parks are wonderful amenity for any neighborhood.  They provide a place for recreation and rest, raise the property values of a community, and are great place to meet your neighbors.  Yours truly takes ample advantage of the nearby park-using the jogging path and exercise area.  Park do more than just provide a place to have a picnic or celebrate a birthday, they also reveal what a community needs and, or wants.  In his CityLab article, "Why Race Matters in Planning Public Parks," Brentin Mock reports on a major renovation of a large Houston-area park that reveals the differences in what Caucasian, African-American, and Latino residents actually want and, or need.

The City of Houston, Texas has initiated a $220 million parks projects, named Bayou Greenways 2020, "...a 150-mile network of continuous hiking trails, biking paths, and green space that will run throughout the city."  The project is completed in 2020, it will fulfill the plans made by urban planner Arthur Comey in 1912 to link the city's parks with the bayous etched into the Houston landscape.  Residents approved the $166 million bond project by a 2012 ballot referendum to fund the Bayou Greenways 2020 project, and for the rehabilitation of the neat-50,000 acres of park space.  "The goal is to connect the areas's bayou's and parks to neighborhoods spanning the region," writes Mr. Mock.

Rendering of the Bayou Greenway 2020 project
Houston, Texas
usa.streetsblog.org

Even though connectivity is the overarching priority for this extensive parks rehabilitation, not everyone in Houston is enthusiastic about it.  Specifically, connectivity is the sole priority for the city's Caucasian and affluent residents.  In 2014, the city parks and recreation conducted it Master Plan Parks Survey in 2014 (http://www.houstontx.gov), the majority of the participants replied "...that they wanted their neighborhoods and parks linked to biking and walking paths."  However, Mr. Mock points out, "The problem with that survey is that about two-thirds of the respondents were white while with households incomes over $75,000.  This is clearly not a good starting point for Houston, one of themes racially diverse (heavily segregated) cities in country.

Gareth Potts on Twitter
twitter.com

A group for researchers at Rice University set out to correct this assumption.  They conducted another study, with approval from the parks and recreation department (and their funding), focused on African-American and Latino neighborhoods.  The goal of the study is discovering what these communities wanted from the new park upgrades.  No surprise, researchers found that the priorities in the African-American and Latino communities differed from the Caucasian communities.  The report, More Inclusive Parks Planning: Park Quality and Preferences for Park Access and Amenities (online.liebertpub.com) concluded:

Neighborhood connectivity to parks was not a salient issue among park users in these neighborhoods, although this had been a primary finding from the 2014 Master Plan Survey and a favored option of 31 percent of respondents in our closed ended questions.  Instead, they envision a diverse set of new or improved amenities-most prominently, restrooms and water fountains, and an array of recreational infrastructure.... (Ibid)

As a park user in more affluent neighborhood, yours truly can attest to a similar need for improvement as well.

"Responses to Open-Ended Questions About Parks Improvement
citylab.com

More to the point, connectivity was last on the list of priorities for African-American and Latino Houstonians.  What are their priorities for their parks?  Brentin Mock writes, "Not only clean, functioning public bathrooms, but also better lighting to make parks safer at night and better playground equipment that's prone to breaking down."  Blogger would like the same thing for her park.  The authors identified the priority gap between the survey as a matter of environmental justice that requires more diverse points of view in designing public parks.  The authors writes:

The implications for diverse audiences such as park department employees, citizen advocates for park, and academics studying environmental justice issues are connected by the need to be inclusive of voices typically under-represented in planning process, namely those racial minorities and low-income populations.  In Houston, particular effort must be made to better existing parks infrastructure in these communities. (Ibid)

Atlanta BeltLine
Atlanta. Georgia
citylab.com

Urban planner, architect, and planning commission member Antoine Bryant told Mr. Mock that "...he's not surprised by the wide variation of viewpoints between the two surveys.  He also says the racial discrepancies probably explain why the Bayou Greenways Initiative hasn't exactly been a particularly all-inviting campaign." The Bayou parks project is mostly privately financed-"$90 million in private funds have been raised as of February 2016, Mr. Bryant, who is African-American added "...many think that it's created for the enjoyment of Houston's elites-the king who informed the original city survey."

The Freelon Group rendering of Emancipation Park
The Freelon Group
Houston, Texas
theworldbulletin.com

Antoine Bryant continued,

There's a perception, and not just in Houston, that if you have too many black people or Mexicans in the park, they don't know how to act...and that's why [the Bayou Greenways project] has never been actively marketed to our communities.  Half of the black and Latino people in this city probably don't even know how to get to it, even though it's in close proximity to many of their neighborhoods.  That I can tell you unequivocally.

It is not like the Houston Parks  and Recreation Department has been completely oblivious to its African-American and Latino residents.  Mr. Bryant told Mr. Mock, "the department is better at responding to communities of color than most city agencies."  Case in point, "...one of Houston's most ambitious, and expensive, park prospects is the 10-acre, $33.6 million Emancipation Park plan for one of the oldest African-American ward in the city."  The project is being undertaken by architect Philip Freelon, best-known for the soon-to-be-open Smithsonian National Museum of African American History Culture, is spearheading the Park's development.

The Houston parks received a great deal of input from the African-American communities for the Emancipation Park initiative. according to Mr. Bryant.  When completed, anticipated by this years Juneteenth holiday, "...the aesthetic renewal of the park will hopefully boost the economic vitality of the surrounding neighborhood."

Antoine Bryant concludes,

The community has been actively involved on this more so than any park project in the city...That level engagement is uncommon around here, but hopefully it will continue as we look at other park improvement plans.