August 2018 - Parks & Recreation - 41

A student illustratation of an ideal park.
Some ideas were incorporated into the
Florence-Firestone Community
Parks and Recreation Plan.

ties across the county. Although this
method might be more old school, it
was still a good way to determine a
community's park priorities.
Drawing and Building
Dream Parks
The traditional public meeting
tends to be dominated by a few loud
voices, eager to share their opinions
with everyone. To truly engage kids,
meetings need to be more fun and
interactive. Providing art supplies
and allowing younger children to
draw their favorite dream or ideal park is one way to do this. This
type of activity not only encourages them to be creative and share
their ideas visually, but it also helps
parents to more freely participate
in the meeting without having to
worry about their children. For the
Master Plan for Sustainable Parks
and Recreation (https://tinyurl
.com/y82lnad6) planning process,
time was set aside toward the end of
meetings for children to present their
drawings. This helped to create an
overall hopeful and positive feeling
for all participants. Yet another way
to engage kids is to provide them
with toy blocks and other random
materials they can use to build model parks. For example, planner and
artist James Rojas' (www.placeit
.org/bio_james_rojas.html) interactive planning approach through the
use of model building has proven
successful in engaging the public,
especially kids, and encouraging
innovative city-making. Having
had first-hand experience in a
Rojas-led exercise, I know this approach empowers participants by
allowing them to shape and share
visions in a supportive environment without the fear of providing
a wrong answer.

Touring Parks
Sociologist Frederik Polak once
said, " The future may well be decided by the images of the future
with the greatest power to capture
our imaginations and draw us
to them, becoming self-fulfilling
prophecies. " To enable children to
see what is possible, they need to be
exposed to a wide variety of park
and recreation destinations. This
is especially true for kids growing
up in underserved communities
with very few parks and lacking the
means to travel to places outside
of their immediate neighborhoods.
As part of our various planning efforts, we organized tours for children to visit and experience parks
in other areas. For example, during
the Belvedere Skate Park's design process (https://tinyurl.com
/yag46pk2), our department took
young East Los Angeles skateboarders on a tour of various
skateparks to see which design
features they would like at their
own skatepark. Also, for the Puente Hills Landfill Park Master
Plan, many youths participated
in an organized hike to the top of
the landfill (https://vimeo.com
/188573554) so they could experience what it would be like to have
a regional park there in the future.

Visiting Schools
In addition to hosting meetings with
activities that engage children and
offering tours of parks, it is also important to visit children where they
are and where they spend most of
their time - at their schools. This
requires coordination with and the
cooperation of local school districts and/or principals, but it is
well worth the effort. As part of
the Florence-Firestone Community
Parks and Recreation Plan (https://
tinyurl.com/y6twr6wf), a middle
school allowed us time to conduct
a survey of its students to better
understand their needs and preferences with respect to park and recreation programs. We also asked the
students to illustrate their ideal park
and came away with some wonderful pieces of art that were incorporated into the plan.
To meet the growing and diverse
needs of communities, park and recreation agencies must effectively reach
out to and collaborate with existing
and future park users in the planning
and design of recreational facilities.
We must plan and design parks with,
rather than for, children.
Clement Lau, AICP, DPPD, is a Departmental Facilities Planner
with the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and
Recreation, and a member of NRPA's Health and Wellness
Advisory Panel (clau@parks.lacounty.gov).

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Parks & Recreation

August 2018 - Parks & Recreation

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