June 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 51

Take Miami-Dade County, whose
massive park and recreation system
serves one of the most racially and
ethnically diverse communities in
the nation. When the agency's leaders and staff set out to engage residents around needed improvements
and green infrastructure on public
lands, they knew they would need
to use all the tools and strategies
they could find.
As Park Planner Stephanie
Cornejo explains, " We have communities where folks only speak
Spanish or Creole. " Reaching these
populations means recruiting and
deploying multilingual staff. But
the agency knows translators and
multilingual staff alone are not
enough to ensure they are truly
hearing from residents of all backgrounds and walks of life.
" We're taking meetings to them
- not expecting them to come to
us, " says Cornejo. " So that means
sending staff to get feedback from
church groups, out in the park, at
PTA meetings. " And while park
and recreation professionals provide a variety of online platforms
and resources for people who
can't make it to a meeting, " we
constantly remind ourselves that
many communities we serve may
not have access to laptops. So, we
have a standing meeting in local
recreation centers where we share
information, no matter the size of
the crowd. Because that's how we
show we're listening. "
This kind of commitment to resident input is critical even when
there isn't a potential language
barrier. Consider Louisville, Kentucky: with more than 16,000 acres
of public lands, the local park and

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CITY OF ATLANTA
DEPARTMENT OF WATERSHED MANAGEMENT

The Upper Proctor Creek Capacity Relief
project is underway at Rodney Cook Sr.
Park in Historic Vine City, Atlanta.

recreation agency manages one of
the largest systems in the nation.
But as Parks Administrator Bennett Knox acknowledges, the area
has " a long history of allocating
natural areas and programming
inequitably, " with communities of
color and low-income neighborhoods intentionally excluded.
But in June 2006, Louisville
became one of the first cities in
the country to establish a Center
for Health Equity (tinyurl.com/
yaocfe5d),
recognizing
that
residents living just miles apart were
experiencing dramatic differences
in their health and quality of life.
For their part, the park and recreation department staff soon understood they needed to work differently if they were to walk the talk of
engaging Louisville's full range of
communities. According to Knox,
" We used to do standard public
meetings at five or six o'clock on a
Thursday, but we were getting the
same people every time. We knew
a lot of voices weren't being heard
in those meetings - whether it was
parents who couldn't get childcare or
people who worked nights. We realized if we wanted people's input, we
needed to get out into the parks and
ask them what they thought. "

Soon, staff and volunteers armed
with clipboards hit the streets and
playgrounds, asking neighbors for
their input on what they needed and
what they wanted to see. But the
innovations didn't stop there. In recent years, Louisville has partnered
with the Canoemobile (tinyurl.com/
y9729p54), a 24-foot voyageur canoe
whose broad, steady bottom makes
getting out on the water easy even
for total novices. Its designers call the
Canoemobile a " floating wilderness
classroom, " which can be brought
into communities where people may
have never set foot off dry land.

Bringing Water Out
into the Open
Given the health and quality of life
benefits of parks and green spaces,
many communities have been looking for ways to reclaim and restore
public lands - especially those
that have fallen into disrepair or
disuse. Adding green infrastructure
elements, like bioswales, ponds and
rain gardens, can profoundly change
the landscape of a neighborhood.
Not only are these improvements
more cost-effective than traditional
gray infrastructure, but also, done
right, they can become attractions
in and of themselves.

PA R K S A N D R E C R E AT I O N .O R G | J U N E 2 02 0 |

Parks & Recreation

June 2020 - Parks & Recreation

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