September 2019 - Parks & Recreation - 61

users next door and should be designed to maximize its playability
by students. A design process for
a new park set within a neighborhood of immigrants will work
with these park users to understand their needs and desires. This
may lead to clustered picnic tables
for large groups, rather than individual, isolated tables. Some highdensity neighborhoods lack gardening space, so including community
gardens responds to this need. An
example of this contextual sensitivity is Cully Park in Portland, 2UHJRQ,
set within a diverse community of
both Native Americans and recent
immigrants. Its design includes an
extensive Inter-Tribal Gathering
Garden and key ceremonial spaces.
Flexible to Evolve Over Time
Great parks have longevity; yet,
reflect how we prefer to recreate changes over time. Landmark
parks, such as Central Park in New
York City and Druid Hill Park in
Baltimore, Maryland, have shown
their adaptability over the decades.
Originally designed as " Pleasure
Grounds " for promenading, both
parks later added active recreation
facilities, such as sports fields, and
Central Park converted the sheepfold into the Tavern on the Green
restaurant, while Druid Hill Park
added the H.P. Rawlings Conservatory. A great park can adapt and
replace uses preferred in earlier
generations with new activities.
Timeless
Great parks are also timeless in their
design. This means that although
they should reflect the era in which

PHOTO COURTESY OF AECOM

Echo Park in Los Angeles, California,
exemplifies a multiple-benefit infrastructure, with its beautiful, functional and
sustainable design.

they were designed, they are not so
gimmicky or trendy to be quickly
outdated. Some of the most innovative park designs have changed
the course of park design elsewhere.
Two remarkable examples are Lawrence Halprin's Ira Keller Fountain
Park, which opened in Portland in
1970, and Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial dedicated by the
National Park Service in 1982.
Maintainable
As park budgets continue to be in
peril, the ongoing maintenance of
parks has been increasingly scrutinized. This has led to two developments: first, designers are being
asked to design parks with maintenance in mind. Great parks involve
maintenance staff in the planning
and design process for new parks
to ensure efficient maintenance
processes are integrated into the
design. And second, new ways of
accomplishing park maintenance
are being considered by communities across the country through
park conservancies and private-public partnerships. In Portland, a new
approach, called the Ecologically
Sustainable Landscapes Initiative,
identifies maintenance-intensive portions of existing parks and converts
them to native, low-maintenance
" nature patches. "

Cultural Influences
Great parks do not exist in isolation. When it comes to why certain parks become well-loved while
others languish, context matters.
The changing experience of parks
is often related to broader cultural
changes and phenomena. Parks
have always been, and are increasingly becoming, places to register
cultural change and preference. Evidence of a few of the more recent
shifts are outlined below:
Branding and Communications
The internet has disrupted nearly every facet of U.S. life in ways impossible to imagine 10 years ago. Dating:
meet Tinder. Shopping: meet Amazon. Friendship: meet Facebook.
Driving: meet Uber. Great parks are
equally tech-engaged and allow flexibility at entrances and along park
edges, where cars once reigned, to accommodate ride shares, bicycle hubs
and scooter rentals. Great parks are
branded - and live in both the physical and digital worlds in the minds
of consumers - with information
about exploring park places and
programs an increasingly simplified
click away. And, as much as many
may not want to admit, parks with
" Instagrammable " moments see
greater visitation and engagement.
For example, Lawn on D in Boston,

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Parks & Recreation

September 2019 - Parks & Recreation

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