Phoenix is the fifth-largest city in the United States and the fastest-growing city in the country. For Mayor Kate Gallego—the second elected female mayor in Phoenix history and, at 39, the youngest big-city mayor in the United States—navigating that growth means prioritizing economic diversity, investments in infrastructure, and sustainability.

Gallego was elected in March 2019 to complete the term of a mayor who was heading to Congress, then reelected in November 2020. As a member of the Phoenix City Council, she led the campaign to pass a citywide transportation plan for Phoenix through 2050, which represented the country’s largest local government commitment to transportation infrastructure when it passed in 2015.

Before entering politics, Gallego worked on economic development for the Salt River Project, a not-for-profit water and energy utility that serves more than 2 million people in central Arizona. Just days after her reelection, Mayor Gallego spoke with Senior Fellow Anthony Flint. The interview kicks off a series of conversations with mayors of cities that are especially significant to the Lincoln Institute, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2021. An edited transcript follows; listen to the full interview on the Land Matters podcast.

Anthony Flint: Congratulations on your reelection. What issues do you think motivated voters most in these tumultuous times?

Kate Gallego: Voters were looking for candidates who would deliver on real data-driven leadership and science-based decision-making. I come to this job with a background in economic development and an undergraduate environmental degree. My chemistry professor told us that the more chemistry you take, the less likely you [are] to move up in electoral politics. But I think 2020 may have been a different year where science matters to voters . . . Arizona voters wanted leadership that would take COVID-19 seriously, as well as challenges such as climate change and economic recovery.

For younger voters in particular, climate change was a very important issue. I ran for office as my community faced our hottest summer on record. In some communities, climate change may be a future issue, but in Phoenix, it was an issue facing us right now. Different generations describe it differently. So my dad tells me, if you can just do something about the heat in the summer here, you’ll definitely be reelected. A different lens, but I think the same outcome.

AF: How has the pandemic affected your urban planning efforts? Did it surface any unexpected opportunities?

KG: The pandemic really changed how people interact with their communities. We saw biking and walking more than double . . . what people tell us is they didn’t realize how much they enjoyed that form of moving about our communities, and they intend to keep some of those behavior changes . . . . We’re currently looking at how we can create more public spaces. Can we expand outdoor dining and let people interact more with each other?

Dr. Anthony Fauci has told us that the more time we can be spending outdoors, the better for fighting COVID-19. But that also has other great benefits. I serve as mayor of the city with the most acres of parks of any United States city, and this has been a record year for us enjoying those Phoenix parks . . . You can be in the middle of Phoenix on a hiking trail and some days you don’t see anyone else. So those amenities and the focus of our planning around parks has really improved this year.

We also continue to invest in our transportation system. We’ve decided to speed up investment in transit, which was a decision that we did have real debate over, that I think will allow us to move towards a more urban form. We’ve actually seen increased demand for urban living in Phoenix. We have more cranes in our downtown than ever before and we are regularly seeing applications for taller buildings than we have seen before. I understand there’s a real national dialogue about whether everyone will want to be in a suburban setting, but the market is going in a different direction in our downtown right now.

COVID-19 has also made us look at some of the key challenges facing our community such as affordable housing, the digital divide, and addressing food security, and we’ve made significant investments in those areas as well.

AF: Many might think of Phoenix as a place with abundant space for single-family homes, where a house with a small yard and driveway is relatively affordable. Yet the city has a big problem with homelessness. How did that happen?

KG: Phoenix competes for labor with cities such as San Francisco and San Diego and others, that still have a much more expensive cost of housing than we do. But affordable housing has been a real challenge for our community. Phoenix has been the fastest-growing city in the country. Although we have seen a pretty significant wage growth, it has not kept up with the huge increases in mortgages and rent that our community has faced. It’s good that people are so excited about our city and want to be part of it, but it’s been very difficult for our housing market.

The council just passed a plan on affordable housing including a goal to create or preserve 50,000 units in the next decade. We are looking at a variety of policy tools, and multifamily housing will have to be a big part of the solution if we are going to get the number of units that we need. So again, that may be moving us towards a more urban form of development.

AF: Opponents of the recent light rail expansion argued it would cost too much, but there also seemed to be some cultural backlash against urbanizing in that way. What was going on there?

KG: Our voters have voted time and time again to support our light rail system. The most recent time was a ballot proposition [to ban light rail] in 2019 shortly after I was elected. It failed in every single one of the council districts; it failed in the most Democratic precinct and the most Republican precinct in the city. Voters sent a strong message that they do want that more urban form of development and the opportunity that comes with the light rail system. We’ve seen significant investments in healthcare assets and affordable housing along the light rail. We’ve also seen school districts that can put more money in classrooms and in teacher salaries because they don’t have to pay for busing a significant number of students. We have really been pleased with its impact on our city when we have businesses coming to our community. They often ask for locations along light rail because they know it’s an amenity that their employees appreciate. So I consider it a success, but I know we’re going to keep talking about how and where we want to grow in Phoenix.

AF: We can’t talk about Phoenix and Arizona without talking about water. Where is the conversation currently in terms of innovation, technology, and conservation in the management of that resource?

KG: Speaking of our ambitious voters, they passed a plan for the City of Phoenix setting a goal that we be the most sustainable desert city. Water conservation has been a Phoenix value and will continue to be. The city already reuses nearly all wastewater on crops, wetlands, and energy production. We’ve done strong programs in banking water, repurposing water, and efficiency and conservation practices, many of which have become models for other communities.

We are planning ahead. We have many portions of our city that are dependent on the Colorado River, and that river system faces drought and may have even larger challenges in the future. So we’re trying to plan ahead and invest in infrastructure to address that, but also look at our forest ecosystem and other solutions to make sure that we can continue to deliver water and keep climate change front of mind. We’ve also had good luck with using green and sustainable bonds, which the city recently issued. It was time to invest in our infrastructure . . . partnerships with The Nature Conservancy and others have helped us look at how we manage water in a way that takes advantage of the natural ecosystem, whether stormwater filtration, or how we design our pavement solutions. So we’ve had some neat innovation. We have many companies in this community that are at the forefront of water use, as you would expect from a desert city, and I hope Phoenix will be a leader in helping other communities address water challenges.

AF: Finally, if you’ll indulge us: we will be celebrating our 75th anniversary soon; our founder established the Lincoln Foundation in 1946 in Phoenix, where he was also active in local philanthropy. Would you comment on the ways the stories of Phoenix and the Lincolns and this organization are intertwined?

KG: Absolutely. The Lincoln family has made a huge impact on Phoenix and our economy. One of our fastest-growing areas in terms of job growth has been our healthcare sector, and the HonorHealth network owes its heritage to John C. Lincoln. The John C. Lincoln Medical Center has been investing and helping us get through so many challenges, from COVID-19 to all the challenges facing a quickly growing city.

I want to recognize one Lincoln family member in particular: Joan Lincoln, who was one of the first women to lead an Arizona city as mayor [of Paradise Valley, 1984–1986; Joan was the wife of longtime Lincoln Institute Chair David C. Lincoln and mother of current Chair Katie Lincoln]. When I made my decision to run for mayor, none of the 15 largest cities in the country had a female mayor; many significant cities such as New York and Los Angeles still have not had one. But in Arizona, I’m nothing unusual. I’m not the first [woman to serve as] Phoenix mayor and I’m one of many [female] mayors throughout the valley. That wasn’t true when Joan paved the way. She really was an amazing pioneer and she’s made it more possible for candidates like myself to not be anything unusual. I’m grateful for her leadership.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Photograph: Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego has pursued an ambitious sustainability agenda for the city. She was reelected in November 2020. Credit: Mayor Kate Gallego via Twitter.

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The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy today launched a new enterprise to expand the use of advanced technology for land and water conservation—The Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS). The center will give people and organizations the tools they need to manage land and water resources with precision, at the scale required to confront pressing challenges such as climate change, loss of habitat, and water scarcity.

The center will provide data, conduct analysis, and perform specialized consulting services that enable organizations of all sizes in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors to deploy geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and other geospatial technologies. The center will help practitioners to overcome barriers such as a lack of staffing, resources, or expertise, which have hindered the adoption of geospatial technology, especially in the nonprofit sector.

“If land and water managers, conservationists, and governments are to meet rapidly accelerating social, economic, and environmental challenges, including climate change, they need to work together at larger scales and make use of every possible tool,” said Anne Scott, executive director for the Center for Geospatial Solutions. “The Center for Geospatial Solutions will enhance collective access to better data and analysis, so that practitioners and decisionmakers can act collaboratively on the best information available.”

The center will deliver services directly to nonprofit organizations, foundations, governments, and businesses, and will also work with funders to guide and administer grants. The center will also use the resources and expertise of the Lincoln Institute, which is organized around the achievement of six goals: sustainably managed land and water resources, low-carbon, climate-resilient communities and regions, efficient and equitable tax systems, reduced poverty and spatial inequality, fiscally healthy communities and regions, and functional land markets and reduced informality.

“My wife, Laura, and I developed Esri to help people make better decisions for our world, and that is what the Center for Geospatial Solutions is accomplishing,” said Jack Dangermond, President and CEO of Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri). “The Center for Geospatial Solutions will move the global environmental field over the next decade to meet goals set forth by scientists to save and restore our planet. The center’s combination of partnerships, shared resources, advanced data science and analysis fills an important niche to bring geospatial technology solutions to environmental organizations worldwide.”

The center will prioritize access to technology for people and communities that have been historically marginalized, governments in the developing world, under-resourced nonprofit organizations, startups, and businesses operating in developing or restricted economies. The center will build customized tools that can be tailored to fit the size and capacity of any organization.

“These are unprecedented times, which require broad vision combined with the practical implementation of innovative solutions,” said Breece Robertson, director of partnerships and strategy for the Center for Geospatial Solutions. “We can’t address global challenges like climate change and inequity without access to data, science and technologies that enable everyone to act effectively.”

The potential for geospatial technology to improve conservation is well demonstrated. In one powerful application, regional planners in Tucson, Arizona, worked with nonprofit partners, including the Lincoln Institute’s Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, to map the tree canopy, surface temperatures, and other data to help communities to better-manage stormwater, and to prioritize where to plant trees. In another case, Denver’s regional planning agency is using high-resolution maps to classify land cover into eight categories for a wide range of possible uses, including to understand habitat connectivity and quality to guide investment in green infrastructure.

In addition to advancing land and water conservation, geospatial technology can inform decisions in urban contexts. Its applications include analyzing cities’ carbon footprints, exploring the conservation potential of brownfield sites, revealing local variations in air quality, and mapping parks, open spaces, and urban corridors for wildlife.

“Some organizations are already using geospatial technology to understand what is happening on the ground with greater and greater precision,” said Jeffrey Allenby, director of geospatial technology for the Center for Geospatial Solutions. “The center will bring this capability to organizations of all sizes and scales by building customized tools that are easy to use for all staff, even those with no background or training in technology.”

“The center builds on the Lincoln Institute’s long track record of pioneering ideas that have transformed land policy,” Lincoln Institute President and CEO George W. “Mac” McCarthy wrote in an essay in Land Lines, the magazine of the Lincoln Institute. “The Center for Geospatial Solutions represents another transformational idea—by making land, water, and mapping technology universal, we can enable people and organizations to collaborate and achieve impact that is orders-of-magnitude greater than what they can accomplish today. Like lifting a fog, applying geospatial technology will enable anyone to see what is happening anywhere on the Earth. It will make the planet feel that much smaller, and the solutions to humanity’s toughest problems that much easier to grasp.”

For more information, visit cgs.earth or email cgs@lincolninst.edu.

Leadership of the Center for Geospatial Solutions

Anne Scott, Executive Director

Anne brings leadership experience in public and community health and international development, and she is particularly passionate about achieving cost-effective outcomes that can be replicated and scaled. She has lived and worked in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East on the implementation and evaluation of large-scale health and environmental programs funded by the U.S. and European governments, and philanthropic foundations. Anne has held executive positions at the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation in London, the Charlottesville (Virginia) Area Community Foundation and, most recently, Boston-based Pathfinder International. She is a prior board chair of the Chesapeake Conservancy. Anne has a Ph.D. in medical anthropology and an MBA in finance, as well as post-doctoral qualifications in science and diplomacy, and health and child survival.

Jeffrey Allenby, Director of Geospatial Technology.

Jeff brings a wealth of experience developing systems-focused solutions at the intersection of technology and the natural world. Prior to joining the Lincoln Institute, Jeff was the director of conservation technology at the Chesapeake Conservancy and cofounder of the Conservancy’s Conservation Innovation Center, building it from scratch into a globally recognized pioneer in the application of technology to improve environmental decision making in the Chesapeake Bay and across the world. Jeff worked previously for the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources on projects to support local climate change adaptation. Jeff has a M.E.M. and a certificate in geospatial analysis from Duke University and a B.S. from the University of Richmond. Jeff also serves as a member of the advisory board for the Internet of Water.

Breece Robertson, Director of Partnerships and Strategy

Breece has more than 18 years of experience leading collaborative and strategic initiatives that leverage data-driven platforms, GIS, research, and planning for the park and conservation fields. Breece combines geospatial technology and storytelling to inspire, activate, educate, and engage. During her career at The Trust for Public Land, she led geospatial innovations that supported the protection of 3,000+ places, over 2+ million acres of land, provided park access to over 9 million people, and achieved $74 billion in voter-approved funding for parks and conservation. She is a skilled leader, collaborator, implementer, and creative visionary with a legacy of building award-winning teams and community-driven GIS approaches for strategic conservation and park creation. Esri, the world’s leader in geographic information system (GIS) technology, twice has honored Robertson for innovation in helping communities meet park and conservation goals. In 2006, she was awarded the Esri Special Achievement in GIS award and in 2012, the “Making a Difference” award – a prestigious presidential award.

About the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy seeks to improve quality of life through the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute researches and recommends creative approaches to land as a solution to economic, social, and environmental challenges. Through education, training, publications, and events, we integrate theory and practice to inform public policy decisions worldwide.

Will Jason is director of communications at the Lincoln Institute.

Image: NOAA Data Enterprise (NDE) VIIRS daily global active fire detections, UMD Geographical Sciences VIIRS Active Fire site, http://viirsfire.geog.umd.edu/pages/mapsData.php.

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City Tech: Precision-Mapping Water in the Desert

In communities across the country, parks and open space have seen dramatic increases in use this year as people sought refuge and respite from the COVID-19 pandemic. With public health guidelines recommending staying close to home, urban residents have been using public spaces in unprecedented numbers as places to exercise, be closer to nature, and socialize, dine, or shop at social distances. They have used public spaces to access essential services and to hold protests and demonstrations. The pandemic has elevated the value of parks and open space and has underscored the benefits for cities of creating more public spaces and more equitable access to them. It also has highlighted significant challenges, including how to pay for parks in the face of a looming fiscal crisis.

In many cities, the pandemic prompted city leaders to implement workarounds in neighborhoods without access to parks. The success of adaptive projects like widening sidewalks and bike lanes or closing streets to traffic has encouraged cities to continue to think creatively for the long term. COVID has also prompted discussions about how reimagining public space and creating new collaborations between public agencies could help city leaders make progress toward key urban goals, such as encouraging safer active-mobility options, expanding access to opportunity in underserved neighborhoods, converting vacant or underused land for public use, and developing greater climate resilience. Underlying all of this, the push for creating and maintaining traditional parks—and ensuring equitable access to them—continues.

“The pandemic has proven that parks are essential infrastructure,” says Adrian Benepe, who served until this fall as senior vice president and director of national programs for the Trust for Public Land (TPL) and was parks commissioner for the city of New York from 2002 to 2012. “It’s a great paradox that parks have never been more used or appreciated than now. Everything else was shut down, and parks were a last refuge.”

Even before COVID, parks and recreation had been identified as a growing priority for cities in every region of the United States. According to a 2019 analysis conducted by the National League of Cities, some 63 percent of mayors had outlined specific plans or goals related to parks and recreation in recent “state of the city” speeches, compared to just 28 percent in 2017 (Yadavalli 2019).

As the pandemic continues, many city leaders are asking themselves key questions:

• What have we learned about public parks and open space during the pandemic?

• What are the best practices for providing access to and expansion of public spaces?

• How do we reach out and listen to all communities about their open space needs?

• How can we think differently about our city’s spatial assets, and—perhaps most important—where do we find the land and financial resources to develop new ones?

Parks, Public Health, and Economic Recovery

Across the country, up to 30 percent of urban land typically is occupied by paved streets and parking lots. Parks and open space, by contrast, occupy only 15 percent of urban land. But a national survey conducted in May for the 10 Minute Walk coalition, which includes TPL, the Urban Land Institute, and the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA), confirmed the crucial role of local parks and green spaces in maintaining physical and mental health and helping communities navigate toward recovery. Some 81 percent of the 1,000 survey respondents said increasing access to local parks and green spaces would help people enjoy the outdoors safely as states reopened (10 Minute Walk 2020). Two-thirds agreed that parks were important in maintaining physical and mental health, that access to local parks had become more important during the crisis, and that their quality of life would improve with better access to a park or green space near home. Urban respondents were most likely to value nearby green space.

These data points are backed up by years of research indicating that parks and open space provide many “cobenefits” for urban areas, where 80 percent of the U.S. population lives. Studies show that park use can lower the risk of stress, obesity, respiratory problems, cancer, and diabetes. Increased exposure to green space has also been linked to higher cognitive abilities, reductions in aggressive behaviors, and a stronger sense of community.

“The data are clear: Parks and green space soothe and console us, relax and restore us, reduce our anxiety, depression, and stress,” says physician and epidemiologist Dr. Howard Frumkin in Parks and the Pandemic, a TPL special report (TPL 2020b). Frumkin, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Public Health, advised: “In this and in future pandemics, we’ll want to combine physical distancing and other infection-control measures with universal access to parks and green space, to help everyone get through hard times as safely as possible.”

In addition to public health benefits, parks and open space are highly valued as economic drivers. In a 2019 NRPA survey, 85 percent of respondents said they seek high-quality parks and recreation amenities when choosing a place to live (NRPA 2019). A March 2020 NRPA poll revealed that 94 percent of respondents recognize the importance of governments investing in infrastructure that promotes economic activity, including parks and trails (NRPA 2020). Proximity to parks increases property values as much as 20 percent, which in turn increases local tax revenues. High-quality public parks and open space also draw new businesses and visitors to cities. In Detroit, the $19 million, 2.5-acre Campus Martius Park helped attract new companies and redevelopment to downtown after it opened in 2004. In recent years, it has attracted over 2 million visitors annually and has helped catalyze more than $1 billion in real estate investments around the park, with billions more development dollars projected in a pipeline that would also lead to thousands of jobs.

Urban areas also derive multiple environmental benefits from parks and green space. Trees absorb pollution, producing billions of dollars in savings from cleaner air; their shade helps reduce the heat island effect by lowering urban temperatures. The ability of parks to absorb water is increasingly valuable, not just in coastal areas and riverfront communities, but also in cities seeking to control stormwater through green infrastructure. As part of Philadelphia’s $4.5 billion, 25-year Green City, Clean Waters program—a collaboration between the Parks and Recreation and Water departments that aims to capture 85 percent of the city’s stormwater runoff—the city pledged to add 500 acres of parks and green spaces in underserved neighborhoods.

Other local initiatives, including the School District of Philadelphia’s GreenFutures plan, the Rebuild Initiative, and TPL’s Parks for People Program, are contributing to the effort to expand access to public green space in the city.

Ensuring Access for All

In recent years, cities have been exploring ways to create more urban parks and open space, but “what’s unique at this moment is people are finally noticing inequities in park access and the urgent need for public parks close to where people live,” says Alyia Gaskins, assistant director of health programs for the Center for Community Investment (CCI) at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. In the context of recent demonstrations and discussions about race and racism, she says, “people are noticing that Black and brown communities are not only at greater risk from COVID-19, but also frequently excluded from the very health benefits parks provide.”

Across the country, more than 100 million people lack safe and easy access to parks within a half-mile of home, says TPL. That number represents about 28 percent of the U.S. population, including 28 million children. In the nation’s 100 largest cities, 11.2 million people lack easy access. The organization says ensuring everyone in those cities has a nearby park would require adding 8,300 parks to the 23,000 that exist. Even where parks are available, inequities exist. A TPL study released in August reported that across the United States, parks serving primarily nonwhite populations are half the size of parks that serve majority white populations and five times more crowded. Parks serving majority low-income households are, on average, a quarter the size of parks that serve majority high-income households, and four times more crowded (TPL 2020a).

During the pandemic, states and cities have varied widely in their approaches to parks and open space. Some cities closed waterfronts and limited park access. Others sought to manage crowds by implementing controls such as timed entries or one-way signs. At the popular Katy Trail in Dallas, where visitors at a single entrance increased from 22,834 in early March to 34,366 by late March, officials instituted a voluntary system that allowed access on alternate days based on the first letter of a visitor’s last name. Some cities prohibited parking at packed parks, prompting equity questions on behalf of people who did not have the proximity or ability to walk or bike there. Other cities addressed the surge in demand for parks by converting streets into pedestrian-friendly spaces. During the initial months of the shutdown, “parks became the most valuable resource in the city,” says J. Nicholas Williams, director of the Oakland Parks, Recreation, and Youth Development Department.

To offer room for recreation in neighborhoods where parks were overcrowded or nonexistent, Oakland closed 74 miles of streets to all but emergency vehicles and local traffic in April. The city relied on a network of streets identified in a 2019 bicycle plan that had been developed with the participation of 3,500 residents.

The Slow Streets program—some version of which has been enacted in cities from Tucson, Arizona, to Providence, Rhode Island—was well received by many Oakland residents, but was also criticized for its initial focus on predominantly white neighborhoods. Working with residents and community groups in more racially and economically diverse areas such as East Oakland, Slow Streets expanded into new neighborhoods and launched “Slow Streets: Essential Places,” which improved pedestrian safety along routes to essential services such as grocery stores, food distribution sites, and COVID-19 test sites.

The Slow Streets program continues, but Williams says Oakland, whose population grew 10 percent in the past decade to 433,000, faces a greater need: “Oakland continues to grow . . . we have to set aside more park land and more equitable access to parks and open space.”

Equitable Park Planning

“City parks are at the center of resilient and equitable cities,” says Catherine Nagel, executive director of City Parks Alliance (CPA), an independent nationwide organization that has worked with mayors to leverage more than $190 million to build urban parks in underserved communities. “Our research shows some of the ways cities can leverage the equity, health, and environmental benefits of parks are to identify new sources of funding, new cost-sharing partnerships, and new [sources of] support.”

Cities are funding parks with adjacent sectors, drawing on or partnering with water, housing, and health departments, and “leveraging outside of the traditional park world,” Nagel says. Property developers are building public parks, and cities are partnering with business improvement districts and nonprofit organizations for programming and management responsibilities. “Parks are more complex than people think,” Nagel says. “They need intensive programming and maintenance, ongoing revenue streams, and the ability to interface with and reflect community user and local needs.”

With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CPA has worked on initiatives that analyze how cities are reallocating money to address equity concerns, how they’re leveraging funding from adjacent sectors, and how they’re innovating for equity and sourcing funding. CPA’s Equitable Park Funding Hub, an interactive online database set to launch this fall, will feature park funding opportunities related to brownfields, workforce development, community development, conservation, climate mitigation, and water and green infrastructure.

The Groundwork USA Network shares examples of park and green infrastructure projects that focus on community ownership and health equity gains for long-term residents in Reclaiming Brownfields (Groundwork USA 2017). In one project, Groundwork Denver helped with visioning, planning, and fundraising to transform a 5.5-acre brownfield site into the Platte Farm Open Space for the Globeville neighborhood in North Denver. Residents of the predominantly low-income Latinx neighborhood, which is surrounded by former industrial sites and bisected by interstates, led the project to restore native shortgrass prairie and install a pollinator garden and paved walking and biking trails. A $550,000 grant from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment paid for construction and maintenance, which will be completed by the City and County of Denver Departments of Parks and Recreation and Transportation and Infrastructure.

The Denver project illustrates how cities can reimagine current assets. While most don’t have large tracts of vacant land, says Benepe of TPL, they could creatively retrofit brownfields, abandoned industrial sites, sanitary landfills, or railroad and utility rights of way, as high-profile projects like the High Line in New York and Millennium Park in Chicago have shown. Benepe says every city should analyze the equity of its park system and identify potential park and open space sites in underserved neighborhoods.

CCI’s Gaskins says the first step in equitable park planning is to “be in conversation with communities to get their vision for what they want parks to be, whether that’s building new parks or reimagining existing spaces.” Proximity and access are important, she says, “but it’s also the quality of the park and whether people feel welcomed and safe”—both in the park and en route to it.

Particularly in neighborhoods affected by gentrification, longtime residents often don’t feel like amenities such as parks that are introduced with new development are intended for them, Gaskins says. With new development, planners and other city officials should ensure a robust community engagement process. “Parks are more than infrastructure,” she says. “They offer access to programs and services, gathering spaces, and job opportunities that are also important for advancing health equity.”

Paying for Parks in Lean Times

Following the 2008 financial collapse, parks budgets were cut early and were among the last municipal budget items to recover. From 2009 to 2013, park spending dropped 21.2 percent, says NRPA, and by 2013, parks and recreation represented only 1.9 percent of local government expenditures. Deferred park maintenance for many large cities has been estimated in the billions of dollars.

Will parks budgets meet the same fate in the age of COVID? A late-June NRPA survey of more than 400 parks and recreation leaders found that two-thirds of their agencies had been asked to reduce operations spending between 10 to 20 percent for the fiscal year in effect on July 1, and 57 percent were facing 50 to 59 percent median reductions in capital spending. One in five reported their capital budgets had been zeroed out (Roth 2020).

Park advocates warn that city park systems have reached a critical tipping point, with heavy use and COVID-related budget cuts risking irreversible damage in 2020 and beyond. Some say priority funding for maintenance is critical to ensure that parks and green spaces are safe, attractive, and used, while others say investments in new capital projects would do more to help stimulate the economy for COVID recovery. Rachel Banner, NRPA director of park access, notes that park budgets that rely more on property taxes, which have been stable during the pandemic, may be in better shape than those that rely primarily on sales tax revenues. “Diversity in revenue streams is important,” says Banner. “Think about what’s important for resiliency in an economic downturn, like drawing from a variety of sources.”

One successful strategy NRPA has seen is to allocate a standard proportion of the general fund to parks and open space, “especially now that they are absolutely essential.” To address park equity in the capital budget, Banner says, some cities use prioritization criteria related to factors such as the quality of park space, age of equipment, ADA compliance, and neighborhood demographics including income, race, health outcomes, and car ownership.

In many cities and counties, dedicated tax campaigns have shown success in generating a significant portion of parks and open space funding. In March, Oakland voters passed Ballot Measure Q to create a 20-year tax, with 64 percent of the resulting revenues directed for parks, landscape maintenance, and recreational services beginning in FY 2020–2021. The success of Measure Q demonstrated that city residents have “turned a corner in recognizing the value of parks and open space,” says Oakland parks director Williams. While Measure Q doesn’t provide funding for new parks and open space, he says, it does address equity by providing funds to maintain and program smaller community and pocket parks. The measure was projected to bring in $13.4 million for parks in FY 20–21, a figure that hadn’t changed as of the city’s mid-cycle budget review this summer but will continue to be reviewed, Williams says.

Other successful ballot efforts include Denver’s Measure 2A, passed in 2018 and known as the Parks Legacy Fund. Between 2012 and 2017, the city’s population grew 11 percent, but park space increased by only 5 percent; the city also faced $130 million in deferred park maintenance. Combined with general funds, the Parks Legacy Fund was projected to produce $37.5 million a year to renovate parks, acquire land, and build new parks, trails, and open spaces, prioritizing high-need communities. The city expects to revise its budget to reflect COVID-related impacts this fall.

Last year, a ballot measure in New Orleans created hundreds of millions of dollars for parks over 20 years, with a priority for lower-income areas, says Bill Lee, TPL senior vice president of policy, advocacy, and government relations. Despite COVID’s impact on local economies, Lee is optimistic about other ballot-related funding prospects: “More than three-quarters of these measures pass in good and bad economic times, in red and blue states, because people see the value of parks and open space.”

Oklahoma City can attest. In November 2019, the city opened a 36-acre portion of Scissortail Park in the downtown core, on brownfield land that formerly featured abandoned buildings and junkyards. This first phase of the $132 million project features amenities such as a playground, interactive fountains, roller rink, café, performance stage, lake with boathouse and boat rentals, demonstration gardens, farmers’ market, lawn and promenade, and nearly 1,000 trees.

Scissortail Park is located next to the city’s new convention center and near the downtown library, arena, ballpark, and streetcar, all of which received funding from the Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS) tax, a voter-approved penny sales tax created in 1993 to pay debt-free for projects to revitalize downtown and improve the city’s quality of life. A public-private partnership, the park also has benefitted from millions of dollars in donations, and it earns income from event and equipment rentals, sponsorships, food and beverage concessions, memberships, and grants. Ten years in planning and construction, the park by 2022 will include another 34 acres that will extend to the Oklahoma River with sports fields and natural areas, accessed by a bridge across Interstate 40.

Scissortail Park received a key allocation from the third round of MAPS funding; in December 2019, voters approved a fourth MAPS round, with $140 million dedicated to transforming the city’s neighborhood and community parks and sports facilities, part of a $978 million neighborhood and human services ballot measure.

“Scissortail is our cultural commons for downtown,” says Maureen Heffernan, CEO and president of the Scissortail Park Foundation, which manages the park and has kept it open with limited events and programming during the pandemic. Many people have expressed gratitude for Scissortail Park and the city’s nearby Myriad Botanical Gardens, which Heffernan also manages. “More than ever, beautifully maintained green space in urban areas has been a critical resource for people to enjoy and destress over the last few months,” she says. Urban parks “are something everyone wants and wants to fund, and they’re transformative,” Heffernan notes, adding that Oklahoma City “does not normally like to raise taxes, but residents have approved this MAPS tax because these tangible projects make a dramatic difference in people’s quality of life here.”

Park advocates also are looking to federal legislation for funding. The Great American Outdoors Act, signed into law in August, includes permanent funding from offshore oil and gas fees for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), making $900 million per year available for public lands, including city parks and trails. LWCF’s Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) program is a source for annual grants for urban areas with more than 50,000 residents, providing $25 million last year in grants ranging from $300,000 to $1 million, with priority given to projects in low-income areas that lack outdoor recreation opportunities.

Parks advocates also have their eye on potential federal stimulus funds. In May, 100 organizations, including TPL, CPA, NRPA, the American Planning Association, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, asked Congress to include $500 million for jobs related to building or renovating parks in low-income urban areas as part of a future coronavirus stimulus package.

Public-Private Partnerships

In some cases, partnerships with nonprofits make the creation of parks possible. The Western Reserve Land Conservancy (WRLC), a Cleveland-based nonprofit, has conserved over 60,000 acres and created over 155 parks and preserves in the region since the late 1990s. WRLC has raised over $400 million to help land banks demolish 40,000 abandoned or vacant properties throughout Ohio, securing land for low-income communities until it can be redeveloped into parks, green spaces, or sites for affordable housing and other purposes.

Through its Reforest our City program, WRLC has planted more than 10,000 trees in Cleveland; WRLC bought a landfill on a linear site next to the zoo, cleaned up contamination, and developed the 25-acre Brighton Park with a walking/biking trail. Located in a densely populated area, the $1 million park, due to open in October, will be planted with 1,000 trees next year, and will be managed by the Metroparks District, says Jim Rokakis, WRLC vice president and coauthor of The Land Bank Revolution (Rokakis 2020). WRLC is also creating six neighborhood parks in Cleveland’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood that it will own or manage.

Other cities rely on business and philanthropic support to fund parks. About 90 percent of the $19 million cost for Detroit’s Campus Martius Park and surrounding infrastructure was funded by Detroit corporations and foundations. Owned by the city, the park is managed by the Downtown Detroit Partnership. The Indianapolis Cultural Trail, an eight-mile pedestrian and bike trail connecting eight cultural districts in downtown Indianapolis, is undergoing a $30 million expansion with $20 million from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., $5 million from the city, and $1 million from the Anthem Foundation. Cities are also partnering with private developers to build and operate new parks and open space. Since 1993, New York City’s waterfront zoning has required developers to provide public access to the waterfront. The zoning has led to the redevelopment of industrial sites into multiple parks that provide public access and build climate resilience.

The six-acre Domino Park on Brooklyn’s East River, opened in 2018, is part of an 11-acre site that will include the adaptive reuse of the historic Domino Sugar refinery and 3.3 million square feet of mixed-use development with 2,200 housing units, 700 of them affordable. Brooklyn-based developer Two Trees Management, which invested $50 million to build the park and spends $2 million annually on operations, worked closely with the community to identify needs such as a short access road to make the park feel truly public. The park, designed by James Corner Field Operations, includes a waterfront esplanade, recreation facilities, interactive fountains, a five-block artifact walk of salvaged factory machinery, and 175 trees. It provides public waterfront access for the first time in 160 years.

Another promising financing option is land value return, a mechanism through which cities recover the increases in property value triggered by rezoning or by investments in infrastructure. Also known as land value capture, this tool “will be an effective way for cities to convert underutilized spaces into parks and open space,” says Enrique Silva, the Lincoln Institute’s director of international initiatives.

Silva says cities could recover zoning-related increases in land value to secure land and pay for park development. Cities also can recover value through higher property tax assessments that lead to higher municipal tax revenues. City-owned vacant sites intended for buildings the cities can’t currently afford to build could also become temporary or permanent parks and lead to additional land value capture opportunities, he says. Municipal planning tools such as special assessments and transferable development rights also can help fund parks, open space, and infrastructure improvements.

Parks and open space can increase value in the form of climate resilience and now, with COVID, will be viewed as adding social value, says Silva. “There’s increasingly a sense that an investment in parks and open space as public infrastructure is an investment worth making, one that will have increased relevance as more public space is needed,” says Silva. “To the extent that COVID is forcing everyone to rethink public space and there’s a premium on open space in cities,” he says, steps including converting streets for pedestrian use and establishing new parks and open spaces are “where planning is going to lead.”

Survey on Pandemic and Public Spaces

A global survey conducted by Gehl, the Copenhagen-based design and planning firm that reimagined Times Square in New York City for pedestrians and bicyclists, reveals the importance of public space during the pandemic. Some 2,000 respondents from 40 U.S. states, 68 countries, and nearly every continent, about two-thirds of whom hailed from urban areas, shared views on the value of public space in their daily lives:

• 66 percent used nearby public spaces at least once a day, and 16 percent used them several times a day.

• Top public space destinations included the neighborhood street and sidewalk (87 percent), essential places like grocery stores (72 percent), neighborhood parks (67 percent), and stoops, yards, or courtyards (59 percent).

• Two thirds reported walking more during the pandemic; among car owners, that figure was 69 percent. 

Gehl’s suggestions for improving access and reducing overcrowding of parks and open spaces include:

• Reallocate space to allow for more physically distant walking, biking, and rolling through sidewalk extensions, parking lane closures, or street closures at the block or multiblock level.

• Prioritize space reallocation measures in neighborhoods without walkable (less than 15-minute) access to parks and essential services.

• Manage flow into more congested public spaces by expanding the number of entrances or by designating gateways as entry-only or exit-only.

• To support seniors and other vulnerable populations, ensure new public spaces create opportunities for sitting at safe distances, not just moving through.

Source: Gehl (https://gehlpeople.com/blog/public-space-playsvital-role-in-pandemic).

Kathleen McCormick, principal of Fountainhead Communications in Boulder, Colorado, writes frequently about healthy, sustainable, and resilient communities.

Lead Image: According to the Trust for Public Land, more than 100 million people—including 28 million children–lack safe and easy access to parks in the United States. Credit: portishead1/iStock.

References

10 Minute Walk. n.d. “Our Research.” https://10minutewalk.org/#Our-research.

Groundwork USA. 2017. Reclaiming Brownfields: Highlights from the Groundwork USA Network. Yonkers, NY: Groundwork USA. https://groundworkusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/GWUSABrownfields-Highlights-2017.pdf.

NRPA (National Recreation and Park Association). 2020. The Economic Impact of Parks: An Examination of the Economic Impacts of Operations and Capital Spending by Local Park and Recreation Agencies on the U.S. Economy. Ashburn, VA: National Recreation and Park Association. https://www.nrpa.org/siteassets/research/economic-impact-study-summary-2020.pdf.

———. 2019. 2019 Engagement with Parks Report. Ashburn, VA: National Recreation and Park Association. September. https://www.nrpa.org/globalassets/engagement-survey-report-2019.pdf.

Rokakis, James, and Gus Frangos. 2020. The Land Bank Revolution: How Ohio’s Communities Fought Back Against the Foreclosure Crisis. Cleveland, Ohio: Parafine Press.

Roth, Kevin. 2020. “NRPA Parks Snapshot: June 24–26 Survey Results.” Open Space (blog), National Recreation and Park Association. June 26. https://www.nrpa.org/blog/nrpa-parks-snapshot-june-24-26-survey-results/.

TPL (Trust for Public Land). 2020a. The Heat Is On: With Temperatures Rising and Quality Parks Too Few and Far Between, Communities of Color Face a Dangerous Disparity. San Francisco, CA: The Trust for Public Land. https://www.tpl.org/sites/default/files/The-Heat-is-on_A-Trust-for-Public-Land_special-report.pdf.

———. 2020b. Parks and the Pandemic: A Trust for Public Land Special Report. San Francisco, CA: The Trust for Public Land. https://www.tpl.org/parks-and-the-pandemic.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on the Columbia University Press blog.

COVID-19 has presented new challenges for leaders at all levels, forcing many to reconsider their emergency management processes. What are the impacts of the current public health crisis on disaster preparedness and community planning, and what will it take to build a more equitable and resilient future? We sat down with Laurie Johnson and Robert Olshansky, authors of the Lincoln Institute book After Great Disasters: An In-Depth Analysis of How Six Countries Managed Community Recovery and companion Policy Focus Report to discuss the pandemic and the path forward. Johnson, an internationally recognized urban planner specializing in disaster recovery and catastrophe risk management, has advised local governments and others following earthquakes, landslides, floods, hurricanes, and human-made disasters around the world. Olshansky is Professor Emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and has published extensively on post-disaster recovery planning, policy for earthquake risks, hillside planning and landslide policy, and environmental impact assessment. Olshansky and Johnson also coauthored Clear as Mud: Planning for the Rebuilding of New Orleans, a book informed by their years on the ground after Hurricane Katrina.

Emma Zehner: What lessons from disaster recovery are most relevant to this pandemic? How is this public health emergency different from natural disasters you have dealt with in the past?

Robert Olshansky: With many disasters, we think about external factors, but the way this disaster manifests itself is in people. The threat, instead of a hurricane or earthquake, is every person we encounter, which sets up a different dynamic. The other unique aspect is the time delay and the exponential nature of the spread. These are counter to our normal cognitive processes. Masks seem to reduce the exponential factor, but the time delay is still there. So, yes, we have the ability to control things and in principal have the ability to change the trajectory of the disaster, but some of that is an illusion because the situation is so unusual.

Laurie Johnson: Yes, time is one of the four factors that governments can control. The others are money, information, and collaboration. This case is slightly different. With sudden onset disasters like earthquakes, you come to the disaster scene and begin to act. Right now, we can actually act while the pandemic disaster is unfolding and try to control how impactful it will be. This is also unusual because it is impacting all of the United States and most of the world at the same time. Historically, disaster management in the United States and many other countries has been built on the concept of mutual aid. We don’t have all of the fire trucks to fight all fires in California, so we rely on supplies from elsewhere. In the case of emergency management in the pandemic, we haven’t been as able to use these mutual aid principles. In every state and every city, supply chains have been impacted.

This has called for a different kind of collaboration. Most of the needed action is actually inaction, social distancing, which is counter to the idea of collaborative governance in the sense of empowering people to rebuild. Instead we are trying to empower people to do nothing, which is hard for leaders to get their head around.

It has also been interesting to note how public officials have defined essential services. To flatten the curve and keep people sustained, we had to consider and maintain a wider set of services than what we normally think about for natural disasters, in which essential services focuses primarily on mass care and shelter, water, and other basic infrastructure. In the pandemic, essential also included access (even if limited) to exercise and outdoor recreation, farmers’ markets and restaurant take-out services, for example.

EZ: To what extent has the pandemic prompted a questioning of standard disaster preparedness and management practices, especially spatial/territorial ones?

LJ: This pandemic has underscored the idea of local primacy in disasters and the importance of leadership at the local level. California is depending on county and city public health officials and others to really make things happen. I think it will be the same in terms of recovery. The civil protests have also pushed local leaders on how limited resources should be reallocated at the local level. So the pandemic has raised some good questions about the mutual aid management model, and reinforced the need for local primacy.

RO: It has become clear that the model of local primacy with resources from above is really the way that we need to do it. Now what is missing is a lot of the resources from above. One of those resources is technical guidance, which is the role that the CDC should play. Others include federal coordination, communication, funding to make social distancing feasible, funding to ensure that economic impacts are equitable, regulatory actions to scale up testing, and policy changes to spur production of needed supplies.

LJ: Also, during this pandemic, there is a whole structure of public health management that is not typically as dominant in natural disaster management. You have different leaders: the National Institutes of Health and the CDC, and state and local public health departments. On top of that, you have political leaders setting up their own task forces. It is definitely not as lean and efficient as when you have clear lines of authority through the emergency declaration process, but I think that a ton of learning has occurred.

EZ: Has the response to the pandemic provided new tools and ways of thinking for disaster planning? What responses do you point to as examples?

LJ: It was an aha moment for me to realize that we can be so much more deliberate in mitigating the impacts while we are in disasters that unfold with time (even wildfires and hurricanes in which the disaster event can last several days). We typically talk about resilience in terms of engineering, such as building barriers for floods, and adaptation. Those both typically happen either before disaster strikes or during the recovery stage. We don’t talk as much about resilience during the event. The decisions we make during the crisis can really affect our recovery trajectories differently. The same is true of wildfires and hurricanes, even though the event timeframe is more limited. Mass evacuation in real time can protect lives and also allow first responders to focus on managing the hazard, like firefighting, instead of evacuating people during the disaster. The evacuation process can really help set the recovery up. As we note in After Great Disasters, in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, people were evacuated all over the country, but there are things we don’t really know: How many got back and when? How many were able to establish productive and happy roots elsewhere? I now see that we do have more ways to design a good recovery in real-time with the decisions and actions we take as the disaster is unfolding. Another example is sea level rise, which has a slow onset with sudden shocks in the form of storms. We actually have ways we can mitigate the impacts of sea level rise so that those sudden shocks of storms aren’t as impactful.

RO: The pandemic has reinforced a lot of things for us, but it has also stretched our thinking a bit. It is hard to say we are doing well, but in some ways we have done a lot—such as the initial shutdown that saved our healthcare system from collapse, federal funding to lessen economic impacts, growing capabilities for testing and contact tracing, and unprecedented development of treatments and vaccines–and I think this can increase our self-confidence that we have the capacity to deal with huge events like this in the future.

LJ: In terms of notable responses, the response where I live in Marin County (California) has been very good even with some major challenges and setbacks. The county public health officials produce a video nearly every day that walks you through the decisions the county is making. Their data provides a lot of demographic and geographic details and regularly updated progress indicators give them a dashboard of information to use in determining when to back off with the next [phase of] opening. The whole process has been pretty transparent and helped people to better understand what the tradeoffs and risks are.

New Zealand, one of the countries we studied in our book, has also been very transparent. People understood where they were with that system. Their response has also been led by the national health officials and not by the formal emergency management structure. They defined different alert levels right away and set a framework of guidance and restrictions for people to follow before moving to the next level. There was clear communication from national leaders and health officials daily and restrictions on movement were strictly enforced. Perhaps it’s easier for a country that size. Nonetheless, I do believe we have much to learn from their and many other countries’ approaches.

EZ: What could we be doing better?

RO: Some of our favorite governance models are various kinds of councils and committees that were set up after these large disasters. Part of what we are missing now is transparency, communication, and explanation. Counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, all have dashboards of key pandemic indicators. Now they need to address how they are making policy decisions based on the data. I would like to see highly visible, explicitly defined councils at state and regional levels, so it is clear they have representation from all of the different stakeholders, are carefully listening to their views, and are making well-reasoned decisions based on multiple tradeoffs.

EZ: As we begin the COVID recovery, what can planning directors do to prepare for the next pandemic?

LJ: I am starting work on a local general plan update process now, and I think one of the things everyone has been rushing to deal with is how to work in a digital environment. How do you do both the day-to-day planning processes and the long-term planning, both of which need to involve the community? There are also big issues around equity that have been laid bare by the pandemic and we, as planners, need to understand which parts of our communities are successfully using online meeting platforms and other civic engagement tools and which are not because they don’t have access to smartphones or broadband. This is a good experience to help us strengthen and develop the tools that we need to do planning in a more expedited, online way. We are finding new efficiencies and it helps us in thinking about how we can streamline bureaucracy after disasters.

I do think some of our ongoing resilience work before the pandemic to protect against hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters is actually benefiting us right now. We have this pretty stable infrastructure that is supporting us in spite of all the demands that are being placed on the grid and on the internet in particular.

RO: Planners are very good at stakeholder involvement. In the pandemic, we need even more inclusive systems of broader stakeholder involvement, using various means of communication. We need those all the time after every disaster. Right now, I am able to attend a lot of meetings that I couldn’t attend before. We can use some of these tools that we have developed to expand the ability of a broader variety of stakeholders to communicate after all disasters. In the pandemic, all of these things have worked relatively well. In the case of an earthquake or hurricane, though, we expect to have physical infrastructure damage that can disrupt communication systems, so we need to continue to prepare to use multiple communication modes. As a result of this pandemic, we also appreciate even more the need to stay connected, and we should make sure our communications systems are going to be able to survive the earthquake and the hurricane as well.

LJ: I think planners are capable of seeing spatially and seeing systems: we are taught to think holistically. I would appeal to planners, as things come back online, to think about some of the problems that we had before this happened (congestion, traffic, etc.) and what policies we can put in place that will reduce some of those negative factors in our communities before the next disaster—but still not erode the economic and social vitality of our communities. To some extent, the civil protests are raising these questions. We don’t want to come back online without addressing the social injustice that we had long before the disaster. What did we learn during this pandemic that can be useful to this conversation? As planners, we are always studying the daily rates of this and the daily uptake of that, and we need to be providing that kind of information to the pandemic response and reopening conversations. How can we come back but reduce some of these negative daily things we know exist in our communities?

Emma Zehner is communications and publications editor at the Lincoln Institute.

Image: Map showing cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people from September 7 to September 21, 2020. Credit: Big Local News and Pitch Interactive COVID-19 Case Mapper.

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