Encouraging Equitable Park Investments

And navigating how to get there

By Kimberly Burrowes and Matthew Eldridge

Parks are treasured community assets that offer significant benefits:

• They encourage physical activity and mental well-being.
• They facilitate community interaction and provide access to cultural events and programming.
• They help mitigate environmental challenges.

Photo: © Can Stock Photo / eddtoro35

These benefits and others are felt beyond the physical boundaries of parks; surrounding neighborhoods often view their parks with pride.

Yet access to quality parks isn’t universal. People living close to parks may choose not to use them because of concerns about maintenance, safety, or relevant features and programming. Low-income neighborhoods and communities of color disproportionately lack access to quality park assets and, as a result, have less opportunity to enjoy the immense benefits parks offer.

To close this “park equity” gap, parks and recreation agency leaders and their partners in government and communities must work together. A new research report suggests that examining park-funding decisions and ensuring investment strategies are grounded in equity are critical for a sustainable approach.

How Park Systems Are Funded
Park systems are most often funded through budget appropriations, dedicated tax and revenues, or fees. These funds are supplemented with resources from philanthropic organizations, state and federal grants, public-private partnerships, and a range of local sources. As with other infrastructure, parks rely on two types of funding: capital expenditure (acquiring and building new assets) and operations and maintenance (programming and protecting existing assets), each of which presents distinct challenges and opportunities. Sustainable funding for operations and maintenance is a perennial problem for many park systems (especially those in places with limited resources) because policymakers and planners typically see funding as the local jurisdiction’s responsibility. Capital funding, on the other hand, can and does come from multiple sources, including federal, state, and philanthropic grants.

Cities across the U.S. have varying capacities to tap into funding for parks and recreation. One determining factor is city size: the park department in Houston has a far larger budget than the one in Brownsville, Texas. Smaller cities, or places with less fiscal capacity, must carefully consider the park’s users and align funding accordingly. Another factor is the ability of parks and recreation agencies to forge partnerships. For example, the Willian T. Penn Foundation has been pivotal in ensuring equitable park investing in Philadelphia through the Rebuild Initiative. Collaborating with the local philanthropist has encouraged Philadelphia agencies to be mindful of park development and maintenance.

Regardless, there still is not enough funding to go around. Park departments are often pushed to be nimble and innovative in attracting and using funding. Most of the emerging innovative funding opportunities are capital investments, with operations and maintenance funded through more traditional sources. But park departments can leverage funding by accessing new and different streams, braiding and blending funding, and tapping into traditional streams in new ways.

Improving public parks can have unintended negative consequences, however. In particular, property values in nearby low-income neighborhoods can increase rapidly, leading to higher taxes for property owners, higher rents for tenants, and even displacement and erasure of neighborhood culture. Park agencies do not want their investments to create this perverse scenario—known as “green gentrification”—nor do they always have the ability to solve it. And underinvesting in community parks is not the answer. However, agencies can be a part of the solution by engaging communities in planning so the parks built align with their needs and desires. Park agencies and their partners can also ensure that investments align with other local programs and policies to help mitigate displacement effects.

Photo: © Can Stock Photo / etienjones

Tips For Park Leaders, Advocates, And Partners
Promoting park equity and ensuring that communities have an active voice at the table can be a complex process. After reviewing the experiences of several places that have been addressing park-equity gaps, several takeaways have been drawn for the groups:

• Demonstrate the broader impacts and benefits of parks to build a coalition of support.

Parks have tremendous value that spans different sectors, including health, environmental sustainability, disaster resilience, and transportation connectivity. But funding rarely aligns with these benefits, and park systems are vulnerable to budget cuts in lean times. To broaden the funding base, advocates might identify and measure the link between parks and outcomes in various sectors, then share this information with other public agencies and private philanthropic funders. One relatively clear link is between parks and green infrastructure, such as rain gardens, dense tree canopies, and other nature-based solutions to environmental change. Camden leveraged New Jersey’s revolving fund for stormwater-management practices, construction of 17 new rain gardens, and a 5.5-acre riverfront park. The initiative has created benefits for the community, addressed the city’s stormwater-management responsibilities, and secured funding for improved parks. Relationships across sectors can also contribute to sustainable operations as funds are set aside for regular maintenance of these park-based assets.

• Leverage local talents and resources.

Communities often value their parks highly. Park systems can leverage this goodwill in partnerships with community groups that raise resources and secure in-kind labor and skills, making more public money available to communities with less capacity to support their parks. Conservancies, such as the Central Park Conservancy and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, advocate for parks, raise philanthropic resources, push equity conversations, and facilitate conversations between communities and park agencies. Some cities have embraced community ownership and stewardship of local parks. Crispus Attucks Park in Washington, D.C., is owned and managed by the surrounding residents. Open to the public, this park creates a green asset with minimal public investment, either capital or ongoing.

• Blend, braid, and think outside the box to bridge capital gaps.

Creatively blending different funding sources for a single project is a solution for many park systems, particularly those in small and medium-sized cities with limited local resources. Blending funding requires seeing the multiple roles parks play, developing strong relationships with different local and state partners, and thinking creatively about how funding can be layered. Braiding and blending different funding (e.g., philanthropy, federal grants, local bonds) into the stack for one project can enable larger projects and creates a broader coalition of support, with different entities rooting for the project to succeed. In New York, the Yonkers Greenway project revitalized the downtown area with a large park converted from a brownfield site. The project received funding from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields program and several additional sources, such as the state Department of Transportation and state environmental funds.

• Tap traditional funding avenues in new ways.

Most park systems are funded primarily through regular budget appropriations, dedicated taxes or bond revenue, and fees and earned revenue. Cities are finding ways to embed an equity lens within these traditional funding sources. San Francisco Recreation and Parks, for example, offers scholarships to low-income households to cover between 50 and 100 percent of recreation-program fees. Although the city earns about a quarter of its revenue from fees, it has prioritized altering the payment structure to expand access to park resources. Meanwhile, Los Angeles County uses a tried-and-true mechanism—a dedicated parcel tax—to identify park equity gaps and help bridge them.

These issues reflect a growing desire by park agencies, political leaders, philanthropies, communities, and other partners to confront inequities in parks and green space. Park agencies across the country and abroad are willing and eager to share their lessons and learn from those of others. Parks are only one piece of a larger equity puzzle. But by meaningfully engaging communities, thinking creatively about solutions, and critically examining their funding sources and decisions, park agencies are helping lead the way.

Kimberly Burrowes is a training and technical-assistance specialist with the Research to Action Lab at the Urban Institute, where she works with local government agencies and nonprofits to coordinate and deliver training and technical assistance to tackle policy challenges.

Matthew Eldridge is a policy-program manager in the Research to Action Lab at the Urban Institute and the research products manager of Urban’s Pay for Success Initiative. For more information, visit https://www.urban.org/.