Urban Parks and the Public Realm: Equity and Access in Post-COVID Cities

Held on Friday, April 30, 2021. Watch a recording or read a recap below.

Recap by Claudia Chiappa

On Friday, April 30, 2021 the Boston University Initiative on Cities (IOC) and The Trust for Public Land hosted an event on the future of urban parks in a post-COVID world featuring IOC Co-Director Katharine Lusk, Mayor Byron Brown of Buffalo, NY, and Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland, CA.

The discussion, moderated by Diane Regas, President and CEO of The Trust for Public Land, examined in-depth what some national and local leaders have done to address accessibility and quality of parks, and in what ways the COVID-19 pandemic has changed outdoor space in cities.

The use of outdoor space has gained significant focus since the COVID-19 pandemic. With widespread lockdowns and restrictions isolating people in their homes, parks and greenspaces became more valuable than ever to provide a space for relief. In many neighborhoods, cities had to figure out how to adapt their outdoor spaces to cater to residents’ new needs.

“Parks are not just nice to have, parks are absolutely necessary,” said Regas. “As Americans endured the health impacts, the economic challenges, the isolation brought on by the pandemic, the fight for racial justice, outdoors became a lifeline for all of us.”

Mayor Schaaf talked about the importance of having parks as places that grow a sense of community.

“It’s the soul of our city,” said Schaaf about Lake Merritt, one of the most used greenspaces in Oakland. “These public spaces are what connect us to a sense of community. The idea that everyone in our cities is part of our family and we have a mutual responsibility to one another.”

Access to Parks and Equity

To paint a broad picture on the issue of quality and accessibility of greenspaces, Lusk presented some of the results gathered through the 2020 Menino Survey of Mayors, an annual survey that collects insights on different aspects of leadership and public life from several U.S. mayors.

The survey asked mayors about their perceptions of city parks, public access, and equity. It found that most mayors believe their parks are safe and accessible to everyone within walking distance. According to the Trust for Public Land, however, 100 million people across the U.S. do not live within a 10-minute walk of a park.

Overall, mayors recognized that there are inequities in the quality of parks, which tend to differ depending on whether the space serves communities of color or white communities. In fact, Lusk said, only 40% of mayors believe that the quality of greenspace is the same in all parks.

Most mayors were not too far off in their assessment. The Trust for Public Land found that parks accessible to communities of color are half the size despite serving five times more people per acre than parks in white communities.

“Our data around access to quality parks shows that it’s too often the case for low-income neighborhoods, communities of color that don’t have access to quality parks,” Regas said. “And those are the same neighborhoods that have been hit so hard by COVID.”

Mayor Brown said equitable access to greenspace has been an important goal for his city.

“How we think about parks is critically important to how we think about equity in our communities,” noted Brown. “It’s hard for people to have good quality of life if they don’t feel that the allocation of resources is equitable.”

Lusk and IOC researchers found that mayors’ perceptions of their greenspaces differed based on geographical regions. For example, mayors in the Northeast were more likely to report “strong walk access” to parks and more likely to report inequities in park quality than mayors from the South.

Parks During the Pandemic

As people found a new appreciation for parks and greenspaces during the COVID-19 pandemic, mayors often chose to change and adapt some of their outdoor spaces to accommodate their residents’ needs. 92% percent of mayors, Lusk said, created new space for outdoor dining over 2020, but they implemented few other changes when it comes to traffic or road closure.

“What we’re most interested now to see is the extent to which, where the changes have been taking place, and this new demand and understanding and appreciation for this reallocation for the public realm,” noted Lusk. “We are curious to see the extent to which constituents pressure mayors to hang on to some of those new uses.”

Mayor Schaaf said that during the past year, a lot of the efforts went into repurposing spaces for park-like uses. This means taking already existing areas and implementing changes to ensure these spaces are safer and more accessible for pedestrians and cyclists. Many residents are now asking that these changes become permanent, said Schaaf. “To see streets liberated from the dominance of cars, to see them become a place of community gathering, where families could get outside and scooter and ride bikes, and doing it in a safe way,” said Schaaf.

Looking forward, the survey found that mayors expect residents to continue to visit parks, walk, and bike more frequently than they did before the pandemic. This means a continued attention to how public spaces are accessed and maintained in the future. Despite their predictions, however, Lusk said that mayors foresee dramatic cuts to their parks and recreation budgets, which will make it harder for them to effectively care for outdoor spaces.