Parks can bring outdoor power

Parks and green spaces that enable community engagement and organizing are often overlooked interventions for building community power. Parks have enormous unrealized potential to serve a critical function for the nation: social infrastructure.

The creation of new parks represents a powerful way to regenerate both the land and the communities that inhabit it. By restoring damaged landscapes, providing valuable green spaces, and fostering environmental education and awareness, parks can play a significant role in healing the land and building more sustainable and resilient communities.

As cities become more densely populated and concern about the impact of climate change increases, planners, elected officials, and community advocates are using parks to help address critical urban infrastructure and public health issues. Parks are recognized as powerful tools for urban communities and local economies.

The presence of pocket parks in cities is like an oasis in the desert for cities with high buildings, which not only provide ecosystem services as other forms of urban green infrastructure but also work as a low-cost green infrastructure that is suitable for high-density cities, .

City parks are typically created and managed by local governments that are responsible for engaging neighbors in park design and programming, theoretically with the purpose of reflecting community input in shaping the environment.

Envisioning, planning, creating, and stewarding a park exemplifies social infrastructure, enabling communities to address social issues on their terms and replace despair and frustration with hope and action. To respond to the times, parks and public spaces must become not just passive spaces but catalysts in forming a healthy polity.