New guide provides creative funding strategy support for successful park development
Parks are powerful antidotes to many social, economic, political, and environmental ills. They improve public health by reducing stress and supporting physical activity, foster social cohesion and communal gathering, reduce crime, and increase community engagement. Parks boost local economies, create jobs, clean the air, and build resilience. At their best, they can even bridge political divides and foster common ground.
Yet, despite wide-ranging superpower benefits, parks often rank lower on funding priority lists compared to other forms of infrastructure. So, the national nonprofit Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR) partnered with landscape architecture and urban planning firm WRT and a Community Advisory Panel composed of park professionals and community leaders to publish Let’s Create a Park: Planning a Creative Park Funding Strategy.
Through conversations with communities with park-development projects across the West Coast, CCLR Senior Associate Sarah Fingerhood found the two biggest barriers to park development are a lack of financial strategy and limited institutional capacity.