Is your community ready for a parkour park?
Parkour has been around for centuries and provides a full-body workout, which has led to the development of current fitness trails and military obstacle courses. Modern parkour consists of daredevils leaping between buildings, somersaulting off walls, and scaling tall buildings. This doesn’t really sound like an activity a recreation and parks director would be interested in, but it does sound exactly like a skatepark proposal from the 1990s: a wild idea presented by a ragtag group of kids and young adults to duplicate city obstacles for use in a public park.
Just as public skateparks have proven to be a huge success, with over 20,000 in the U.S. alone, recent developments suggest that parkour parks will also be successful, not only as a space for athletes but also for the sport’s spectators to gather, watch, and be inspired.