Pocket parks can improve public life with minimal requirements
Community parks are often celebrated as the epitome of urban park experiences, as evidenced in Google results, bustling vehicular traffic, and ambient sounds present. However, leaders tend to overlook the invaluable opportunity to forge community bonds through the intimate spaces of smaller parks. Not all citizens go to parks after a 9-5 shift in a minivan with their kids, ready for active recreation. Moreover, rethinking the impacts of smaller parks, pocket parks, plazas, and multi-destination greenways is paramount in delivering on the promise of excellent parklands for all citizens in urban regions and beyond.
A Changing Paradigm
As leaders in this sector, we know the benefits of parks, but to build great (sometimes small) parks, we need to understand whom they serve (the people), what resources we leverage (the land), and why their benefits extend to residents.
When we recall the historical context of American parklands, that value was defined by the ability to distance people from…other people. Booming industrial societies grew with much of their value being placed in density, yet urban planning had not yet caught up with citizens’ needs; thus, parks were meant to provide a much more bucolic experience—an escape from urbanity, separated from the patterns of urban living.
There now exists a changing paradigm in urban park design: smaller parks can be critical in serving a wider range of community needs. Their form and presence throughout cities ensure that greenspaces are integrated into the daily lives of urban residents, rather than being separate destinations. By fostering connections, parks can catalyze community building at a local scale, while also serving ecological needs. They can mitigate heat islands, restore biodiversity, and improve air quality—all while providing conviviality in public spaces. Design can maximize the impact of even the smallest green areas, turning them into vital, multifunctional, community assets.
Pocket-Park Design Elements
When we speak of pocket parks, neighborhood parks, and popups on a hyperlocal scale, there are a few key elements to consider in basic planning. NRPA notes that successful pocket parks have four primary qualities:
- They are accessible.
- They let users engage in activities.
- They are comfortable spaces with a good image.
- They are sociable places where people meet each other and take visitors.
Smaller parks hold an inherent cost advantage. Their size allows for greater flexibility in form and in their offerings, and requires that little square footage goes unnoticed or without deliberate planning. Smaller parks dotted across an urban fabric, or in areas with no other practical use, are quicker to design, build, and maintain—and often quite accessible to common passersby. Their very purpose is to serve people where they are. Again, they are often part of a journey, though they can be a destination. By identifying underutilized parcels in greater downtown regions, trail systems, or neighborhoods, park professionals can bring to the masses a small portion of land with large impact.
Strategic placement allows for people to gather near valuable community events or destinations. La Reina Wheeler, of Ferndale Parks (Mich.), notes the success of Shiffer Park in downtown Ferndale. Being its smallest park doesn’t make it less accessible to the masses; it often hosts visitors for the Nine on Nine concert series and remains an integral part of downtown placemaking year-round. Lauryn Kabrich, of Raleigh Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources (N.C.), has seen her city adopt new placemaking strategies across trail networks, as pocket parks and well-designed trailhead nodes create additional places for residents to enjoy while advancing a greater system of accessibility. In cities, there are many much-needed services and places that, if developed creatively, can be employed at scale to serve the needs of residents and visitors.
Raleigh has worked with a new 520-acre development planned near the convergence of Neuse River Trail and Walnut Creek Trail. By being firm in developmental requirements, such as requiring healthy pocket-park spaces and mobility access, leaders seek to address residents’ active and passive recreational needs. Kabrich says developers are offered a “menu” of pocket-park recreational features, to suggest they should be integrated into the development in a way that fits the overall form. This way, if there are hundreds of new residential units in a locale, the inhabitants can also be accompanied by a mix of uses and offer more people greater proximity to parks and place-based natural amenities. Those looking to live in a neighborhood crafted primarily for residential purposes can have trail access points, shade, a few small sport courts, benches, and more at their service.
Pocket Parks In Action
Smaller pocket parks are active in nature. Since they’re often situated in spaces through which humans already pass, they catalyze social connections, prompt people to actively stay in a public space for longer than a trip demands, and make time for play, rest, or wandering in a way that would not otherwise be possible without a park’s existence. Megan Greene, an Assistant Park Planner for the Wheaton Park District (Ill.), notes that the area’s average pocket park size is less than 2 acres, and many have features that are heavily used and critical for hyperlocal recreation. Notably, the small ice-skating pond at C.L. Herrick Park draws local visitors, and during the warmer months, delivers bountiful shade, seating, and circuitous paths that invite neighbors into the corner pocket and playground. In this context, it’s largely situated away from bustling activity, though it serves locals in a way that larger parks can’t. Conversely, Wheeler, of Ferndale, notes that the city’s density, urban grid, and commercialized regions near downtown call for visitors to spend unplanned time in these spaces where additional seating, shade, art, and activities exist. This, in turn, fosters greater civic pride, produces a socialized downtown, and encourages spending.
A great pocket park maintains its image not only through its form but in its function, user sentiment, and the types of activities that are encouraged there. If a small park space provides seating outside a few frequently used businesses and has outdoor games to play, one may spend extra time there. Children may find new ways to play and interact with others. If art is present and showcases nearby talent, this can build a greater reverence for local ideas, cultures, and traditions. Additional sensory inputs through public instruments, painted surfacing, interactive art, and educational elements can make a space more convivial and attract users for longer periods. The extended presence of people activates a pocket of public space, creates a sense of safety, and provides a social cue for passersby that the area is accommodating for business, leisure, and at times, play.
This image—as well as the objective measures of a place’s worth—can be reinforced through community-partner interests. New York City has a public database of all privately owned public spaces (POPS). Some are indoor plazas, courtyards, walkable arcades, and natural spaces; some, however, are pocket parks. If leaders look at one of the more noteworthy ones, Greenacre Park, they’ll see shade trees, water features, and seating. Not all municipal park agencies will have something similar, though collaboration with private squares, plazas, courtyards, and entryways to greater areas of public commerce is a healthy way to offer delightful spaces for visitors. Whether this means installing bollards, educational signage, additional lighting for an artful walkway, or pollinators in a corridor often not thought of as hospitable to the human experience, adapting a place for greater civic enjoyment often doesn’t require decades-long financing or grueling construction work.
In Raleigh’s park system, the emerging .57-acre Caraleigh Park seeks to incorporate state-of-the-art universal design practices, while also being in close proximity to a planned bus rapid-transit line. Inner-park features, such as sensory play, shade, new playground elements, and updated court surfacing, make for enjoyable times at the park—though ensuring it lies in an urban grid that can be reached accessibly and reliably by all is a goal worth striving for. In Champaign Parks’ system, Stampofski Park is simply a triangular divider for downtown traffic that emerged through historic need; now, it boasts plantings, an American flag, and a war memorial while facing the heart of downtown Champaign. Do people drive to visit it? No. Is it a final destination for many? No. However, it serves as a must-needed traffic divider and pedestrian crossing, provides artful framing of the downtown blocks, guides traffic well, and serves as an additional 1,000 square feet of verdant landscape in one of the densest areas of town.
Smaller spaces are flexible, adaptive, and can more readily meet the needs of growing populations. It doesn’t take much to identify underutilized spaces in our urban fabric or imagine what can be done with public spaces near existing activities. If it’s safe, playful, stimulates the senses, and enhances a leisure or play experience, it will likely be visited time and time again. There are and always will be natural constraints. Therefore, explore the interstitial, the underutilized spaces, the hidden corners—and see pocket parks as a means of maximizing happiness per acre.
