A conversation with Sarah Fingerhood, Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR) Senior Associate about how to turn brownfields and abandoned or under-utilized spaces into safe, viable public parks.

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.

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.

This conversation provide ideas and strategies for solving these two problems and creating more parks for your community. Enjoy!