PARKS, RX
SAY YOU’RE A DOCTOR and you’ve got patients who are overweight. You can tell them to get more exercise, and then watch them nod obediently while you wonder if they’ll actually try it out. But what if you could hand them an actual prescription for exercise—one that included a map to a park within walking distance of the patient’s home, along with recommendations on what kind of activity to try once they got there? That’s the idea behind “park prescriptions,” an emerging movement that’s pair- ing the health care system with the park system to fight the obesity epidemic. “This connects people not just to physical activity, but to nature,” says Zarnaaz
Bashir, the director of strategic health initiatives for the National Recreation and Park Association. “Once they’ve made that connection, they’re more likely to con- tinue [exercising outdoors].” In Washington, DC, volunteers rated 350 area parks and put them into a database for doctors to reference when advising their patients. In San Diego, parks provide free recreation programs and fitness classes to children with prescriptions. And in South Carolina, where two-thirds of the population is overweight or obese, a prescription gets you free entry to one of 30 state parks. As independent efforts like these gather momentum, park and health leaders
are looking to a national standard for park prescriptions as the next logical step. “As our world becomes more urbanized, people are going to move into tighter and tighter spaces,” says Kristin Wheeler of the Institute at the Golden Gate, a parks research group. “We’re going to need green spaces to make us healthier.”
CITIES ARE LOOKING TO ROADWAYS TO PROVIDE REAL ESTATE FOR
MORE HUMAN INTERACTIONS.
Transforming railways is an especially attractive option in “built- out” cities where space for new parks is hard to come by. “With urban areas, it’s hard to find 20, 30, or 40 acres of wide-open space,” says Peter Harnik, director of The Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence. “Finding a rail trail is more feasible.” Riverfronts offer another opportu- nity to convert disused industrial areas into public spaces that people
48 · LAND&PEOPLE · SPRING/SUMMER 2014
can use. Once trash-strewn and pol- luted, urban waterways have benefited from federal clean-water regulations. Now, cities can reclaim their rivers: The Buffalo Bayou in Houston is being transformed into a network of green space and bicycle paths, dot- ted with music venues and dog parks. Denver’s South Platte River has been reinvigorated with more than 100 miles of hiking and biking trails. Even Los Angeles is creating riverfront parks—some even open for fishing.
TAKING BACK THE STREETS In 2009, New Yorkers woke up one day to discover that a portion of the city’s famous Times Square had been cordoned off with orange traffic bar- rels. Cheap lawn furniture was strewn about like a stateside Riviera waiting for sunbathers. It was a pilot project: the city had decided it didn’t have enough open space for people to congregate and socialize. So why not carve some out from the streets? It didn’t take long for New Yorkers to warm to the idea and the pilot soon went permanent, with concrete planters replacing the barrels and the lawn furniture swapped out for stylish café tables. In the following years, about 50
other pedestrian plazas have prolifer- ated throughout the five boroughs. “[Streets are] an asset that’s largely hidden in plain sight,” said New York City’s then-transportation chief Janette Sadik-Khan at a TED Talk last year. “The lesson from New York
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