IN THE CAVERNOUS GYMNASIUM OF JOHN F. KENNEDY HIGH SCHOOL IN RICHMOND, CALIFORNIA, 75 PEOPLE ARE REDESIGNING A PARK.
It’s nine acres of patchy grass and dingy play equipment across the street from the school, and it’s long overdue for an update. The hosts of today’s event—including The Trust for Public Land—are canvassing neighbors to find out what improvements the community wants most.
A half-dozen folding tables are set up around the perimeter of the gym, bearing title cards like “Health and Wellness” and “Family Zone and Children’s Play Area.” Big aerial photo- graphs of the park are spread out on the tables. Prints depict- ing play structures hang on the walls. At the “Neighborhood Livability” station, Sequoia Erasmus, an educator from Contra Costa Health Services, is trying to rope in a dozen middle- and high-school students before they lose interest and filter out the gym’s side doors. “Say you’re going to the park,” Erasmus prompts them. “Which streets do you take, to be safe?”
The kids pore over a street map of Richmond. They’re given green and red stickers to mark good and bad intersections. The map quickly fills with red dots. “This is where the gas station is,” says Relandre Lincoln, pressing his finger to the map. “It’s pretty bad!” Another stu- dent writes on a red sticker, “crackheads”; a dot on a nearby school is labeled “fights.” At the gas station cross-streets, the sticker just says “ghetto.” Another dot, this one green, dubs nearby Nichol Park “safe, chill.” Richmond sits across the water from San Francisco, just north of Berkeley. Despite its proximity to world-class univer- sities and the runaway wealth of Silicon Valley startups, it can
feel a world away. In 2007, the city was ranked the ninth-most dangerous in America by number of homicides. The biggest employer in this majority-minority population of 107,500 is Chevron: three years ago, an explosion at the refinery sent a plume of black smoke rising miles into the air; in the after- math, 15,000 people sought medical treatment for respiratory problems. Day and night, uncovered coal trains traveling from inland states like Colorado and Utah rattle through neighbor- hoods en route to the Richmond waterfront, dusting homes and sidewalks with black soot.
Still, Richmond is a city of great pride. Crime has declined sharply in recent years, thanks in part to new and innova- tive community-policing programs. UC Berkeley is expanding its Richmond research campus, and the Bay Area’s booming real-estate market is attracting new homebuyers. A progres- sive city government has set ambitious goals for community health and wellness. And neglected public spaces are finally starting to get some attention: with the help of organizations like The Trust for Public Land, Richmond’s 32-mile shoreline, rail-trail greenways, and neighborhood parks—including John F. Kennedy—are becoming the focal point for a larger conver- sation about how to make this city a better place to live. The crowd inside the gym is a part of that conversation. By the end of the Kennedy Park renovation meeting, the walls are covered with posters proposing big ideas in neon marker: go-carts, water slides, a football stadium. But there are also more modest suggestions: bathrooms, water fountains, a place to sit in the shade.
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