Parks, gardens and open natural spaces provide benefits to a resident's health and wellness, while also mitigating stormwater impacts and improving air quality.
One in three residents in the U.S. do not have a green space or a park within a 10-minute walk from home. Most of these areas without parks are in low-income communities. 10-Minute Walk is a program to improve safe, easy access to green spaces through policies and solutions for planning public spaces.
Building upon the 10-minute walk policy framework, the Trust for Public Land has launched its Park Equity Policy Incubator. The program will collaborate with cities to workshop local policy challenges, institutionalize park needs assessments and community engagement, leverage public financing tools and explore land use policies and provide tools for multi-sector collaboration and political will building.
The Incubator program is a year-long program that will provide virtual workshops, subject matter experts and case studies to strengthen your cities’ approaches to policy change and peer support and networking. Applications for the Incubator program are due September 25, 2024.
Other programs of the Trust for Public Land include Connecting People to Parks: Strategies to Increase Park Access and Parks Plus: Economic Vitality.
Connecting People to Parks: Strategies to Increase Park Access is a program track that will examine park access from the perspective of enabling physical and social conditions, and integration of mobility planning to ensure spaces are safe and inclusive. This program starts in October 2024 and ends in June 2025. Registration for the program is due September 30, 2024.
Parks Plus: Economic Vitality discusses how parks and green spaces can play a role in boosting economic vitality and how parks can benefit small businesses, workforce recruitment, tourism, and more for inclusive and equitable growth. The program starts in November 2024 and ends in July 2025. Registration is due October 30, 2024.