Outside Boston, Park Offers Multisensory Experience for All

The nonprofit Alzheimer Scotland hosts outdoor events in Cairngorms National Park for people with dementia and their families to give them the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors safely.

At the vanguard of initiatives to increase diversity among visitors to the National Parks are groups like Oakland, CA-based H.E.A.T.—Hiking Every Available Trail -- which uses social media and group park expeditions to increase minority groups' awareness, use, trust and enjoyment of the outdoors. Emerging alongside changes in policy—such as the Park Services' creation of a Diversity and Inclusion Office—, HEAT demonstrates how local organizers in minority and, often, urban regions around the U.S. are moving the presence of diversity at National Parks from rarity to normality, with studies and polls revealing the positive changes in attendance and interest.

Urban planners in Belgium are creating play spaces, known as the “speelweefselplan,” to give children more room to be outside. The design process includes asking schoolchildren about their routes to and from school, and then planners map out ways to make those routes more interactive. As cities grow and traditional parks are limited, this model shows a way that cities can continue to be welcoming for children.

Gathering Place is the name of a new park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is a large-scale creative park project that, rather than receiving funding from the local government, was funded entirely through a local philanthropic foundation. One goal of the park is to bring different areas of the city together--though it remains to be seen if this will work as well as if privately-funded public spaces are effective in the future.

Disability activists have used nonviolent direct action for decades, including lying in the street to protest inaccessible public transit and crawling up the steps of the U.S. Capital to support the Americans with Disabilities Act. “We have never gone out a door that we do not have a solution for,” says ADAPT member Dawn Russell. “That’s ADAPT 101.”

Gallaudet University has interior design and architecture built with the needs and preferences of people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing in mind. By analyzing the effects of lighting, color, space, and other design principles emphatically, restaurants and other public spaces can be similarly accommodating for individuals with different hearing abilities.

San Diego residents may be seeing more placemaking projects, like murals or pedestrian plazas, because of a more streamlined permitting process. The city, notorious for making such projects difficult and expense to install, passed legislation and will be reviewing it to assess whether it should be expanded. San Diego has also created a fund that can help offset the costs of permit fees and other expenses.

After falling behind in urban planning and innovation in the 1990s and early 2000s, Oklahoma City created a limited-time sales tax called MAPS to pay for capital projects, like the new Scissortail Park. The tax consisted of a series of one-cent sales taxes and has brought in over $1.5 billion and has helped fund convention centers, other urban green areas, and more.

PHS LandCare, with support from the city, develops small vacant lots into mini-parks that bring people out of their homes and engage with their community. A 2018 study found that people living near LandCare lots reported a decrease in feelings of depression and a reduction in feelings of poor mental health. The city's role is important to the program’s success, especially in providing money to hire contractors to maintain the green spaces, especially local residents and formerly incarcerated people. Sites must be in low-income neighborhoods and near business areas, schools, and recreation centers.

The nonprofit Coombs Outdoors runs summer and winter camps for youth to experience and learn about the outdoors. The camps are in high demand because of the affordable price made possible by donor subsidies.