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With the introduction of structured play and recreation programs in parks, their func- tion became more ..... The lawn at the local McDonald's is well appreciated as the .... but do they do that, will they take care of it, will they listen to me? .... Integrated solutions to any urban management issue run counter to business as usual.
THE REINVENTION OF PUBLIC GREEN SPACE1

Stephanie Pincetl2 Institute of the Environment University of California—Los Angeles Elizabeth Gearin School of Policy Planning and Development University of Southern California

Abstract: Much attention has been paid to preserving land at the urban fringe, and to the negative effects of sprawl and its costs. There is increasing recognition that enhancing green, public open spaces in cities provides a strategy to make those cities more sustainable, more livable, and more equitable. This involves a new approach to public spaces that integrates infrastructure needs, takes equity into account, and reexamines the range of uses public spaces offer. We consider the potential for urban greening through a case study in the dense inner core of Los Angeles that probed local resident attitudes and values toward a more inclusive strategy, and that measured the potential value of nature’s services in the urban fabric using a GIS program. [Key words: Los Angeles, public urban open space, sustainability, regreening, GIS.]

Our collective perception of cities depends on the landscape of open spaces. They lace a city with their voids.… City is not so much a construction as a landscape of open spaces. —Lawrence Halprin, 1979 Great parks are the key to more livable towns and cities. —Fred Kent, President, Project for Public Spaces INTRODUCTION Recent U.S. urban planning and geography literature suggests that urban greening and parks have experienced a resurgence of interest (Greenhalgh and Worpole, 1995; Kayden, 2000; Ingrassia, 2000; Platt, 2000; Barrette, 2000, 2001; Thompson, 2001; Enlow, 2002; Heynen, 2003; Markowitz, 2003). Increasingly understood for their ecological, social, and economic importances, the role of parks and green public open spaces in the urban fabric seems to be undergoing another historic evolution. As the history of parks demonstrates, their perceived functions have changed over time. We posit that today

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Our thanks to Robert Lake, David Sloane, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, and several reviewers for their helpful comments, and to the Haynes Foundation for its support for this research. 2 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Stephanie Pincetl, Visiting Professor, Institute of the Environment, LaKretz Hall, Suite 300, 619 Charles E. Young Drive East, Box 951496, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1496; e-mail: [email protected]

365 Urban Geography, 2005, 26, 5, pp. 365–384. Copyright © 2005 by V. H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.

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those functions are again undergoing a re-evaluation of their contribution to urban sustainability, including the redressing of urban environmental inequalities (Heynen, 2003; Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003). For the purposes of this discussion, urban sustainability means enhancing economic and social well-being, and ameliorating ecological processes and environmental quality. This paper presents the results of a structured two-year research study in Los Angeles hypothesizing that environmental sustainability can be enhanced through urban greening, but we did not know how local residents would value such an approach. We employed several research methods in the course of the study, including a GIS analysis, focus groups, and a survey. We conducted our research in a high-density, low-income, largely immigrant neighborhood with no public parks or greened spaces. We focused our environmental sustainability research on spaces that were publicly owned, or could be purchased for public ownership. This included streetscapes, (planting strips, sidewalks, and alleyways) and vacant and abandoned parcels. Further, the study specifically modeled the greening of “open” spaces that would increase permeability and storm-water recharge potential. Our aim was to draw attention to the potential of the already existing urban fabric to rededicate environmental externalities, such as air pollution, through a rethinking of existing open spaces. As Rees (1995) and Beatle (2000) pointed out, it is in [North American] cities that the greatest opportunities exist to make changes necessary for general sustainability. At the same time, a green infrastructure approach provides a venue to address environmental inequalities in densely populated and socioeconomically diverse cities such as Los Angeles (Heynen, 2003). We address this hypothesis through a series of focus groups with local residents. In this paper we discuss the potential of greened public spaces for their symbiotic economic, ecological and social benefits, the constraints to providing urban green spaces, and an emerging trend to provide these spaces. Moreover, we suggest the need to think beyond park spaces—designed and programmed public areas of the city—and consider what Joan Woodward is calling “feral land”—remnant, unprogrammed spaces that are open—as part of the greening potential of cities that can offer public and environmental benefits.3 First, we contextualize this discussion with a review of the evolution of U.S. parks that demonstrates the changing notion of the common good, the roles of local government, recreation and leisure, and the concept of nature in the city. We next describe Los Angeles in terms of its provision of public parks and greened open spaces. It is the lack of parks and their unequal distribution in the city that initially motivated our research, and caused us to consider how parks may also contribute to a larger agenda of sustainability. Having set the historical, geographical, and institutional context, we describe our research and findings. We conclude by both pointing out some of the important fiscal and political constraints that inhibit the creation and maintenance of parks, and discussing alternative greening scenarios.

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Joan Woodward, California PolyTechnic Institute in Pomona California is currently writing a book about this topic. We would like to thank Terrence Young for his assistance in clarifying these ideas.

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Reconceptualizing Urban Green Space Open spaces—streets, alleyways, passageways, avenues, parking spaces, malls, leftover triangles, parks, playgrounds, waterfronts, railways, rooftops, and more—are all places we use and which create the communal life we call “city” (Halprin, 1979, p. 3). Parks have evolved in their design, function, and size as cities have grown and changed, reflecting different societal priorities and understandings of cities, race and class, landscapes, and human-nature relations. Moreover, urban parks and open spaces have been a part of town planning in varied and inconsistent ways. Consider that in the Hispanic Southwest, plazas were part of city designs, and in the French-influenced South, park squares were integrated into neighborhoods. But for those new towns that were plotted on the grid pattern in much of the West, and for cities of the East, parks and public open spaces were often only lightly integrated. While prior to the growth of large metropolitan areas in the United States there was little need for dedicated urban open space, even with urban growth there was little agreement as to what an urban park should be (Schuyler, 1986). For example, Central Park, originally designed as an oasis of rural beauty, evolved to accommodate modern recreation with athletic fields in the place of pastoral meadows, and the construction of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Schuyler, 1986) reflected yet other priorities. Rapid industrialization and inadequate sanitation infrastructure in growing Eastern cities raised concerns about urban residents’ limited access to clean air and nature. Park advocates argued for the creation of parks to counter the unhealthy physical aspects of the city (Harvey, 2003). The primary impetus for this earliest urban park creation and its subsequent pastoral design was as a rejuvenative antidote to the city environment itself. By the turn of the century, social reformers believed “parks could engender a better society” (Young, 1995). Park design typically incorporated play equipment, with structured play seen as a deterrent to youth crime (Cranz, 1982; Draper, 1996). The experience of nature as a primary park function was de-emphasized and the use and purpose of parks changed to meet a changed city, and to create mechanisms of acculturation and control for newly arrived immigrants and their children. With the introduction of structured play and recreation programs in parks, their function became more complex. Passive nature parks, as well as intense activity-oriented parks with swimming pools, recreation centers, and tennis and basketball courts were being developed simultaneously, but different parts of the city received different amenities. Decisions about what would get built and where, were informed by ideas of race and class, and available space. Suburbanization and the rise of leisure for the middle classes led the mix and emphasis of needs served by parks to evolve further (Rome, 2001), and ushered in the concept of open space, which initially implied a reserved and unimproved natural space in contrast to parks as designed spaces. This call for open space preservation at the suburban frontier and its integration into new suburbs did not look back to the city and to the property abandonment and racial and economic segregation of older urban neighborhoods in cities from New York to Chicago. More recently, organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street program, the San Francisco Bay Region’s Greenbelt Alliance, and the national Center for Livable Communities have identified with Geddesian garden city interpretations of open space provision and

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related them to inner-city commercial and residential revitalization (Burch, 2002). This represents another historic shift, moving beyond traditional ideas of parks to a broader concept regarding the role of public green spaces in the city. Yet, as our case study illustrates, neighborhoods lacking civic capacity have limited success in developing parks and other green spaces. Parks and Green Space Opportunities in Los Angeles Los Angeles is one of the most park-poor cities in the United States and ranks last among major cities in per capita open space. With its predominantly suburban ethos, this situation has been little recognized until recently, spurred by high population growth and densification in the older inner core. At about four acres per 1,000 residents (City of Los Angeles Planning Department, 2000), provision of parklands falls far short of national standards, which range from 6.25–10.5 acres per 1,000 residents (National Parks and Recreation Association, 2000). Using data from the 2000 U.S. Census Bureau, government park Web pages, and information from the Center for Spatial Analysis and Remote Sensing at California State University, Los Angeles, researchers at the University of Southern California found that access to metropolitan Los Angeles parks varies strikingly with race. With accessibility defined as a park within a one-quarter-mile radius, Latinos have approximately 1.6 acres of parks for 1,000 people, African-Americans have 0.8 acres of parks per 1,000 people, Asians 1.2 acres per 1,000 and Whites 17.4 acres per 1,000 (Wolch et al., 2002). Moreover, a survey of Los Angeles parks indicated that parks located in inner-city neighborhoods were less clean and less well-maintained than parks in more affluent, San Fernando Valley neighborhoods (Loukaitou-Sideris and Stieglitz, 2001). This situation is the result, in part, of historic factors: lack of willingness on the part of city leaders to create parklands for fear of losing revenues at critical historical junctures (Hise and Deverell, 2000); and a suburban single-family development pattern in many parts of the city (Pincetl, 2003). Despite these obvious inequalities, the ability to create new large urban parks today, especially in underserved areas, is limited. Given that Los Angeles also faces an extreme housing shortage, especially of affordable housing, designating land for park development often represents an unacceptable trade-off between scarce housing and park provision, though there is little city money for the creation of either. Los Angeles has become both more dense and more urban over time, without having gone through the park building phase of other large metropolitan areas. Proposals for increasing parks in the 1930s were deemed too expensive (Hise and Deverell, 2000). A young, growing, and suburban city, it considered itself fundamentally different than its counterparts to the east. Now the second most dense metropolitan region in the United States. (Fulton et al., 2001), Los Angeles missed its historic opportunity to provide gracious large parks, scenic highways, and public open spaces. We posit that Los Angeles needs a new approach to the provision of parks and nature, one that acknowledges its density and coming of age as a city; it is no longer a string of suburbs and thus needs to rethink its urban morphology. Los Angeles is in a unique position to reshape its urban form and create public parks and green open spaces to serve the multiple purposes necessary for cities to become more sustainable. Such open space development would address the needs of the 21st century city, encompassing sustainability

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ends, as well as addressing the lack of park and open space of the disenfranchised, largely immigrant neighborhoods of the re-densified urban core. Case Study—Los Angeles Urban Green Space: Testing the Hypothesis Over a two-year period, researchers from the Sustainable Cities Program of the University of Southern California received funding from the J. Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation to study opportunities for creating new parks and public open spaces that would contribute multiple benefits for greater urban sustainability in the older inner core area of the city of Los Angeles. We focused on public spaces, and demonstrated different ways to modify these overlooked places in the built environment in order to increase the amount and quality of “greened” places, and to identify their potential environmental, social, and economic benefits. We were concerned first with determining whether the urban fabric itself had the capacity for greater greening given the area’s dearth of open spaces. Second, if greater greening was possible in this dense, hardscaped area, we wanted to measure the potential ecological and economic benefits of local greening to the neighborhood and the city. Third, we hoped to uncover resident” attitudes toward urban greening, in order to confirm our hypothesis regarding the importance of greening and social well-being. The study area is a 2.2-square-mile area in the Vermont/Western Corridor, 5 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The neighborhood is approximately three times denser than the city average, or about 36 residents per acre. The housing stock is 90% multifamily rental. Approximately 25% of the resident adults have not completed high school. Of the residents, 60% are foreign-born, living in enclaves of Thais, Koreans, Filipinos, Armenians, Russians, and Central Americans. The area—during our study period—had no neighborhood parks, community swimming pools, or recreation centers (Pincetl et al., 2003). Playing fields at the local community college served as de facto park space, although the college does not encourage such activity. The average income is 60% of the County average (City of Los Angeles Planning Department, 2000; Fig. 1). METHODS AND RESULTS Capacity for Greening During late 2000 and early 2001, we conducted field surveys at nine designated subsites within the study area. Summary data were calculated for each site, and the area’s capacity for greater greening was assessed via the use of CITYgreen, a geographic information system developed by the nonprofit organization American Forests (American Forests, 1999), that has been used to quantify the economic costs of ecosystem function losses resulting from increased urbanization at the urban fringe (Miller, 1995). CITYgreen models the benefits that natural systems provide to mitigate air pollution, the urban heat island effect, and stormwater runoff. It is based on empirical studies of air pollution removal, carbon storage and sequestration, which result in a description of the relationship between air pollution levels and the rate at which trees remove pollutants. The CITYgreen model also calculates the energy savings of shade trees; provides information about the quantity and temporal distribution of storm water flowing off study sites

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Fig. 1. Study area.

under scenarios with and without trees; and contains formulae for the translation of environmental benefits to economic terms, including calculating monetary benefits for pollution removal, energy usage and storm water reduction. Because this type of analysis is rarely conducted in urban areas, there is little understanding of the type and extent to which natural elements such as the urban forest, contribute to the city. To determine the potential capacity for increased provision of ecosystem services within the existing urban fabric, we developed two greening scenarios. The first, conservative, scenario involved improvements to public property, primarily the provision of a full complement of street trees. The second, more aggressive scenario involved adding trees to parking lots and other private property, using permeable surfaces for parking lots, “Hollywood” style semi-paved driveways, boulevard medians, converting vacant lots to parks, transforming alleys, and “sharing” residential streets.

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Benefits of Urban Greening Using the land-cover percentages, and information about tree location and characteristics, CITYgreen was used to calculate several environmental benefits, including the removal of five pollutants (ozone, pm10, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide) from the air by trees. The calculations indicated average benefits at $275 per cubic foot of potential avoided stormwater infrastructure costs, a reduction of residential energy bills by 10–20%, and measurable air pollution mitigation as a result of the increased tree canopy. (Pincetl et al., 2003; Longcore et al., 2004; Table 1). That ecosystem functions—nature’s services—can and should be quantified is an important aspect of urban sustainability research and implementation as it moves sustainability beyond an abstract argument. Work in valuation is still in an early stage, but interdisciplinary research by economists and natural scientists is adding to the understanding of how natural systems actually contribute to economic and social well-being, even in densely inhabited urban areas (Daily, 1997). One purpose of this research was to advance this understanding, and add a quantifiable dimension to the importance of urban greening for urban sustainability. This approach is not only utilitarian; an increase in nature’s services measurably improves the quality of the urban environment by reducing air pollution and cooling the ambient temperatures, effects especially important in heavily pollution-impacted areas. Moreover, standard theories about how economic processes operate do not account for the physical laws that govern the energy and matter transformations that form the basis of the production process. Biophysical analysts argue that ignoring such constraints prevents standard economic theory from fully accounting for the economic significance of nature to economic production (Cleveland, 1987). An ecological economics approach to valuing nature in the urban fabric is one step toward integrating a different set of metrics into how urban areas are planned and programmed. It recognizes and protects natural capital. Quantifying the actual benefits makes the case for urban sustainability more tangible. Residents’ Attitudes toward Urban Greening We were interested to uncover attitudes toward urban greening strategies of our resident population. For Los Angeles and other cities in the Western U.S. that are experiencing demographic growth and densification, this information is important because much of the growth is among immigrant populations, whose attitudes and values toward parks and open space are poorly understood. There is a growing body of research focused on understanding the values of open space held by different ethnic, racial and immigrant groups in the U.S., which started with analyzing differences between Whites and African Americans (Hutchison, 1987; Carr and Williams, 1993; Floyd et al., 1994; Floyd, 1998; Payne et al., 2002; Tinsley et al., 2002). Most differences in recreational preferences and participation rates have been described in terms of ethnic/racial influences and/or differences in income levels (Carr and Williams, 1993). Over all, conclusions regarding explanatory factors (race, ethnicity, or income) seemed highly dependent on the questions asked, the methods used, and geographic specificities. Hutchison’s (1987) examination of Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics in Chicago’s urban parks, for example, found distinctive patterns of recreation behavior. Hispanics used

8.85 $26.55 11.53 $34.59 10.33 $30.99

3.26 $9.86 8.26 $24.78 7.21 $21.63

1.11 $3.33 5.04 $15.12 4.49 $13.47

O3 ($3.00/lb.)

0.74 $1.81 0.96 $2.35 0.86 $2.11

0.27 $0.66 0.69 $1.69 0.60 $1.47

0.09 $0.22 0.42 $1.03 0.37 $0.91

SO2 ($2.45/lb)

8.13 $56.10 10.59 $73.07 9.48 $65.41

2.99 $20.63 7.58 $52.30 6.62 $45.68

1.02 $7.04 4.63 $31.95 4.12 $28.43

NO2 ($6.90/lb)

10.34 $53.77 13.47 $70.04 12.06 $62.71

3.80 $19.76 9.64 $50.13 8.42 $43.87

1.29 $6.71 5.89 $30.63 5.24 $27.25

PM10 ($5.20/lb)

1.60 $2.40 2.09 $3.14 1.87 $2.81

0.59 $0.89 1.50 $2.25 1.31 $1.97

0.20 $0.30 0.91 $1.37 0.81 $1.22

CO ($1.50/lb)

0.104 $1.04 0.116 $1.16 0.122 $1.22

0.025 $0.25 0.080 $0.80 0.085 $0.85

0.013 $0.13 0.021 $0.21 0.053 $0.53

Tons carbon stored ($10.00/ton)

8617 $141.67 10561 $184.35 6689 $165.25

$131.95 3447 $115.47

$52.05

$71.81

$80.31

$17.73

Annual savings per acre

$1,839,475

$2,904,275

$2,369,675

$947,925

1921 $528,275 3413 $938,575

738 $202,950 915 $251,625 1728 $475,200

Cubic feet storm water avoided ($275.00/cf)

Values are calculated via CITYgreen GIS program equations. Calculations are based upon a model that combines local tree figures developed by TreePeople and Los Angeles Sanitation Districts; and an American Forests model used in the midwest. Carbon sequestered (stored) is based upon a $10.00/ton value. The value of pounds removed will vary with pollution market variability for air pollution.

a

Residential

Institutional

Aggressive greening scenario Commercial

Residential

Institutional

Conservative greening scenario Commercial

Residential

Institutional

Current urban landscape Commercial

Scenario

Pounds removed/dollar savings, per acre per year

TABLE 1. ECONOMIC VALUES OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE UNDER THREE SCENARIOS

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public recreation facilities more intensively than their White or Black counterparts; Whites and Blacks participated in more individualistic activities than Hispanics; but Blacks were more likely to be surrounded by peer groups while Hispanics were surrounded by their families and so forth. Hutchison also observed these patterns varied with neighborhood affluence. In wealthier areas, Black activity patterns were similar to those of Whites. Los Angeles area studies of Latino use of natural environment areas on the periphery also showed differences in preferences—Latinos preferring areas with restrooms and developed picnic sites (Bass et al., 1993). But such studies did not address the question of open space and park “need” or perception in the dense urban fabric lacking such spaces, and, indeed lacking space for conventional park development altogether, an important issue for our research. We opted for a focus group method as the most appropriate for uncovering residents’ attitudes and values toward public green spaces in their neighborhood, and for assessing their understanding of how those spaces are provided by the city. We conducted eight focus groups and one Community Forum: one focus group with representatives from major nonprofit institutions and area employers; two rounds (one before and one after the Community Forum) of three focus groups with a total of 24 adult residents from the three study area sites; and one youth focus group. Adult participants were evenly divided in terms of gender, 50–60% Latino predominantly from Mexico, with immigrant Armenian, Non Hispanic White and African Americans making up the remainder. The average age of participants was 35–40 years, while individuals ranged from teenagers to residents in their 70s. Most were renters (75–85%) and 70–80% had children under 18 at home. The youth focus group, convened at Belmont High School, involved 16 students—5 girls and 11 boys—and was 94% Latino; and incorporated an experiential 10-minute walk around the school campus. In order to understand how greater empirical knowledge of the benefits of nature affects attitudes toward urban greening, we staged a Community Forum for focus group participants and the larger community. We presented the CITYgreen model and pictorial greening scenarios alternatives utilizing specific abandoned lots, alleyways and streets in the study areas, and we discussed the political institutional context within which planning is conducted and urban amenities are developed (Figs. 2 and 3). In the first set of focus groups, participants showed an understanding of the ways in which trees contributed to improving the urban environment by cooling the atmosphere, buffering noise, absorbing air pollution, and contributing habitat for wildlife. This is consistent with recent polls that demonstrate strong support among Latino voters for environmental protection and parks, and underscores Latinos’ understanding of the role of natural elements in mitigating urban environmental pollution. In the 2000 elections, 74% of Latino voters (compared to 56% of Non Hispanic White voters) approved Proposition 40, a $2.6 billion park and open space measure. Additionally, the strongest support for the parks measure, 75%, came from households earning less than $20,000 per year (Rogers, 2002). While we did not ask participants about their citizenship status, and consequently cannot empirically assert a relationship between our participants and Latino voters at large, it seems there is a strong correlation between views and knowledge expressed in our focus groups and polls taken of Latino voters. Of course, the category Latino is broad, encompassing many countries and regions including Mexico, Central American and Latin America, so generalizations are tricky (Pincetl, 1994). Yet, a preponderance of evidence

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Fig. 2. Vacant lot/greened scenario.

suggests that despite national and ethnic differences among Latinos themselves, there seems to be general support for, and understanding of the benefits of environmental protection and the enhancement of natural elements in the urban fabric. For example, one day researchers were out gathering data for CITYgreen, measuring trees and identifying them. They were approached by a group of Latino day laborers who readily comprehended their work—oh yes, trees clean the air and cool the atmosphere. Residents participating in the first set of focus groups expressed strong feelings regarding the local lack of green space. They told of Griffith Park’s overcrowding and

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Fig. 3. Residential street and greened scenario.

policy of turning cars away on weekends, and of perceived dangers in MacArthur Park, another large park on the fringes of our study area (neither within walking distance). When asked where people went for parks and open space, answers varied, though the small number of immigrant Armenian participants cited shopping malls, and expressed interest in more greened commercial strips as desirable additions to the neighborhood. One young Latina woman said she visited rooftops to experience open space. Most participants, however, felt there was simply no place to go locally and that, while they might want to go to the beach, since transportation options were limited, children ended up either watching television inside, or sitting on curbs outside to watch cars go by. The second round of focus groups was oriented toward probing residents’ understanding of CITYgreen, gauging reactions to the various greening scenarios presented, and exploring greening options, their feasibility and potential consequences. Participants

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were generally able to recognize their local neighborhoods on the digitized maps used in CITYgreen, and reacted positively to visual representations of the increased green proposed in scenarios and the resultant changes offered by researchers, but were reluctant to work with or suggest alterations to them. In reaction to proposed tree-lined streets, mothers complained about the lack of shade on streets when they walked their children to and from school, making the connection between street trees and a cooler atmosphere. For those who have automobiles and drive their children to school, and are able to drive wherever they need to go, the relationship between a cooler environment and trees might not seem so apparent, or so important. But for those who must walk, or take buses, the benefits of greening are much more tangible, and the need for commonplace encounters with the urban green is deeply felt. Yet focus group participants were uncertain about what the CITYgreen results meant and how they related to the actual trees, grass, and other vegetation. Further, there was some confusion between GIS and GPS—Global Positioning Systems. In sum, focus group discussions about urban greening strongly pointed to the need for urban park and recreation policies to evolve to meet the needs of residents in dense urban areas in ways that also enhance their daily quality of life—not simply as recreation or leisure destinations. Thus, providing naturalized environments—tree-lined streets, landscaped streetscapes, and pedestrian corridors along “necessary journeys” such as walking to a bus or metro stop, school, or store—were seen as part of how the city needed to approach its parks, recreation, and green open space provision. Residents expressed a strong desire for this kind of open space, a different type of access to nature than is currently provided through traditional, though often inaccessible, parks and nature on the periphery. As Burgess et al. noted, providers of parks and open spaces “do not recognize the incidental ways in which people use and come into contact with urban green space. Unofficial green areas are tremendously important for local people. Moreover, open spaces are seen and experienced holistically, as embedded in the built environment rather than isolated from it” (1988, p. 459). Within the traditional leisure research literature, there has been little exploration of nontraditional urban green space provision and its appreciation, and even less connecting the provision of this kind of space to greater urban sustainability and the multiple benefits it offers—environmental and social. To determine whether our focus group participants were representative of the larger study area, researchers administered a multicultural, multilingual (Spanish, Armenian, English) telephone survey to 96 households. We included several questions to determine environmental literacy, since our focus groups with largely Latino immigrants showed high understanding of nature’s services and we wanted to see if this was merely an artifact of those who were willing to participate in the focus groups. The survey was stratified to ensure a statistically significant sample of Latino and Armenian residents. Overall, responses to our telephone survey showed great interest in urban greening, parks and open spaces as well as awareness of nature’s services in the city. Of the respondents, two-thirds reported they visited parks. While 30% visited parks every week, 34% visited parks rarely. Cars were the most frequent mode of transportation to parks (64%), followed by walking (33%) and public transport (7%). Those who reported walking to parks were much more likely to go once a week, while those who did not walk were much more likely to go rarely. Those who drove to parks weekly reported far less park use than those who did not drive. Use of public transportation to access parks

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was associated with infrequent (once a month), but not rare, park use. Park use was negatively correlated with age in a logistic regression (r2 = 0.11, p < .0002). Older residents used parks less, even when ethnicity was controlled for. However, older residents were more likely to walk to the park when they did go, and those who walked visited frequently. In addition to parks, open space used by residents included the street/sidewalk, mall, school, and work. The results of the survey suggest that if public green spaces are accessible by foot, people will use them frequently. If they have to travel by car, then they become a special destination that is much less visited. This was consistent with our focus group discussions—without a car, people were confined to the neighborhood, making green spaces within the area a high priority and value. Values given to open space were uniformly high; 89% felt that access to open space on a daily basis was very important or important. Uses of open space ranked by percentage of residents citing it as very important were: place for children to play (85%); sports (73%); trees, flowers (73%); places to meet (68%); and community gardens (67%). While women and men did not differ significantly in these attitudes, Latinos uniformly responded with higher expressions of importance than Armenians for all features of open space except one, a place to meet. DISCUSSION Focus group results indicated both a sort of desperation for urban green space, and a pragmatic approach to create and maintain it. Most residents participating pointed out that local open space opportunities were virtually nil, and that limited transportation options made accessing parks outside of their immediate neighborhood infeasible. They expressed a desire for relatively free-form urban green spaces—street trees and trees to sit under, informal parks (on vacant parcels and sliver lots) to relax in—and repeatedly mentioned the need for accessible park space for children, from toddlers to teens. The conversion of “feral” space to usable green space was a welcome concept. We realized people are in touch with the natural elements in the urban fabric whether policy makers and others recognize it or not. The lawn at the local McDonald’s is well appreciated as the only accessible green space for children to play on; the vine up the wall at another fast food outlet makes sitting at the nearby tables more pleasant. Our focus group discussions were replete with such examples of small pleasures created by natural elements in the predominantly hardscape environment of the study area. For those who are transportation-limited, such elements in the urban landscape are meaningful. All participants were very enthusiastic regarding the greening scenarios of local open spaces that were presented, which varied from a modest increase in street tree-planting to more ambitious linear street parks along the tradition of the Dutch woonerf,4 as well as the creation of small parks on available open spaces. Youth focus group participants also felt deprived of urban greenery and accessible open space, and expressed interest in multiple-use open spaces for socializing, playing, and relaxing; and they generated innovative

4

A woonerf is a type of street calming physical redesign forcing automobiles to move only as fast as pedestrians. They typically involve street narrowing and the creation of wider pedestrian ways, including trees and vegetation.

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yet realistic and feasible urban greening options for their neighborhood—transforming a graffiti-covered abandoned rail tunnel into a park; planting alleyways to create a linear garden; and even stepping up maintenance at existing parks in adjacent areas rather than creating new ones. Such realism demonstrated their awareness of the difficulties involved in financing new parks. Discussions in both adult and youth focus groups demonstrated a need for public green space policies to evolve to meet the demands of a densifying city. Creating tree-lined streets, pedestrian corridors, and beautifying existing hangouts were suggested as viable strategies to remedy the bleak neighborhood hardscape and improve the quality of daily life spaces. Participants were also pragmatic regarding the problems of public parks. When researchers presented a range of greening opportunities, from greened streetscapes— adding more trees, widening planting strips, restricting traffic, greening alleys—to creating small parks on vacant parcels varying in size and shape, residents reacted with both delight and skepticism. Concerns focused on long-term maintenance and safety. Both adults and youth offered candid remarks about local dangers, including gang drive-by shootings. And two of the single-family property owners expressed reservations about having a hypothetical vacant lot next to their house developed into a public green space, voicing concern specifically with potential noise and supervision problems (Pincetl et al., 2003; Gearin and Kahle, in press). Participants were also acutely conscious of their marginal status as low-income immigrants who had little or no political clout to exert at city hall, their poor English language skills, and their own lack of civic capacity to develop collaborative consensus and cooperation. Our discussions with residents indicated that the study-area neighborhood is unlikely to achieve the greening levels of wealthier communities without assistance from community organizers, planners, professionals, or politicians; and greater technical knowledge, such as the utilization of a GIS model, was unlikely to change the fundamental structural problem of powerlessness. Moreover, GIS modeling only confirmed what people already knew about the value of nature’s services in the urban environment. Residents expressed that they lacked local leadership, political capacity, and time and money to influence the planning and policy-making process, and even an ability to get along among themselves. Recent Los Angeles history and the current California municipal fiscal structure seem to support the importance of access and influence as well as the power of conventional thinking with regard to open space provision. In the last decade, billions of dollars of open space and watershed restoration bond money for the Los Angeles region has passed, yet little has been made available to low-income neighborhoods, with the exception of projects along the Los Angeles River, and park refurbishment that were favored by politicians and well established nonprofit organizations. Neither approach addresses the hundreds of thousands of residents who have no access to public open spaces whatsoever (Pincetl, 2003). Nonprofit organizations such as the regionally active Trust for Public Land, promote the need for parks in poor neighborhoods of color, but their activities have largely been confined to cities outside of Los Angeles itself, such as in Maywood, and driven by decisions internal to the organization rather than neighborhood need. Other projects, such as the grand Baldwin Hills Conservancy, is very large scale (larger than Central Park in New York), and combines ecological restoration objectives with recreation, along traditional park lines. At the same time, the immanent development of a

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13-acre community garden in Central Los Angeles, former site of a proposed trash to energy incinerator, has been, by and large, not contested by the nonprofit community— community gardens do not fit the conventional notion of open space and park. By way of contrast, in one Los Angeles neighborhood, a “grass-roots” effort by residents, including a design developed by a local resident and professional landscape architect and $45,000 in private money from local residents used to match a grant from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, resulted in the planting of street trees and the creation of a greened median along a central boulevard (Ramsey, 2001). Local fund raising to match grant monies was not likely in our low-income immigrant study area, and residents were keenly aware of their disadvantages in the structure of power, influence, and resource allocation of the city. Their comments (July 9–24, 2001) underscore this: So I don’t know, I don’t know which department.… I don’t know my way around civic government in L.A. well enough to know who should be involved [re: regreening].” Others stated “… I wish I could just close my eyes and boom the trees are there. I know that just can’t be done like that. What is it—is it a long term that we are supposed to wait for this, or after your studies—your proposal to councils of the city, or how do we can help [sic]?” and “I could call (the city council offices), but do they do that, will they take care of it, will they listen to me? CONSTRAINTS TO REINVENTING THE URBAN GREEN One impediment to greening cities is municipal finance. Local government in the United States is characterized by structural weakness (Stone, 2001). Cities and counties are constrained by a fiscal structure that does not allow them to borrow money, and requires a balanced budget. Local governments are also receiving declining support from states and the federal government (Pincetl, 1999, 2003; Staeheli et al., 1997). For example, in the 1970s, federal aid to municipalities amounted to about 15% of city budgets; now, according to the National League of Cities, it makes up 3% of their budgets. In California, this situation has been exacerbated by the passage of tax restricting propositions, starting with Proposition 13 in 1978, which dramatically reduced local property taxes. Subsequent restrictions, requiring a two-thirds majority vote for any new local taxes, for example, have further increased the pressure on local governments to allocate local land to revenue producing uses and cutting expenses elsewhere (Schrag, 1998; Pincetl, 1999; Press, 2002, Hiltzik, 2003). In this situation, any additional provision for creating and maintaining public parks and open spaces is difficult. In the early 1980s, the City of Los Angeles was forced to close 24 recreation centers, reduce funding for the remaining 154 centers, and slash weekly operating hours of many facilities (Schwandron and Richter 1984, as quoted in Loukaitou-Sideris and Stieglitz, 2001). Between 1972 and 1998, the City was able to purchase less than 1,000 acres for parkland. As of this writing, the City is again facing major budget cuts. Over 400 positions in the Department of Recreation and Parks have been frozen, and the Department has been asked to generate $4.5 million in new revenue. Among new fees imposed, high school cross-country teams will be charged $100 to practice in city parks (Rappleye, 2004). Park shortages throughout the state and in Southern California because of fiscal constraints have not gone unrecognized. Several park bond propositions have recently

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passed both locally and statewide, providing billions of new park dollars to the Los Angeles area that have helped the City Department of Recreation and Parks to begin long deferred maintenance of existing facilities, to fund tree planting and graffiti removal, and to create jobs for “at risk” youth, and to finance trail building and natural land acquisition. Bond monies have also allowed some nonprofit organizations to apply for funds for new projects on a competitive basis. But little of this money has been allocated to create new multiple purpose types of small public open spaces in park-poor low-income neighborhoods. This is because the park bond language reflects traditional notions of parks and recreation, including recreation-oriented parks for the dense inner core of the city, and ecological preservation-oriented land acquisitions for as-yet undeveloped lands. Interstitial, raw, or “feral” urban lands, community gardens, are not acknowledged in the definitions for park bond funds, nor are street trees, woonerfs or any other types of nontraditional greening methods, so funding the kinds of greening for neighborhoods that lack conventional types of open spaces is impossible. Yet, given that cities such as Los Angeles also have a tremendous backlog of street maintenance, building maintenance, and other infrastructure repair, coupling the provision of greater public green spaces that at the same time serve to rededicate environmental problems such as air pollution, storm water run-off, and the urban heat island effect, could provide a win-win strategy for providing more public greened spaces while also contributing to meeting infrastructure needs. However, this multipurpose approach is hampered by the traditional division of labor, by funding and mandates within governmental agencies, by inflexible approaches to park management, by outdated approaches to toward natural processes in the urban fabric, and by slow social acceptance of change. Yet another difficulty in urban greening is perception. The difficulties regarding a paradigm shift from thinking of a park as a place for urban recreation to the notion of parks and open spaces as part and parcel of the urban fabric, are multiple. They involve moving beyond parks as the designated zone for nature and recreation in the city, overcoming the emphasis on auto mobility so as to transform alleyways, streets, and sidewalks into multiple-function zones (bioswales for storm water capture, linear street parks), addressing bureaucratic reluctance to change, and public skepticism, not to mention resolving the lack of public funds. Local public bureaucracies have evolved to address specific functions such as transportation, sanitation, street trees, environmental protection, recreation and parks. This leaves behind a significant portion of the urban fabric: the lands in between, the underutilized spaces that are used for disposing of the by-products of urban living, such as trash. A nature’s services approach—a greened city approach—necessarily involves change and collaboration among city agencies and, most importantly, a different view of land use in the city. CONCLUSION The disparities of access to parks and to public greened open spaces in Los Angeles demonstrates that those individuals and groups who lack recourse to political power, and who are poor and immigrant, tend to suffer environmental injustices that result in an overall lower quality of life. The situation in Los Angeles is complicated by a number of factors, including dramatically declining public funds, the historic development of the city that did not include much in the way of parks, high rates of recent population growth,

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particularly among the Latino population, and a general reluctance to embrace urbanity and acknowledge existing densities. Moreover, the relationship between urban nature and the built environment has greatly favored human-engineered structures. The biological requirements of trees and plants are not planned or engineered into city structure, though a nature’s services approach to urban infrastructure would require such a change. It is also clear that despite the spatial distribution of limited urban environmental resources there is no framework through which to systematically approach issues of uneven urban socioecological change, explicitly related to the inherent spatial patterns of urban inequality in the distribution of environmental amenities (Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003). Los Angeles is now a dense city, in the second densest metropolitan region in the country. In order to meet the evolving demand for urban green space, definitions of the public urban green need to evolve, and public parks, open spaces, and access to nature must change accordingly, and become multipurpose spaces that are equitably distributed. The evolution of urban parks, and then open spaces, reflects changing attitudes and values about nature, race and class, and about cities themselves. Urban sustainability and value of nature’s services for environmental remediation and improving both the quality of life and neighborhood economic desirability is yet another iteration in these changing ideas. A sensitive reintroduction of natural services throughout the city, and most especially in disenfranchised neighborhoods, could begin to redress decades of neglect and blight. Yet this avenue for greater urban sustainability faces multiple obstacles— cities and metropolitan regions are increasingly fiscally constrained, and parks and greening budgets are often the first to be cut. There are no fiscal tools that recognize nature’s value. Integrated solutions to any urban management issue run counter to business as usual. Finally, the reinvention of public green space also requires a deep and long-term commitment to equity, a fundamentally different way of thinking about city infrastructure and maintenance, and a rethinking of the allocation of resources on a metropolitan scale. REFERENCES American Forests, 1999, CITYgreen [computer software]. Washington, DC: Author. Barrette, M., 2000, Anyone searching for examples of innovative land planning wouldn’t necessarily look to water and storm water projects. But that could be a mistake. Planning, Vol. 66, No. 8, 14–21. Bass, J. M., 2001, Parks and the city. Planning, Vol. 67, No. 8, 4–9. Bass, J. M., Ewert, A., and Chavez, D. J., 1993, Influence of ethnicity on recreation and natural environment use patterns: Managing recreation sites for ethnic and racial diversity. Environmental Management, Vol. 17, No. 4, 523–529. Beatle, T., 2000, Preserving biodiversity: Challenges for planners. Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 66, No. 1, Winter 5–26. Burch, E. L., 2002, Five generations of the Garden City: Tracing Howard’s legacy in twentieth-century residential planning. In K.C. Parsons and D. Schuyler, editors, From Garden City to Green City. The Legacy of Ebenezer Howard. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 171–200. Burgess, J., Harrison C. M., and Limb, M., 1988, People, parks and the urban green: A study of popular meanings and values for open spaces in the city. Urban Studies, Vol. 25, 455–473.

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