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Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ...... 3 LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ...... 8 METHODS ...... 10 RESULTS ...... 12 Typology ...... 12 Selected Parks ...... 16 Selected Parks Analysis ...... 19 Type 1 (Parks created under federal programs): Adams Park ...... 19 Type 2 (Parks created by non-profit organizations using money from foundations): Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park ...... 21 Type 3 (Parks funded by state, county, and city dollars): Knight Park ...... 24 Type 4 (Parks created by private real estate developers): Atlanta Memorial Park ...... 26 Type 5 (Parks created by community organizations): Freedom Park ...... 28 DISCUSSION ...... 30 CONCLUSION ...... 33 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 35 APPENDIX ...... 37

INTRODUCTION Two green spaces in Atlanta’s English Avenue neighborhood hosted a flurry of activity over the last few years. Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park, formally acquired by the city Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) in 2018 and constructed over the next year, opened in the fall of 2019 with a catered ribbon cutting event. Local neighbors, city council members, the commissioner of parks and recreation, and the president of the National Recreation and Parks Association all gave speeches. The park has a new playground, shade structure, and set of adult exercise equipment. During construction, workers added colossal infiltration chambers for holding stormwater underground and built special curb cuts, catch basins, bioswales, and rain gardens to manage stormwater at the ground level. Named in honor of a woman who lived in the area and was shot and killed in her home by Atlanta police officers, the park is both a memorial and a beautiful, active oasis.

Mattie Freeland Park, less than a mile northwest of Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park, is not yet officially a public park. It was a vacant lot not too long ago, when Mattie Freeland herself lived across the street. Though elderly, she took care of her neighbors, offering help of all kinds to those who needed it. She also told friends that she wished for a nicer view from her front porch. After Freeland’s death, residents of the neighborhood worked with some of her descendants to purchase the house, and began fixing up the vacant lot across from it as an informal park in her memory (see Figure 1). With the landowners’ blessing, they assembled a commercially available playset, painted murals together, and put in some picnic tables. Throughout the year, they used the space to host community meals and outdoor movie screenings. These proactive neighbors now have support from public officials for the City of Atlanta to acquire the land and formally establish it as a city park, but until recently, the “park” comprised several parcels held by different, private owners. The community’s substantial success in creating an effective park space despite this ownership barrier is intriguing.

Figure 1. A handmade park sign at Mattie Freeland Park. Photo by Ruth Pimentel.

Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park received major funding from outside sources, and Mattie Freeland Park—which has an irresistible narrative to offer up on grant applications—may be on the cusp of a similar influx. But those funds weren’t a prerequisite for Mattie Freeland Park to become a space that responded to community needs and addressed neighbors’ desires. Savvy, well-connected, tireless neighborhood advocates made the difference. What questions might these two parks lead planners to ask about effective park funding? The American Institute of Certified Planners’ code of ethics states that planners should give a broad range of people, including “those who lack formal organization or influence,” an opportunity to influence plans that affect them. (AICP, 2016) As the threat of gentrification risks rapidly transforming Atlanta neighborhoods and displacing established communities, what lessons do park planners need to learn so we can listen to legacy residents about the areas they have long called home, and support them in providing the things they know are missing?

LITERATURE REVIEW Academic writing and industry reports on parks funding show that parks have lost significant government funding in recent decades and are continuing to lose it. Scholars Crompton and McGregor (1994) have written a good deal about the topic, and they describe an important sea change in the United States’ political and economic world this way: “During the late 1960s and early 1970s state and local governments were the fastest growing employers in the economy,” but towards the end of the 1970s, “persistent and unprecedented double-digit inflation” dramatically slowed the growth of everyone’s income value. People began to find taxes a greater burden and became increasingly reluctant to vote in favor of tax increases. Instead, they pushed their elected officials in the other direction, creating a “tax revolt” (Crompton & McGregor, 1994) that first took legislative form in California’s 1978 property tax-slashing Proposition 13. This change did not confine itself to California, but “reverberated across the nation. By the end of 1979, 22 states had reduced property taxes, income taxes were reduced in 18 states and 15 states cut sales taxes.” (Crompton & McGregor, 1994) In most places, reductions in taxes mean cuts to departments considered less essential than emergency services—parks are often some of the first in line for these cuts. Today, “Proposition 13 and its progeny” continue to limit government budgets (ChangeLab Solutions, 2015), and parks are coping with the local and federal resources they do have, deferring maintenance to cut costs (Fulton, 2012) and relying more on part-time and contract employees. (Crompton & McGregor, 1994) More recently, “the Great Recession (2007-2009) hit local funding for parks and recreation facilities particularly hard” (ChangeLab Solutions, 2015), exacerbating deferred maintenance costs up to a total of “more than $1 billion in many large cities.” (Fulton, 2012) Parks leaders also report that employing staff full-time is becoming more expensive as governments take on the responsibility of paying out more in retirement benefits and pensions. (Fulton, 2012) The governmental money available for caring for and operating existing parks, and for building new ones, is dwindling. At the same time, as parks leaders seek to direct their limited funds to the specific locations and audiences that need them the most, targeting funds proves to be slippery work. One study evaluated a Portland effort to direct public bond-funded “new investments to benefit the parks accessibility of historically disadvantaged population groups.” (Carrell, Chakraborty, & Allred, n.d.) The researchers found that the new parks increased park access more in areas where it had been low than in areas where it had been high, but also that “resulting gains in accessibility disproportionately benefited lower density and less disadvantaged groups.” (Carrell, Chakraborty, & Allred, n.d.) And parks officials who want to use their funding first to care for existing parks rather than bloat an already unmanageable portfolio with new properties have found that, “in general, obtaining funding to maintain and operate

4 parks is more difficult than obtaining funding to create parks.” (ChangeLab Solutions, 2015) Parks leaders are dealing both with limited funds and with not much control over where those funds go and whom they benefit. In the face of this difficulty, parks leaders and scholars are looking to public opinion for ideas on what to do next—after all, many possible “funding mechanisms . . . require the approval of either the local legislative body or the electorate; sometimes, both groups are required.” (ChangeLab Solutions, 2015) Studies on what parks funding strategies people prefer and on what leads people to provide different kinds of support to park agencies shed some light on the matter. For instance, questionnaires distributed to adult residents of Pennsylvania showed that “funding strategies involving external contributions such as donations and corporate sponsorships were most strongly supported by the local citizenry” while “respondents were least supportive of park services privatization and the use of park entrance fees.” (Borrie, Mowen, Kyle, & Graefe, 2006) A survey of creative park funding strategies pointed out that “park and recreation administrators who took actions to build trust and demonstrate commitment were able to expand funding beyond just taxes,” for example by creating strategic plans with “frequent needs assessments to determine interests in the community,” then delivering on the plans. (Rockey, Barcelona, Brookover, Thorn, & Saturday, 2016) And sometimes, public goodwill can snowball into one sweeping impact. In a unique case this year, “more than 1,000 students, philanthropists, sailors, businesspeople, and others raised 3 million Canadian dollars . . . that the British Columbia Parks Foundation needed to buy nearly 2,000 acres in Princess Louisa Inlet” for conversion to a national park. (Hauser, 2019) The New York Times described the foundation’s chief executive as saying that he and his colleagues “had a ‘kind of intuition’ that grassroots fundraising might work, similar to the spontaneous outpouring of donations after the Notre Dame cathedral fire in Paris in April,” and they were right. Parks leaders who can identify public preferences and win public trust in their efforts will be much better equipped to fund their work effectively, and public opinions about parks can occasionally make a massive impact under the right circumstances. Earning public trust is particularly important for parks leaders who want to continue funding parks through tax dollars. Some of the literature argues that a tax, and especially a dedicated tax with a broad base and an independent system like a special parks district so revenue does not get swept into a city’s general fund, is the ideal source of park funding. (Walls, 2014) Since this is such a tall order in the post- Proposition 13 era, leaders will need to secure substantial public trust in the local government to enjoy citizens’ support in voting for such taxes. Research shows that establishing this trust depends on three pre-conditions: “perceived knowability, contingent consent, and shared norms and values.” (Borrie, Mowen, Kyle, & Graefe, 2006) These elements will combine to shape the “public’s evaluation of an organization’s effectiveness” at fulfilling long-term mandates such as “public health, environmental stewardship, and faithful use of public dollars.” (Borrie, Mowen, Kyle, & Graefe, 2006) A parks department that operates in a way residents can understand and relate to, and meets its mandates, may be able to better draw on the most predictable and democratic form of financial support: government funding in the form of tax revenues. Since even in the best of circumstances, most parks cannot fully rely on support from tax dollars, the literature suggests many other strategies for finding funding. Some of these include: Community Development Block Grants, the New Markets Tax Credit program, private nonprofit hospital community benefit funds, public bonds, special taxes, special assessments, shared use agreements such as those where schools and parks cooperatively manage playing fields, public-private partnerships (including partnerships with nonprofits), interagency public partnerships, user fees, volunteer programs, accepting donated gifts and bequests, and a wide variety of approaches linked to private development, such as dedications, impact fees, and environmental mitigation requirements. One report recommends that

5 parks departments “have someone on staff who is responsible for identifying these innovative taxing mechanisms and working with city finance and planning departments to identify new opportunities.” (Rockey, Barcelona, Brookover, Thorn, & Saturday, 2016) Of course, these alternative strategies are not all equally effective, and certainly are not without caveat. One strategy that provides some of the most significant funding, and that is the most widely analyzed in the literature, is the public-private partnership and its bedfellow, donations. Professor Dorceta Taylor breaks down public-private partnerships into five different models: “assistance providers, catalysts, comanagers, sole managers, and citywide partners.” (Taylor, 2010) She finds that a few, unusual parks can rely on sole manager conservancies to bring in massive donations year after year and fund most of the park budget, but that this model does not work in most places. Even where it does work, chiefly at New York City’s Central Park, “some argue that the presence of organizations like the Conservancy allows the city to pare away at parks budgets and allows it to step away from its commitment to provide public recreation to all citizens.” (Taylor, 2010) Other public-private partnership models that provide less substantial funding and take less sweeping responsibility for parks are more common across the United States than sole manager models. Regardless of the model, public-private partnerships are extremely widespread, and are all in one way or another informed by the trend-setting history of New York’s Central Park Conservancy, created in 1980 by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers “to help enhance the image of the park and transform it into a prestigious institution that wealthy people wanted to associate with and donate time and money to.” (Taylor, 2010) Taylor identifies a few reasons partnerships became so attractive beginning in the 1980s and continuing to now: unlike bureaucratic city parks departments, “nonprofits could make decisions fast, fund-raise, and save money,” they were “more effective” marketers and fund-raisers than governments, and they could assure donors that their contributions would not go into the city’s general fund and be spent elsewhere. (Taylor, 2010) Other scholars point out that nonprofits are not always money-savers relative to city governments, since they are likely to spend on “executive salaries, proposal writing,” and fundraising. (Walls, 2014) Since public-private partnerships can give wealthy people disproportionate power to shape public institutions, this approach gives some parks leaders pause. Though the Borrie, et al. survey found respondents were strongly supportive of corporate sponsorship for parks, a 2012 roundtable hosted by the Urban Institute, the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA), the National League of Cities, and the National Association of Counties gave many parks and recreation professionals a platform to say that they “are fearful” that soliciting donations, along with charging fees and using other non-tax funding methods, “will undermine [the] ethic” that parks should be free and everyone should have access. (Fulton, 2012) This fear is not new—in the mid-1800s, when Andrew Jackson Downing first started suggesting that New York’s rich donate land for parks, contemporary critics “argued that parks should be publicly funded and remain free to all; a democratic institution so to speak.” (Taylor, 2010) The discomfort is not unfounded. Potential drawbacks to relying on philanthropy in the form of donations to public-private partnerships for park funding include “uncertainty in funding streams” and “inequities in what gets funded.” (Walls, 2014) As discussed previously, the literature suggests that donors are more likely to want to pay for major, new capital projects rather than operating costs, maintenance, and repairs. (Fulton, 2012) Not every park enjoys the same marketability, and when funds are not legislated, “cities and friends of the parks groups identify and focus on parks for which they can fund-raise effectively while ignoring parks for which fund-raising is most challenging.” (Taylor, 2010) Donors may be most interested in supporting parks they use, and less aware of or compelled by park needs in other neighborhoods. Tremendous inequity in wealth distribution throughout the United States will unavoidably impact the distribution of parks donations. And since donations are voluntary, a parks system cannot depend on a certain amount of funding in any given time period. This potential

Figure 2. Map of Atlanta city parks and surrounding land uses.

7 volatility is more problematic for covering regularly recurring operating and maintenance costs than it is for one-off, special projects like capital improvements, further compounding the funding disparity between these types of park needs. Though some donors may give in predictable patterns, in general donations are not reliable enough to be the sole basis of “sustainable year-to-year funding for park operations.” (Walls, 2014) Scholars and professionals writing about park funding have not published as much analysis about the pros and cons of other non-tax funding strategies. Industry papers and trade publications are currently sharing lists of methods to try, and examples of cities that have put one or more of these approaches to the test, including Atlanta. For example, a 2018 article in the NRPA’s magazine describes the City of Atlanta DPR being “besieged by deep cuts to its rec programs” in the late 2000s, and Kasim Reed campaigning for mayor on a promise to reopen all 33 closed recreation centers across the city. (Paynich, 2018) The article goes on to mention a few of the largest and newest local park projects, including Westside Park, Boone Park West (now called Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park), and Cook Park. Some of the funding sources and nonprofit partners for these parks include Park Pride, The Trust for Public Land (TPL), transportation tax revenue, Renew Atlanta (“an infrastructure bond program”), the Robert Woodruff Foundation, Zoo Atlanta, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, The Conservation Fund, and the city’s Department of Sustainability and Department of Watershed Management. (Paynich, 2018) Atlanta is clearly already leveraging many different governmental and non-governmental sources of funding for its parks.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS In 2020, the City of Atlanta DPR is beginning work on a comprehensive parks master plan. This planning process will ideally incorporate community and expert voices to help transform Atlanta’s parks into a more sustainable, just, resilient, healthy, and inclusive resource. The process will also create a unique opportunity for planners and other park advocates to influence new funding policies. As Atlanta continues to diversify its funding strategies for public parks, it will be important to know how each choice might affect the way a park can serve its neighbors. This paper seeks to answer the following questions:

 How can we categorize Atlanta parks based on a typology of the ways they have been funded?  How well does each type of park fulfill neighbors’ wishes for the area?  What recommendations can help Atlanta develop and finance parks that will better respond to the desires of parks’ neighbors?

Figure 3. Map of Atlanta city parks smaller than one acre.

METHODS The Atlanta DPR records 350 official city parks (see Figure 2). Starting with this full list, I narrowed it down to only parks at least one acre in size. Though smaller parks can also play significant roles, this strategy is useful for ruling out the many “green spots” that DPR technically considers parkland, including medians and building fronts “too small to be considered programmable space.” (City of Atlanta DPR website, n.d.) As Figure 3 makes clear, many of these small parks are clustered in the Ansley Park and Morningside neighborhoods—probably a legacy of historic Olmsted-inspired landscape designs. I the cross-referenced the park list with Park Pride’s list of all the parks with active “friends of the park” groups, where active is defined as having paid a registration fee to Park Pride in 2019. Figure 4 shows that many of these parks are in the northeast half of the city, perhaps an unsurprising result for a financial metric, since residents in northeast Atlanta tend to earn more money than those in other neighborhoods (see Figure 7). Park Pride, which has worked with parks across Atlanta for 30 years and was created to be the non-profit arm of DPR, has a memorandum of understanding with the City of Atlanta and can act as a fiscal agent for all these groups to help them accept, hold, and spend money for projects on public land. I added a few conservancies that work like friends groups but operate independently, such as Piedmont Park Conservancy and Freedom Park Conservancy. I asked local staff at The Conservation Fund, Park Pride, TPL, and DPR to suggest Atlanta parks that have interesting funding histories to make sure I considered a wide breadth of sites.

There are 168 city parks equal in size to or larger than 1 acre. Using archival sources from the Atlanta History Center’s Kenan Research Center, City Council meeting minutes, master plans, and internal funding and community-building records that Park Pride agreed to share with me, I gathered limited initial data for as many of those 168 parks as possible. I hoped to get an idea of what pool I might be able to use for developing a typology. Initial data included: address, acreage, the year the park opened, at least one recorded funding source, a yes/no indicator of whether there’s any recorded community input about park preferences, a yes/no indicator of whether or not the park is currently associated with an active community group, and the classification the city has chosen for the park (the options are regional park, community park, neighborhood park, playlot, nature preserve, green spot, plaza, trail corridor, special facility, and park in holding). Of the 168 parks at least one acre in size, 32 parks had an active Friends of the Park group or similar association in 2019. For 54 parks, I found at least a vague description how the City of Atlanta’s parks department initially acquired the land. Park Pride, the source of funding data for which I can take a most comprehensive look, has archived grants records for 45 of the parks in this dataset, and open grants records for 18 parks in this dataset.

I further narrowed the list to just those parks for which I could find these limited initial data, then researched news articles, an upcoming systemwide history of the city parks system, and planning documents to fill in a little more detail on the acquisition and funding histories of the parks in this smaller dataset. Based on what I found in my second research round, I created a typology of parks to distinguish them by the history of how their acquisition was funded.

For each type, I selected one representative park, choosing only from among those that have recorded community input. After reviewing the communities’ stated preferences regarding each representative park, I drew up a list of neighbors’ desires. For each representative park, I evaluated whether or not the desired features are present through in-person visits, online research, and conversations with knowledgeable local parks experts.

Figure 4. Map of Atlanta city parks with active friends groups in 2019.

RESULTS Typology Since many parks have received multiple sources of funding over their existence, for this typology I chose to focus on some of the most significant lobbying or financial power behind their initial creation or acquisition by the city of Atlanta. Naturally, there is some intricacy and nuance in identifying which people or institutions instigated a project on which multiple groups ended up collaborating, so this typology is necessarily a simplification. For example, a neighborhood association may put in volunteer labor to fix up a vacant lot and lobby their city council representative for help, and the city council member may eventually agree to advocate for legislation to officially acquire the lot as a city park—in this case, I would categorize the park as created by a community organization since they were the primary instigators, even though the purchase money ultimately came from the city budget. In some cases, the collaborative efforts are so intertwined that a park can fall into more than one category. My research suggests that many of Atlanta’s parks can be categorized into these groups:

(1) Parks created under federal programs These are parks springing from or significantly recreated by programs like the Works Progress Administration of the 1930s, federal open space grants through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and federally-funded urban renewal projects like the Model Cities Program of the 1960s to 1970s. These types of parks were likely created using comprehensive or rational planning models, and may not have invited much community input. None of the research for this paper found Atlanta parks created by federal programs more recently than 1970. Adams Park, Browns Mill Golf Course, Chastain Park, Central Park, Cleopas R. Johnson Park, West End Park, Dean Rusk Park, and Gordon-White Park, among others, fall into this category.

(2) Parks created by non-profit organizations with missions focused on greenspace, typically using money from foundations Two of the most prominent organizations of this type currently working in Atlanta, with access to major grant money from charitable foundations and the political savvy to make new parks happen, are The Trust for Public Land (TPL) and The Conservation Fund (TCF). Both of these organizations operate at the national scale to preserve and create greenspace, and have Georgia state or regional headquarters in Atlanta. One of TPL’s goals is that every person in the US can live within a ten-minute walk of a park, and they have advocated for and directed funding towards new Atlanta parks that serve that goal. TCF does similar work with slightly different motivations—their Parks with Purpose program identifies areas with high poverty that are underserved by parks, then acquires land to build parks that can also provide economic benefits like food forests or green infrastructure. These organizations use advocacy planning methods to design, fund, and build parks. Other organizations that interact with Atlanta parks in similar ways are Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and Park Pride.

Charitable foundations associated with major corporations—or with wealthy families who made their money in those major corporations—are some of the most significant funders for the projects these non-profits lead. Among others, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, the Emily and Ernest Woodruff Foundation (which operated from 1938 to 1979 before being liquidated

and donated to Emory University), the Coca-Cola Foundation, the Home Depot Foundation, the Community Foundation, the Turner Foundation, and the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation have all funded parts of the Atlanta park system.

This pairing of non-profit organizations with charitable foundations has played a significant role in Louise Howard Park, Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park, Lindsay Street Park, Cook Park, Cleopas R. Johnson Park, Enota Park, and Boulevard Crossing Park.

(3) Parks funded by state, county, and city dollars Somewhat rarely in Atlanta, the city or state acquires or creates a new park in a way that uses government resources and does not fit into any of the other categories in this typology. This can happen through Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) projects, through eminent domain, through issuing a bond, and by annexation. This category groups several unique situations in which local governments played a more direct, intentional role than is often the case. Armand Park, Piedmont Park, Knight Park, and Pittman Park are all parks of this type.

(4) Parks created by private real estate developers (either donated or sold to the city) Modern-day zoning can require developers building new residential neighborhoods to dedicate a certain amount of land to greenspace. Atlanta’s version of these regulations is currently written in a way that does not lend itself to park creation (State of Atlanta’s Greenspace, 2008), but past developers once did so voluntarily. During the early 20th century, many designers and builders working in Atlanta created sylvan, flowing neighborhoods where homes occupied high ground, and the low-lying areas around streams or ponds became greenways and parks. The most famous firm behind this type of development in Atlanta was the Olmsted Brothers. Though not required by law at that time, these parks were strategic additions for the developers since they raised values for the surrounding new homes before they were sold. In some cases, developers dedicated the land to parks on paper but did not design them or build them out, and in other cases, they arranged for landscape architects to fully design them. Then they negotiated a low price with the city or, in some cases, donated the parks to the city. Atlanta Memorial Park, Adair Park I, Ansley Park, Dellwood Park, Eubanks Park (The Prado), McClatchey Park, Oak Grove Park, Shadyside Park, Springdale Park, Springvale Park, Virgilee Park, Winn Park, and Yonah Park all have developers playing an important role in their creation history.

(5) Parks created by community organizations Over the city’s history, Atlantans who believe in parks have frequently taken things into their own hands (see Figure 5). Whether through personal donations of land or labor, through activist organizing, or other kinds of community collaboration, these residents who do not hold elected positions and do not necessarily work on greenspace professionally have spurred the creation of many new parks. They create their parks using radical planning and social mobilization planning models. It is inspiring to see examples of this grassroots community spirit spread across hundreds of years—it is not just a historic phenomenon, but a pattern that remains alive and well today. Washington Park, Mattie Freeland Park, Freedom Park, Grant Park, and Mozley Park are all parks of this type.

Park Type Example Atlanta Parks Parks created under federal Adams Park, Browns Mill Golf Course, Chastain Park, Central Park, programs Cleopas R. Johnson Park, West End Park, Dean Rusk Park, Gordon- White Park

Parks created by non-profit Louise Howard Park, Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park, Lindsay organizations, using money Street Park, Cook Park, Cleopas R. Johnson Park, Enota Park, from foundations Boulevard Crossing Park

Parks funded by state, county, Armand Park, Piedmont Park, Knight Park, Pittman Park and city dollars Parks created by private real Atlanta Memorial Park, Adair Park I, Ansley Park, Dellwood Park, estate developers Eubanks Park (The Prado), McClatchey Park, Oak Grove Park, Shadyside Park, Springdale Park, Springvale Park, Virgilee Park, Winn Park, Yonah Park

Parks created by community Washington Park, Mattie Freeland Park, Freedom Park, Grant Park, organizations Mozley Park

Figure 5. Community garden flowers beautify the cracked paving at DeKalb Memorial Park. Photo by Ruth Pimentel.

Figure 6. Map showing locations of selected example parks.

Selected Parks The next section reviews one park from each category in the typology more closely, as follows:

(1) Adams Park (2) Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park (3) Knight Park (4) Atlanta Memorial Park (5) Freedom Park

These example parks are selected to showcase a diversity of park attributes. They are spread out across Atlanta in all directions (see Figure 6), though I was unable to include a park in the southeast corner of the city without losing some other dimension of diversity in this group. Some have an active Friends of the Park group or a formal conservancy, others do not. Some have significant public amenities like a recreation center, a swimming pool, and/or a golf course, while others do not. Several have participated in Park Pride’s visioning process, the others have not. Collectively, these parks are in areas with a wide range of average per capita incomes (see Figure 7)—as low as $13,412 near Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park, and as high as $112,012 near Atlanta Memorial Park. They also range widely in racial demographics, displayed in Figure 8 according to what percentage of nearby residents are non-Hispanic white people—as high as 96.6% near Atlanta Memorial Park, and as low as 1.1% near Adams Park, while Freedom Park and Knight Park have values in the middle of the range, which is somewhat rare in a city as racially segregated as Atlanta. In general for Atlanta, areas with a low percentage of white residents have a high percentage of Black residents, and vice versa. Symbolizing this map according to whiteness and placing it alongside the map of income reveals the degree to which wealth and whiteness occur together in this city—striking visual evidence of broader inequity.

My intention in incorporating many varying contexts was to identify some basic, general facts about park funding and park quality that may be true across neighborhoods in Atlanta. The city’s gulfs of racial and economic difference are profound, however. Including parks that serve Atlantans of many different life experiences also provides a chance to critically examine the systemic inequities, past and present, created and sustained by the city park system. Recognizing persistent disparities in park funding can help us identify ways to plan for the needs of Atlantans who face a structural disadvantage. Despite their differences, there is one dimension in which all these parks are similar: they have each been the subject of some kind of planning process that involved community engagement.

Figure 7. Map of Atlanta city parks and average income in the areas that surround them.

Figure 8. Map of Atlanta city parks and the percentage of white residents in the areas that surround them.

Selected Parks Analysis

Type 1 (Parks created under federal programs): Adams Park

Figure 9. Boardwalk and fountain at Adams Park. Photo courtesy of Park Pride.

Adams Park’s 158 acres lie southwest of downtown Atlanta in a hilly, wooded area off Campbellton Road and about two miles inside the perimeter of I-285. The City of Atlanta classifies it as a “regional park,” meaning that it is “large scale, central, or [has] other unique properties that draw users from the greater metro Atlanta area.” (City of Atlanta DPR website, n.d.) It was constructed in 1936 using Works Progress Administration funding awarded to Fulton County, and its golf course was built in part as a National Youth Administration project. (DeVore, Morris, & Reed, 2019) Originally in Fulton County, Adams Park was annexed into Atlanta as part of a massive 1952 deal called the Plan of Improvement. Today, the park does not have an active friends group, but it does have a Centers of Hope recreation center, a swimming pool, and Alfred 'Tup' Holmes Golf Course.

Adams Park neighbors worked with Park Pride to complete a visioning process in 2008. As part of the public engagement for that project, attendees at a community meeting developed this wish list (see table below, in their own words) for Adams Park. They expressed that their highest priorities were “improving the area around the lake,” and then around the master grill. (Park Pride, 2008) They also said they would like to remove the structures in what was at that time a youth baseball field in order to have flexible lawn space instead.

ADAMS PARK Community Request Details (if any) 2020 Status Remove Invasive n/a Yes Species/Undergrowth Repair/Replace Steps at Existing n/a Yes Paths Path Connections n/a Some Restrooms n/a Only in the community center Gazebo – Place to Stop and Sit – n/a No Could be Pergola Stone Pillars at Each Entrance n/a No (Similar to Greenwood Cemetery) or John A. White at Logan Lane and Blvd. Lorraine Picnic (Master Grill) Area Seating Yes Improvements ‘Amphitheater’ in Hillside No Lawn – Eco-Friendly and/or No Drought Resistant Seat Wall No Protective Fencing at Stream – Mostly no Split Rail at Steepest Areas/Bridges Landscaping at Venetian No Lake Area Improvements Stream Area by Culvert Yes Fountain/Moving Water in Yes Middle of Lake Adult Swings (Bench Swings) No More Seasonal Interest/Color – No Perhaps Trees, Shrubs, Cherry Trees? Trees around Lake (Beaver-Proof) Yes Spillway – Cleaned at Pool, Steps, Yes Bridge, Algae at Culvert #4 Rain Garden No Pedestrian Path Around Lake No (Paved, Soft Surface if Practical) Low-Level Lighting (Solar, if No possible; similar to Cascade Rd historic lighting, not baseball lighting ) Benches for Fishermen (natural No looking, wood, rustic, see CPA benches as examples – split logs or similar) Beaver-retardant landscape No Self-sustaining landscape— No natural and eco-friendly

In spring 2020, Adams Park is beautifully maintained but has only a few of the features community members said they wanted twelve years ago. The baseball backstop and fencing are gone. Woodland sections of the park have some English ivy, but they are mostly free of invasive plant species in the undergrowth. The steps in various park paths are in good repair and are accompanied by wheelchair- and stroller-accessible ramps near the lake. There is a natural stream area near the culvert at the southwest end of the lake, a fountain to circulate the water in the center of the lake (see Figure 9), and trees that appear to have been planted recently along its shore. Many of the trees are caged in chicken wire at the base of their trunks to protect them from beavers. The lake’s spillway appears clean and the water is free of algae. At the master grill area, there is plenty of seating at picnic tables, and there’s a patio with benches nearby. None of the other community requests are present, including infrastructure like an amphitheater and a new seat wall, or landscaping like shrubs and a rain garden. It’s particularly notable that there is no formal pedestrian path around the lake, as requested in the plan, because social trails show that park visitors are frequently walking a loop around the lake today. Part of the route was improved in 2016 with a new boardwalk (Park Pride, 2016), but the rest of the path stops and starts in several places. As one example of parks created under federal programs, Adams Park suggests that parks of this type mostly do not reflect the community’s desires. Type 2 (Parks created by non-profit organizations using money from foundations): Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park

Figure 10. Newly installed green infrastructure in the form of stormwater channels at Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park. Photo by Ruth Pimentel.

Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park is one of Atlanta’s newest parks. As described in the introduction of this paper, it formally opened at a ribbon-cutting on November 21, 2019. Before the park’s construction, the 3-acre site was split into several parcels and was fenced off but otherwise vacant. This land and many of the streets and houses around it were prone to serious, polluted flooding due to inadequate stormwater management infrastructure, frequent sewer overflows, and the low-lying topology. A 2010 study of the Proctor Creek watershed led by community members (including Tony Torrence, Yvonne Jones, Pamela Flores, Dr. Makeda Johnson, and “Able” Mable Thomas, with input from many others such as Byron Amos and Ivory Young) and Park Pride had identified this land as a potential park site, in hopes of managing the flooding with green infrastructure.

Over the ensuing years, a team of non-profit organizations worked together to bring this area to the attention of the City of Atlanta DPR and Department of Watershed Management, and also to the attention of foundations that could provide grants for creating a park. The Conservation Fund, Park Pride, and Chattahoochee Riverkeeper shared responsibility for helping the city acquire the land, applying for grants, designing the park, managing remediation and construction contracts, keeping city officials apprised of progress, and more. Money for the project came from many sources, but the largest amount came from The Coca-Cola Company and The Coca-Cola Foundation, for a combined total of about $750,000. Today, the park does not have an active friends group, but it does have a few “community ambassadors” who are paid through funds held by Park Pride for assorted outreach and caretaking efforts.

During the 2016 Park Pride Visioning Process for Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park, which was called Boone Park West at that time, community members completed surveys (created jointly by community members on a park visioning steering committee and by Park Pride staff) indicating their strong preference for the following elements to be included in the park—the top eight choices are listed below, and more suggestions are shown in Figure 11, a graphic from the final Vision Plan document.

KATHRYN JOHNSTON MEMORIAL PARK Community Request 2020 Status Signs that educate Yes Bicycle trail Paved sidewalks and stair-free routes (no BeltLine connection) BBQ area No Fitness equipment Yes Playground Yes Lighting Yes Water fountain Yes Sports facilities Open field

Most of the features listed in the table are present today, chiefly a beautiful new playground (see Figure 12). There are educational signs about the park’s stormwater management system (see Figure 10) spread throughout the park, an area with adult fitness equipment in the northwest corner, a new playground in the middle area with a drinking fountain nearby, and lampposts along all the paths. A few features are present in informal ways: the only sports facility is an open lawn big enough to play casual

22 games of soccer or football, and the only gesture at a bicycle trail are the smooth, paved paths and ramps throughout the park. The only item missing is a barbecue area. As one example of parks created by non-profit organizations using money from foundations, Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park suggests this type of park closely reflects neighbors’ wishes.

Figure 11. From the Boone Park West (later, Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park) Vision Plan, p. 10

Figure 12. Playground at Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park. Photo courtesy of Park Pride.

Type 3 (Parks funded by state, county, and city dollars): Knight Park

Figure 13. Historic building remains at Knight Park. Photo courtesy of Park Pride.

The historical record has little to say about Knight Park’s creation, but it was purchased with money from the city budget. On 5 May 1944, the Atlanta Constitution published an article describing how the city council’s “parks and aviation committee” had acquired the roughly two and a half acres for $3,080, and named the park “in honor of [committee member] Councilman William T. Knight.” (Atlanta Constitution, 1944) The park remains small at under 3 acres, and is mostly passive greenspace with trees, though there is a tennis court, a Little Free Library, a small playground, and the remains of a historic brick building which was recorded as a contributing structure to the Knight Park/Howell Station neighborhood’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places (see Figure 13). Today, the park has an active friends group and enjoys advocacy and support from the Howell Station Neighborhood Association.

Knight Park participated in a Park Pride Visioning process in 2017. Requests mentioned by 5 or more people in the 58 community survey responses are listed below, and more are visible in Figure 14, a graphic from the final Vision Plan document.

KNIGHT PARK Community Request 2020 Status Pavilion/community space In progress Dog park No Better seating No Grills/cooking stations No Additional tables No Playground update Funding secured Flat space Invasive clearing has opened up a little space Pool/splash pad No Nature trail No Tennis court update No

Almost none of the elements listed in the table are present, except that a recent volunteer day to remove invasive plants choking a forested section of the park resulted in a small, flat area in the southeast. The only item in the survey results graphic that is currently in the park predated the visioning plan: the intermittent stream at the lowest point in the park provides a natural water feature. As one example of parks created by local government funding, Knight Park suggests that this type of park does not include the features that community members want.

Figure 14. From the Knight Park Vision Plan, p. 11

Type 4 (Parks created by private real estate developers): Atlanta Memorial Park

Figure 15. Soft trail in Atlanta Memorial Park. Photo by Ruth Pimentel.

Developer Eugene Haynes donated some of the land for Atlanta Memorial Park to the City of Atlanta on the condition that it become a golf course, to increase the value of the homes his company was building nearby. The city accepted this donation in 1927 and built Bobby Jones Golf Course using labor from Fulton County prisoners in 1932. Like many of Atlanta’s parks initially created by early 20th-century developers, Atlanta Memorial Park is surrounded by neighborhoods with a high percentage of white residents and with high average incomes. At well over 100 acres, it is one of the city’s largest parks, exceeded in size only by Southside Park and Chastain Memorial Park. Located in the Springlake/Buckhead area northwest of downtown Atlanta, the park follows Peachtree Creek and wraps around Bobby Jones Golf Course and Bitsy Grant Tennis Center. It also includes a northern section of the Atlanta BeltLine.

Atlanta Memorial Park Conservancy is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization created in 2011. Like Freedom Park Conservancy but unlike the smaller friends groups many other parks in Atlanta rely on for fundraising, outreach to elected officials, and building community support for the park, AMPC is a persistent, formal body with a board and an executive director. It conducted a master planning process in 2014, including several public workshops to identify community preferences for the park.

ATLANTA MEMORIAL PARK Community Request 2020 Status Connected passive park encircling golf and tennis Yes, connectivity in progress facilities Safely lit trails No Trail materials that are accessible to all types of Some (see typical materials in Figure 15) users (smooth, at least 8’ wide) Long-term maintenance and management plan Yes for natural areas (remove invasive species, restore with natives) 18-hole golf course Turned over to the state of Georgia: 9-hole reversible course with driving range Integrated golf & tennis pro shop Turned over to the state of Georgia: new golf clubhouse

During community meetings about the park, much of the discussion focused on the Bobby Jones Golf Course. Neighbors had strong feelings about and were divided on the topic of whether the course should be 18 holes, or 9 holes with a driving range. By the third meeting, more participants wanted an 18 hole course (though there were still many who supported a 9 hole course), and the workshop facilitators noted that some people felt a driving range would be an “eyesore, not what Bobby Jones would want.” (HGOR, 2013) In 2016, after the planning process was finished, the City of Atlanta transferred the Bobby Jones Golf Course and the Bitsy Grant Tennis Center to the state of Georgia. The state built a 9-hole reversible golf course with a driving range, and has a major renovation underway for a club building that will host the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame and other golf organizations.

As one example of a park created by private real estate developers, Atlanta Memorial Park suggests that this type of park is partially successful at reflecting community desires.

Type 5 (Parks created by community organizations): Freedom Park

Figure 16. Tree of Life, a sculpture by Yvonne Domenge, located in Freedom Park. Photo courtesy of Park Pride.

Freedom Park’s history of conflict, protest, and citizen action has been thoroughly documented elsewhere, but the following quick overview can explain why this park is a good example of parks created by community organizations.

As part of the Butler Street Urban Renewal project of the 1960s, the Georgia Department of Transportation used condemnation, eminent domain, and purchases to acquire the land that is now Freedom Park, and cleared the homes that were on it. GDOT intended to use the land for a toll road linking downtown Atlanta to the Stone Mountain Freeway. Instead, neighborhood groups brought legal action, protested, and in 1972 won Governor Jimmy Carter’s support in stopping the road construction. In the 1980s, Carter backed a new version of the road project in connection with his presidential library. Once again, community members formed organized opposition groups, including Road Busters, which blocked construction equipment, and Citizens Against Unnecessary Thoroughfares in Older Neighborhoods (CAUTION), which fought many legal battles to stop the plan. GDOT, the City of Atlanta, and CAUTION finally came to an agreement in 1992, and much of the land that would have been roadway instead became Freedom Park, inarguably as a result of the community’s actions over the preceding 30 years. CAUTION changed its name to Freedom Park Conservancy in 1997, and remains Freedom Park’s formal, relatively powerful version of a friends group.

Residents of the neighborhoods around Freedom Park participated in community engagement for the Atlanta BeltLine Subarea 5 Master Plan, completed in 2009. The goals they identified in the planning process were broad and included non-park projects such as putting high density development near public transit stops. The “Parks & Greenspace” goals identified in this document included creating tree- filled spaces, ensuring park safety, and accommodating active and passive activities for people of all

28 ages. Looking farther back, neighborhood representatives worked with business groups and non-profits to create a Freedom Park Concept Plan in 1994, as Atlanta prepared to host the Summer Olympics. Some of the goals they adopted during that planning process are listed below.

FREEDOM PARK Community Request 2020 Status Promote activities such as walking, jogging, PATH trails promote walking, jogging, and biking, picnicking, and biking and there’s a skate park Downplay programmed recreation, such as tennis No tennis, basketball, or baseball facilities and basketball, and formal baseball/softball facilities Provide for unprogrammed neighborhood There are multiple playgrounds, and open lawns recreation facilities, such as playgrounds, picnic allow for picnicking areas, and pavilions Provide disability-accessible features Not specifically beyond paved paths Provide safe and convenient access to the park Yes, many crosswalks and good trail connectivity from surrounding neighborhoods with the BeltLine, Stone Mountain Trail, PATH trail Create a clear and distinct edge to public open Yes—the park’s passivity (open lawn) makes it space immediately recognizable at most edges Limit motorized vehicular access into the park Limited success; John Lewis Freedom Pkwy, North Ave, Moreland Ave, and a few others cross the park or go through it, experiences in many parts of the park are characterized by being near a major road

Most of the features listed in this table are currently present in Freedom Park. It remains an extremely unprogrammed greenspace considering its size and location. Instead, many of its active users run, walk, or bike on its many paths, or hang out on its open lawns. As requested in 1994, there are no facilities for basketball, tennis, or baseball, but there are multiple playgrounds. Though the paths are wide and well- paved to be accessible to strollers and wheelchairs, they are also hilly, and there are no other special accommodations to make the park accessible to visitors with disabilities. Freedom Park does provide safe and convenient access from surrounding neighborhoods, particularly with regard to trail connectivity: good crosswalks and networks link the PATH Foundation’s Stone Mountain Trail and the Atlanta BeltLine into the park’s many paths.

The community has not gotten their wish of a park that limits vehicular access, however. Freedom Park is entwined with Freedom Parkway, and while the speed and intensity of traffic are probably lower than they would have been on the freeway GDOT originally planned, proximity to busy roads is almost inescapable while in the park. North Avenue and Moreland Avenue are two more major arteries that go through the park, and a few smaller streets cut across it as well.

It’s worth noting that Freedom Park is presently home to many pieces of public art, an amenity that is not mentioned anywhere in the 1994 plan. The plentiful, large-scale sculptures are a distinguishing characteristic of the park (see Figure 16), and new pieces are frequently added or rotated into the space. Based on the requests community members made in the past, it’s safe to say that this was not

29 previously part of their vision for the park. As one example of a park created by community organizations, Freedom Park suggests that this type of park mostly reflects neighbors’ wishes.

DISCUSSION None of these parks have everything that their surrounding communities requested, which is hardly surprising. However, some of them have far more than others. While the sample parks considered in this paper offer only a narrow view of each category in the park typology, we can make some general statements about what these examples demonstrated. Parks created by non-profits using foundation money and parks created by community organizations were particularly effective at fulfilling their neighbors’ desires for the land—almost all the community requests are present in these parks today. Parks created by private real estate developers were somewhat successful at this task—many of the community requests are present in these parks. Meanwhile, parks created as federal projects and parks funded by local government were the least effective by this measure—few to nearly none of the community requests are present in these parks.

Estimated Portion of Park Type Example Park Name Community Requests Fulfilled 1: Parks created under federal Adams Park 33% programs 2: Parks created by non-profit Kathryn Johnston Memorial 88% organizations Park 3: Parks funded by local Knight Park 30% governments 4: Parks created by private real Atlanta Memorial Park 50% estate developers 5: Parks created by community Freedom Park 85% organizations

Contextual details about the sample parks discussed here can add nuance and complexity to the results. For example, the ways that money has flowed into each park after it was created are an important factor in the park’s ability to meet community needs. Over the years, neighbors and supporters at Adams Park have sought improvement funds with limited success. Despite a $250,000 matching grant from Park Pride in 2016 and investments from the City of Atlanta and Carnival Cruise Line, many potential projects identified in the visioning process haven’t materialized and there is a sense of lost momentum. Though community leaders at Adams Park have achieved a lot and can speak as experts at national conferences, they have also struggled with navigating city politics to successfully get the changes they want. Securing further investments in park improvements has been less of a barrier for Atlanta Memorial Park Conservancy, which independently raised $75,000 in donations to hire a landscape architecture firm, worked with the City of Atlanta to use FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Funds to acquire more parcels to be added to the park, won a Legacy Grant from Park Pride for trail improvements, successfully lobbied a city council member to allocate $2.2 million for a new multi-use trail and pedestrian bridge, and more. More detailed pictures of continued financing for improvements at a broader range of parks—too unwieldy an undertaking for this project—would help clarify what might be causing these inequities.

Another important consideration in understanding these sample parks’ results is time—for this set of examples, there are widely varying time periods between collecting community preferences for the park, park creation, and the present day. Adams Park was created nearly a century ago, and the community requests considered in this paper weren’t recorded until 2008, so the initial source of park funding was probably not a key determinant in how those requests were considered and met. Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park has almost everything on its list, which makes sense considering the timeline and scope of work associated with it—a team of non-profit organizations collected neighbors’ ideas for the park as part of a multi-year project in which that same team also designed and built the park. Few to none of the Knight Park community requests are reflected in the park today, but that may be because not much time has passed since they articulated the requests. In fact, permitting is currently under way for a pavilion/community space in the park’s historic building remains, and City Council member Antonio Brown has provided $100,000 to the Howell Station Neighborhood Association in part to update the Knight Park playground.

The relationship between professionals and community leaders seems to have played a crucial role in many of these parks’ effectiveness at meeting community requests. Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park neighbors had ongoing professional support, mostly from non-profit organizations, in clarifying and implementing their requests, from start to finish. The community around Atlanta Memorial Park got a lot of what they wanted but lost their influence over some of the features that were most important to them when the city turned property over to the state, presumably making ties between neighbors and local officials ineffectual as those officials were no longer responsible for certain parts of the park. Freedom Park’s powerful community forces seem to have been successful in many of the areas that mattered to them, including stopping a full-blown freeway, but the smaller-scale roadwork that dominates the area was all but unstoppable—perhaps a result of the unavoidable state-level work with GDOT. Though there are a few examples of community leaders establishing long-term, productive advocacy relationships with Atlanta government officials in support of the parks described here, there are none with state officials, and the cases where community members had sustained access to other professionals closer to home, like private landscape architects and non-profit experts, show better outcomes.

Success in fulfilling community desires is not a static goal. Atlanta’s population is growing quickly, and the social makeup of its neighborhoods is constantly evolving. Neighboring communities are changing especially fast in the areas around Freedom Park and Knight Park. Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park may see neighborhood changes in the future as green streets development and Westside revitalization projects extend in its direction, though for now gentrifying influences aren’t visible so much as predatory investing. This analysis found that Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park meets almost every hope and expectation its neighbors had for it—but how well will that result age? Since this park does not currently have a friends group, it may be difficult for community ambassadors to gather support for requests to city council. Adapting the park as community interests change may be a challenge, and longer-term residents with lower incomes and access to fewer resources may be less likely to have their voices heard alongside newly arrived residents. This situation represents an opportunity for the City of Atlanta to practice place-keeping in the years to come, remembering to continue to value the interests of legacy community members even as some changes to the neighborhood may call for changes to the park. Like all parks, this space will also rely on continued maintenance funding from the city in order to remain an enjoyable community gathering space (see Figure 17). Because the literature suggests that

31 maintenance dollars are harder to come by than creation or acquisition dollars, the City of Atlanta will need to be proactive in order to maintain its current success in fulfilling community desires at parks like Kathryn Johnston Memorial.

Figure 17. A split tree blocking the sidewalk at Lang Carson Park. Photo by Ruth Pimentel.

The results in these example parks indicate some evidence that, beyond an initial start-up or single significant project, ongoing improvements are likely to happen at parks where neighbors earn high incomes. Atlanta Memorial Park has seen extensive changes. Knight Park is actively pursuing several major projects. Freedom Park not only got most of what they wanted, they selected and went far in a new direction with public art. One takeaway for the City of Atlanta from this result is the leveraging power of a linear park. Freedom Park extends across a gradient of average household incomes, which means that some of the political power present in wealthier areas was used to improve areas where incomes are lower as well. By design in the Freedom Park Conservancy’s bylaws, there are representatives from all the nearby neighborhoods on the conservancy’s leadership team, which hopefully means that people of all income levels were able to equally influence decisions about the park overall. However, this representation rule has also been a challenge for the conservancy’s effective functioning over the years, as many representatives see their conservancy work as a minor subset of their assignment to a community improvement association—they are less committed and involved than the rest of the conservancy would prefer.

One unexpected pleasure of the set of example parks considered here is that the different communities had wildly dissimilar, and even conflicting, goals for their parks. The wide variety of interests, whether neighbors wanted to gather as a community, establish formal sports facilities like golf courses, learn about stormwater infrastructure, or create quiet, largely unstructured greenspaces to visit on walks and runs, is a reminder of how many different purposes parks can serve. Atlanta is full of parks that are totally unlike each other, and when successful, they provide tailor-made and specialized resources to the people who love them. This fact leads us to recognize that choosing sample parks which varied along so many different dimensions has introduced a lot of uncertainty into the results and analysis. For example, though this paper suggests that different outcomes between Knight Park and Adams Park are due to their distinct funding typology, there are a lot of additional factors to consider as well: their distinct geographical locations, sizes, amenities, and more. The broad view of so many different situations, opportunities, challenges, and strategies covered here is only an introduction to the panoply of Atlanta’s park funding. Side-by-side case studies controlled for geographic differences, etc. are sure to yield more detailed, actionable insights in the future.

CONCLUSION The state of Georgia’s focus on being business-friendly, combined with the concentration of company offices and headquarters in Atlanta, mean that big corporations are probably always going to have a significant voice in what city leaders do and what happens to city resources. That is to say, foundation money will continue to play an important role in parks funding, as organizations like the Coca-Cola Foundation, the Home Depot Foundation, and others support the work of expanding and improving Atlanta’s greenspace. The example park discussed here suggests that this is great news, and is likely to produce parks that reflect the desires of the people who live near them. However, it’s not clear from this research how important the non-profit management of such a project might be. For further research, we might look to Atlanta’ several large foundation-created private parks, which are outside of the scope of this analysis since they are not publicly owned. Centennial Olympic Park (nearly half its funding came from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, which is an independent foundation but came out of the wealth of a former CEO of The Coca-Cola Company) and the Home Depot Backyard are both open to the public, but privately owned and operated. To what extent, if any, did these parks’ developers attempt to serve local interests? How has the parks’ presence affected the lives and opportunities of the people around them? Parks leaders in Atlanta should take note of the answers to these questions and proceed cautiously in the way they invite and cultivate foundation money in the park system.

It’s also worth recalling one of Taylor’s critiques of this system: that substantial donations through public-private partnerships allow a government “to step away from its commitment to provide public recreation to all citizens.” As planners, we have a responsibility to critically examine systemic disparities and to promote racial and economic integration. Atlanta’s current racial segregation is stark, to the point that finding example parks in neighborhoods with a medium percentage of white residents was difficult. Across the city, patterns of income closely follow patterns of race. Though many of the foundations providing financial support to park creation in Atlanta focus on under-resourced or underserved neighborhoods, efforts toward integration or toward building equitable systems are not obvious. Some of the evidence from this study suggests that parks in wealthier areas with primarily white residents are drawing on a totally different set of financial resources than parks in lower-income areas

33 with primarily Black residents. Celebrating private foundations for providing funding to parks in lower- income areas does nothing to address this significant discrepancy, and the relatively passive role that Atlanta DPR has played across most of these example parks does not reflect a structural commitment to provide equitably for all citizens.

Some of the strongest, most positive outcomes in this study came from parks with serious community leadership. Parks leaders in Atlanta should pay attention to this result. Cultivating community leaders is an extremely powerful tool, and in an era of limited government funding, efforts to strengthen, train, and support neighborhood park advocates can help fill an important gap in the civic structure. At present, Atlanta DPR is severely understaffed and is not hiring. Though this isn’t a universal solution to the underlying problems that have created that situation, city employees who can lift up the work of community leaders, share expert advice appropriately to ease the way for their proposals to be approved in permitting and design review processes, and develop long-lasting relationships by seeing these people as allies rather than adversaries have the power to make a positive difference in the Atlanta park system.

Another way that Atlanta parks leaders can cultivate community leaders is by taking steps to strengthen relationships between community groups and non-governmental professionals. Experts who worked closely with community members, sharing their knowledge about landscape architecture, park design, and lobbying elected officials, seem to have played key roles in the some of the most successful parks in this study. Atlanta DPR officials might support these relationships by continuing to work closely with local parks non-profits, responding to community requests with relevant introductions to potential advisers at outside organizations, and sharing information more openly with these organizations, perhaps through formalized agreements.

This paper was intended to start shedding a little bit of light on how various park funding mechanisms correlate with the parks effectively (or ineffectively) serving community interests. However, the measure of community interest used here is a very limited one. Future research on this topic could incorporate observational data about use patterns, qualitative data from neighbor interviews, pre- and post-surveys around a new park project, and longitudinal studies of how these findings might be influenced by economic development and gentrification in a specific neighborhood.

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APPENDIX This Python program for searching PDF documents for phrases and words related to parks was written by Aubrey and Michael Knudson. As part of my research into funding histories, I ran the code on a directory containing all the minutes from Atlanta’s Community Development & Human Services Committee meetings from April 2013 through October 2019—this is the committee that deals with issues relating to parks before they go before the City Council. import PyPDF2 import unicodedata import sys import glob import os tbl = dict.fromkeys(i for i in range(sys.maxunicode) if unicodedata.category(chr(i)).startswith('P')) def remove_punctuation(text): return text.translate(tbl)

# gets all the file names in the given directory allFiles = (glob.glob(f"{os.getcwd()}/*.pdf"))

# create the export file where we're going to write all relevant data exportFile = open("allParks.txt","w+", encoding="utf-8")

# traverse the file names and open each one for i, fileName in enumerate(allFiles): print(f"Opening '...{fileName[-16:]}\tfile {i} / {len(allFiles)}'") # open the pdf file object = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(fileName)

# get number of pages NumPages = object.getNumPages()

# extract text and do the search for i in range(0, NumPages): # print(f"\t Page {i}") PageObj = object.getPage(i)

Text = PageObj.extractText() words = Text.split(' ') for word in words: word2 = remove_punctuation(word) word2 = word2.lower() if word2 == "park" or word2 == "parks": # print fileName # print("Found " + word2 + " on page " + str(i+1)) # print Text exportFile.write(fileName) exportFile.write("\n") exportFile.write("Found " + word2 + " on page " + str(i+1)) exportFile.write("\n") try: exportFile.write(Text) except Exception as e: exportFile.write('Error printing page: ', e)

exportFile.write("\n") exportFile.write("\n") break # slight optimization to stop looking for the word on the page once we've found it exportFile.close()