DALLAS PARK AND RECREATION BOARD LAUNCHES SMART GROWTH FOR DALLAS PARTNERSHIP
Partnership will use data and community engagement to improve Dallas’s parks and open spaces
(DALLAS) The City of Dallas Park and Recreation Board announced today a partnership with The Trust for Public Land, buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, and The Texas Trees Foundation to develop a set of strategies for Dallas’s parks, open spaces, and green infrastructure called Smart Growth for Dallas. The privately-funded effort will use computer modeling and community engagement to identify areas of Dallas where parks can grow the local economy, connect communities, improve public health, and protect the city’s most important natural places.
“With the pace of development in Dallas only quickening, we are running out of time to protect our city’s most important natural places,” says Willis Winters, Director of the Dallas Park and Recreation Department. “Smart Growth for Dallas will provide invaluable data, insight, and analysis that will allow us to find and protect these natural assets, for the benefit and enjoyment of future generations.”
By combining sophisticated Geographic Information System (GIS) computer modeling and on-the-ground engagement with residents and park users, Smart Growth for Dallas will create an interactive “decision support tool” to help Dallas prioritize its investments in parks based on their economic, social, and ecological benefits. Using this decision support tool, Dallas will be able to create parks that can cool neighborhoods during summertime heat waves, protect homes from floods, improve the health of nearby residents, and build wealth for residents and tax base for the city. The results of the program will be available to city staff, non-profit partners, and the public at large through an interactive website.
“Parks, open spaces, and other natural places can be tremendous assets for solving our city’s biggest economic, social, and environmental challenges. Parks can protect natural resources, strengthen our community, improve health, and spur on economic development,” said Robert Kent, North Texas area director for The Trust for Public Land. “Our science-based approach will help Dallas make strategic and data-driven decisions for its future investments in parks and open spaces, building a strong city that is resilient to the challenges of the 21st century.”
Smart Growth for Dallas builds upon The Trust for Public Land’s Climate-Smart Cities™ program, which helps cities plan for and implement strategies to slow climate change and reduce its impacts, from protecting riverside parks and wetlands, to creating green alleys and water-smart playgrounds. Through Climate-Smart Cities, The Trust for Public Land has developed similar data-driven decision support tools for cities across the country, including Los Angeles, Calif., Chattanooga, Tenn., and Denver, Colo.
As partners in Smart Growth for Dallas, The Texas Trees Foundation will continue its groundbreaking work studying Dallas’s urban forest and the heat islands, and bcWORKSHOP will lead community engagement and storytelling activities, while furthering its work on racial equity and park access. The Texas Trees Foundation’s 2015 State of the Dallas Urban Forest Report and bcWORKSHOP’s 2014 Race and the Control of Public Parks were important milestones in Dallas’s efforts to understand how parks, open space, and other natural assets can improve the city’s resiliency and social equity. Smart Growth for Dallas is the next step.
“We believe that this research project and the resulting data will better position the City of Dallas to be more competitive for economic growth,” says Janette Monear, President and CEO of the Texas Trees Foundation. “Smart Growth for Dallas will provide the framework to prioritize future green initiatives and investments for Dallas to become a more healthy and resilient community.”
“This effort will help to guide public and private investment in parks and public spaces to meet the specific needs of neighborhoods across Dallas. The results will guide strategic decisions that lead to a better Dallas,” says Brent Brown, Founding Director of bcWORKSHOP. “Community engagement is vital to the success of the project, and storytelling will create the propelling voice and political will to make it happen.”
The Smart Growth for Dallas program will create an unprecedented data library and analysis of how parks and open space can offer social, economic, and environmental benefits to the city. The complete analysis will be available through a website featuring maps, data visualizations, storytelling about the importance of parks to neighborhoods, and other innovative features which will allow users to interact with the data.
The Trust for Public Land has already begun the first phase of mapping and analysis, with initial results expected to be complete by June 2016. bcWORKSHOP will lead a series of seven community listening sessions to gather input from the public, which will be used to inform the computer analysis. Dates for community engagements will be announced in the coming weeks. The public is encouraged to take an online survey about Dallas’s parks system and signup to receive project updates by visiting www.SmartGrowthForDallas.org.
About the Dallas Park and Recreation Department – This award-winning organization is among the nation’s largest urban park systems, offering residents and visitors of all ages year–round access to exceptional recreational opportunities and facilities. Park and Recreation cares for almost 24,000 land and water acres that include 379 parks, 100 trail miles, athletic fields, and natural areas. Visit dallasparks.org for more information.
About The Trust for Public Land
The Trust for Public Land creates parks and protects land for people, ensuring healthy, livable communities for generations to come. Millions of people live within a ten-minute walk of a Trust for Public Land park, garden, or natural area, and millions more visit these sites every year. To support The Trust for Public Land and share why nature matters to you, visit www.tpl.org.
About buildingcommunityWORKSHOP
The buildingcommunityWORKSHOP is a Texas based nonprofit community design center seeking to improve the livability and viability of communities through the practice of thoughtful design and making. We enrich the lives of citizens by bringing design thinking to areas of our cities where resources are most scarce. To do so, [bc] recognizes that it must first understand the social, economic, and environmental issues facing a community before beginning work. www.bcworkshop.org
About The Texas Trees Foundation
Texas Trees Foundation is a private nonprofit dedicated to creating healthy communities by protecting and enhancing the urban forest while investing in people. Established in 1982, the Mission of the Texas Trees Foundation is (i) to preserve, beautify and expand parks and other public natural green spaces, and (ii) to beautify our public streets, boulevards and rights-of-way by planting trees and encouraging others to do the same through educational programs that focus on the importance of building and protecting the “urban forest” today as a legacy for generations to come. www.texastrees.org.
