You Can Now Have a Virtual Picnic in the Park, Thanks to Google

California’s Department of Parks and Recreation is getting a facelift, and Google is operating.
The Mountain View-based company has spent the last three months traversing the California countryside, through the towering redwoods and atop Mt. Tamalpais to create virtual maps for more than a dozen parks, helping the once-antiquated state agency plug in and capture a new audience online.

“Information is key for people who are not active users of state parks,” says Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation. “You want to know what a place is like. You want to prepare in advance.”

Google mapped the parks at no cost, using Google Trekker, which was previously used on the Grand Canyon in 2012, according to the Los Angeles Times. Users can view the virtual images of the 14 parks mapped using the Street View feature, with the aim of attracting a younger generation of potential hikers and campers.

“It’s really important to connect a new generation to California parks,”  says Jon Christensen, a UCLA senior researcher working on the software. “We know that generation is very technologically adept and socially connected.”

The impetus to play tech catch-up was prompted by an accounting scandal in 2012, which revealed millions of dollars concealed in a department account during the height of state park budget cuts. Earlier this year in April, the Parks Forward Commission, an independent group created by the Legislature, issued a report finding that the parks system “is debilitated by an outdated organizational structure, underinvestment in technology and business tools, and a culture that has not rewarded excellence, innovation, and leadership.”

In addition to the maps, California officials have also begun experimenting with mobile parking payment at some state beaches in Orange County, while budding architecture students at Cal Poly Pomona are designing park cabins as an alternative for camping out in a tent. And state officials plan to triple the number of parks where visitors can pay fees by credit card by the end of the year, too.

Elsewhere in San Francisco, Stamen Design is teaming up with conservation group Resources Legacy Fund to develop a mobile application to assist users with navigating programs and activities throughout the state’s park system, regardless of whether they’re operated by a government agency.

“Years from now, when we look at the parks system, this is the time when we had the opportunity to make great change,” says Lisa Mangat, acting parks director.

MORE: The Doctor’s Order? Spend More Time in Nature

What Do Toddlers and Senior Citizens Have in Common?

When most of us picture a public park, we see a vision of squealing kids climbing around on playground equipment and adults jogging and walking their dogs.
But UCLA professor Madeline Brozen, who directs the school’s Complete Streets Initiative, and her colleagues are challenging communities in the U.S. to form a new idea of how parks can contribute toward keeping a rapidly aging population healthy.
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, collaborated with Brozen on an award-winning toolkit that advises communities how they can create mini “parklets” in urban areas without a lot of green space. During that time, she realized that seniors weren’t using public parks as much as other age groups. The team wondered if this is because, unlike some in Asia and Europe, U.S. parks are almost never designed with the needs of elders in mind — instead emphasizing playground equipment and ways for younger adults to recreate.
So Loukaitou-Sideris, Bronzen, and other colleagues are now working on a project that will investigate what seniors need from public parks and how to design parks in order to attract those in their golden years. They plan to pay particular attention to the needs of low-income, urban seniors who don’t have a lot of recreational options.
“What we are trying to do with this project,” Loukaitou-Sideris tells Sharon Hong of UCLA Newsroom, “is, first of all, find knowledge from different fields about what an open space or public park for seniors should look like, how it should be different for different groups of seniors, incorporate some of the voices of senior citizens, create guidelines for future such spaces, and hopefully even apply this knowledge towards the creation of a park.”
With the population of Americans aged 65 or older expected to double between 2000 and 2030 to 72.1 million, this kind of thinking about people who are often forgotten by city planners is a must.
MORE: States Are Working to Keep Seniors On Their Feet
 

Can You Green a Community Without Stealing Its Identity?

Large, elegant projects that showcase the best of the best when it comes to environmental design have made their way into cities across the country. Politicians have praised these efforts endlessly, and the press, including NationSwell, have lauded their benefits. But what if the neighborhoods that house projects such as New York City’s High Line or Chicago’s green roofs (and benefit from them) end up being hurt in the long run?
Unfortunately, that’s what seems to be happening with certain projects of this nature — an overgentrification, of sorts, that ends up driving out existing residents.
How does that happen? Well, as it turns out, by making neighborhoods nicer, they can often become too nice — driving up the cost of living and bringing in wealthier residents, according to Next City.
So, how do we make neighborhoods greener without changing the makeup of the area altogether?
One successful example is Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Home to significant heavy industry and a large Polish population, Greenpoint is a working-class neighborhood, just like it was before becoming “just green enough.”
In 2010, the polluted estuary there, known as Newtown Creek, was declared a superfund site. Instead of cleaning it up through a large gentrification project, newcomers and longtime residents alike joined forces through the Newtown Creek Alliance, winning a settlement from Exxon-Mobil (the company that leaked the oil and contaminated the creek). With that money and their elbow grease, a nature trail was created, benefitting the community.
Greenpoint resident and Alliance member Bill Schuck, explained to Next City that his fellow activists thought, “hey, wait a second.  Are we doing this to make this attractive to real estate developers? And it was, no, we’re looking to benefit people like us.” Because of those efforts, Greenpoint received some much-needed cleanup and improvements without sacrificing its cultural and economic backbone.
Though there is no one secret for success in this arena, neighborhoods in other cities can learn from places like Greenpoint.
The key is to tailor any solution to the specific neighborhood — to listen to and to learn from the community members about their lifestyle and what kind of greening could benefit them. Another step is to make sure rents are stabilized and there’s enough affordable housing. Beyond that, though, is a general focus on practicality over publicity. The large, glamorous parks that are often widely loved can often be far less useful to a community, for example, than many smaller parks.
By focusing on the needs of the people when greening, a whole lot of good can be done.
DON’T MISS: 8 Inspiring Urban Renewal Projects

There’s More Than Meets the Eye to This Picnic in the Park

During the school year, lunch often isn’t a problem for low-income kids because they benefit from subsidized meals. But when summer rolls around, well, it’s another thing: Hunger becomes a real threat.
In Idaho, that situation is a bigger problem than you might realize. In fact, more than 90,000 kids experience hunger, according to the Idaho Foodbank.
The nonprofit doesn’t want these children to spend an entire summer with rumbling stomachs, so this year they are continuing their popular Picnic in the Park program — a massive effort to provide 60,000 meals to needy kids in the Boise area.
The initiative has 27 lunch giveaways planned for the summer— the majority of which will happen in public parks. During the noontime gatherings, Parks and Recreation Department employees and volunteers will be on hand to lead kids in exercise and games and the Idaho Commission for Libraries will bring bookmobiles to the events. The Idaho State Department of Education, the Boise School District, and Old Chicago Restaurant are also involved, contributing various things.
“I don’t know if there’s a better collaborative effort than this,” said Boise Mayor Dave Bieter told George Prentice of Boise Weekly. “Getting kids moving, reading, making good friends and developing healthy habits…this just gets better every year.”
Marty Zahn of Old Chicago explained to Prentice how the events work. “As the kids are eating their lunches, we begin some interactions…some small talk, asking them about their plans for the summer and whatnot. Then, it’s just natural to ask them to play some games.”
And after a nutritious lunch, the kids certainly have plenty of energy to play, read, and make friends.
MORE: This Young Child Has Big Plans to Feed His Hungry Peers
 
 

The Doctor’s Order? Spend More Time in Nature

We’ve all fallen victim to spending too much time cooped up inside, hunched over computers and binge-watching television shows. So in an effort to curb those nasty habits and get young people moving, one innovative Washington, D.C., doctor is teaming up with the National Parks Service to treat sickness with sunshine.
Dr. Robert Zarr is the chief evangelist for Park Rx — a database of parks and greenery that doctors can access when treating patients. The service allows physicians to locate a patient’s electronic record, ask them about what they like to do to keep in shape, and make recommendations to nearby parks based on their preferences.
With the help of the National Parks Service, the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation and others, Zarr mapped out and rated 380 parks for activities, cleanliness, safety, and transportation accessibility, according to Fast Company. Doctors can print out recommendations with maps and pictures as a sort of natural alternative to prescriptions.

“We wanted to know whether actually prescribing a park during a doctor’s visit would change behavior,” Zarr said. “And the answer was ‘absolutely yes.'”

The program, which launched last July, has already acquired 30 participating doctors at Unity Health Care. The results have garnered around 550 prescriptions and feedback revealed an average increase of 22 minutes of activity per week among 400 children.

MORE: These New York Seniors Are on the Cutting Edge of Telemedicine

Zarr claims his inspiration stems from Last Child in the Woods, a book about “nature deficit disorder” and its impact on our youth’s health. But the idea is also part of a National Parks Service movement to promote the outdoors as a health prevention strategy. Thanks to the doctor’s advocacy, the program is successfully combining medicine with nature.

While encouraging patients to spend more time outside as a means to improve health is nothing new, Zarr acknowledges it can require some convincing.  “Once you get over the conceptual hurdle of prescribing park, and you believe the scientific literature that clearly says being outside is good for health, then all it takes is to push a button on a computer. They have to do that anyway.”

The nature evangelist is aiming to develop a mobile app and one day, hopes to add, “have you been outside recently?” as a primary question in patient pre-interviews when checking vitals. For many of us, that answer is probably be “not as much as I should.” But hopefully, the Park Rx program is helping to change that.

The Surprising Secret to Get Adults Moving

Going down the slides, swinging on the tire swing, and twirling around on the merry-go-round is just child’s play, right? Turns out that frolicking on the playground isn’t just good for kids, but adults, too. But how do you entice grown-ups to be more active?
In a small study, researchers from the USDA found an interesting way to get adults to move: By getting rid playground benches. That’s because it eliminated the temptation to sit, Reuters reports. The study, which was published in Preventive Magazine, was set up by USDA supervisory physiologist James Roemmich who wondered what parents would do after the eight picnic tables at a Grand Forks, North Dakota playground were temporarily removed. According to the report, researchers found that in the single week after the benches were taken away, parents were 23 times more likely to engage in moderate to vigorous activity, such as pushing children on swings, socializing with other parents, and throwing Frisbees and footballs.
MORE: How a Group of Exercising Seniors Hopes to Change a Crime-Plagued Neighborhood
Fortunately, the on-the-go adults did not deter the kids from acting like, well, kids. The study also discovered that removing the benches did not affect how long children stayed at the playground — nor did it stop them from playing like they normally did. “That’s because children are already very active when they’re at the playground, running from swings to slides, climbing and jumping,” Roemmich said. “Increasing their activity level is more challenging.”
While it’s unlikely that your local park will rip up all the playground benches after this study, it certainly does suggest that simple steps like this could help reduce the obesity epidemic that’s afflicting this country.

Oregon has an Indiegogo Campaign to Give Portlanders a Huge Off-Road Bike Park

Portlanders have been talking in their sustainable libraries and wheat grass shot-shops about building a big, new off-road bike park. The city, and state, listened. Oregon teamed up with Indiegogo, and is looking to raise $100,000 to turn 38 acres of unused earth into a bike utopia. This could be the beginning of a new era of infrastructure investment; crowdfunding is big, but the government hasn’t so much as dipped its toe in the communally-funded pool. Since the recession, budgets have been slashed, and infrastructure projects have been stalled. Oregon could pave the way for cities and states around the country to repair their bridges and bottom lines.
[Image: Build Gateway Green, Indiegogo]