CHAMPAIGN, Ill.— A coalition of nonprofit organizations in Los Angeles led a park-equity movement that effectively shifted California’s funding priorities and brought green spaces closer to the homes of low-income people of color, a new study found.
The LA coalition’s successes could provide a framework for advocacy groups in other U.S. cities that have similar disparities in park access among different populations, said lead author Alessandro Rigolon, a professor of recreation, sport and tourism at the University of Illinois.
With public funding for parks dwindling in recent decades, nonprofit agencies have become key actors in the funding and development of parks and recreation in LA and other cities. According to Rigolon, however, previous research shows that these environmental groups’ park-development initiatives tended to benefit residents of affluent neighborhoods more than people in marginalized communities.
LA’s history of environmental injustices precipitated the founding of a large number of park-equity and environmental justice groups. In a paper published recently in the journal Urban Geography, Rigolon analyzed the work of 23 of these nonprofits to determine which residents benefitted from their projects and whether these groups’ efforts were promoting greater equality or inequality in access to the city’s parks.
Each of the nonprofits that Rigolon studied had supported at least one capital improvement project in the city of LA since 2000.
According to Rigolon’s spatial analyses, low-income neighborhoods in LA and areas populated mainly by racial/ethnic minorities benefitted the most from the new park projects undertaken by these nonprofits.
From 2000-15, the new parks these organizations supported reduced the negative correlation between park acreage in LA and the percentage of racial/ethnic minority people living near parks by 28 percent.
Although inequalities in park acreage still exist, Rigolon reported that equity-oriented nonprofits had improved walking access to parks for LA’s low-income residents – a radical change from previous work by environmental nonprofits in the region, which directed funding for large natural areas to affluent, predominantly white suburbs.
“Equity-oriented nonprofits have led diverse coalitions that leveraged complementary strengths and strategies in the quest for equality,” Rigolon said. “Advocacy has played a key role, as LA park nonprofits have educated the general public about green space inequities and mobilized communities to push the state to address such disparities. This led to the formation of a new urban regime that includes both park agencies and nonprofits, which has managed to establish and improve many parks in low-income communities of color.”
A park planner with the County of Los Angeles Parks and Recreation told Rigolon that equity-oriented nonprofits helped shift the county’s spending priorities by heightening awareness of spatial inequalities.
“Nonprofits like the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust push us to allocate resources to the most park-poor areas,” the park planner said in Rigolon’s report. “I would say that nonprofits are essential in disadvantaged communities for building parks and moving governments to do the right thing.”
The park projects that Rigolon studied were supported mainly by public funds generated by local and state ballot measures such as California’s Proposition 84 bond initiative, which established competitive grants for creating green spaces in neighborhoods defined as “critically underserved communities” due to their insufficient or complete lack of parks and recreational facilities.
Nonprofits such as the City Project and the Trust for Public Land, and collectives such as the Our Parks Coalition, helped write the grant guidelines for Proposition 84 and mobilized voter support for it and similar park-related referenda, Rigolon found.
“Increasingly, nonprofits are focusing on policy change and park funding legislation at the local and state levels because they believe that policy change can have a much greater impact than establishing a single park at a time,” Rigolon said.
Collaboration with local park officials and negotiating geographic and demographic priorities were critical in the projects in LA, since local park agencies owned and operated nearly all of the parks that were built, Rigolon found.
Over the years, several of the nonprofits evolved from grassroots activist groups to highly sophisticated agencies with expertise in areas such as park development, policy advocacy, grant writing and fundraising, and community organizing.
Staff members of public park agencies said they preferred to collaborate with certain nonprofits because of these groups’ extensive experience working in particular low-income neighborhoods and the relationships they had cultivated with key residents and public officials. Some nonprofits also consistently obtained grant funds for their projects that might not have been accessible to the park agencies otherwise.
Editor’s notes: To reach Alessandro Rigolon, call 217-300-5527; email rigolon@illinois.edu.
The paper “Nonprofits and park equity in Los Angeles: A promising way forward for environmental justice” is available online or from the News Bureau.
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