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Newsletter
Spring 2007
Mapping Green Access and equity for the Los Angeles River Region
The City Project is proud to release
the Policy Report Healthy Parks,
Schools, and Communities: Mapping
Green Access and Equity for the Los
Angeles Region. The Report is a
guide for creating healthy, livable
communities for all. It provides a
positive vision to:
- Revitalize the Los Angeles and San
Gabriel Rivers
- Create healthy parks and schools
- Improve health and reduce obesity
- Invest billions of dollars in infrastructure
bonds
- Promote economic vitality, local
jobs, and affordable housing
- Engage and empower communities
- Alleviate unfair park, school, and
health disparities
- Provide a replicable model for other
regions.
The Report provides GIS mapping,
demographic and historical analyses,
and policy and legal justifications for
healthy parks, schools, and communities.
The Report presents ten equal
justice principles for ensuring every
one benefits equally from public investments
in natural public places.
We support a collective vision for
a web of parks, school fields, rivers,
beaches, mountains, forests, and other
natural public places to promote healthy, livable communities for all.
This vision is inspired in part by
the 1930 Olmsted plan for parks,
playgrounds and beaches for the Los
Angeles region. The Olmsted vision
shows what should have been and
what could be.
In contrast to that vision is the reality
of unfair park, school, and health
disparities today. Children of color
living in poverty with no access to a
car have the worst access to parks,
and to schools with five acres or more
of playing fields, and suffer from the
highest levels of obesity.
The shared use of parks and
schools is the best use of land and tax
dollars. But shared use of parks and
school fields tend to be located in disproportionately
white and wealthy
areas.
Obesity levels are intolerably high
for children in every neighborhood--from 23 to 39%. Places and policies
for physical activity in parks and
schools can improve health and reduce
obesity for all.
The revitalization of the Los Angeles
and San Gabriel Rivers should
provide multiuse projects for parks,
schools, clean water, and flood control,
create jobs and affordable housing,
and avoid gentrification.
The Report also discusses the
Heritage Parkscape, an initiative to
link the Los Angeles State Historic
Park at the Cornfield, the Río de Los
Angeles State Park at Taylor Yard, El
Pueblo de Los Angeles, the Los Angeles
River, and over 100 other recreational,
cultural, historical, and environmental
sites. The Heritage Parkscape
will serve as a "family album"
to commemorate the struggles, hopes,
and triumphs of the Native Americans,
settlers, and immigrants who
entered Los Angeles through this
area.
The Report is a multimedia publication
available in various formats.
Visit www.cityprojectca.org to order
your copy.
Our new Policy Report Healthy
Parks, Schools, and Communities:
Mapping Green Access and Equity for
California is forthcoming.
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