‘Even informal, fleeting social interactions can influence your sense of neighborhood satisfaction, sense of identity and connection to your neighborhood. Parks and public spaces that provide an opportunity for people to gather together can increase feelings of safety.’
Lauren Mullenbach, Research Scientist at the University of Michigan in the School for Environment Sustainability and Rachel Thompson, Research Scientist in the Center for Systems and Community Design at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, have studied and worked on projects around urban environmental justice. Lauren’s research has focused on green space development and community benefits and consequences, including physical health and mental health outcomes, social vitality and gentrification. Rachel’s research has focused on the effects of park investment on family and community health in New York City.
Here, Lauren and Rachel share what they’ve learned through their research on the role that parks and green spaces can play in child and family well-being.
Q: What does research tell us about the health benefits of parks for families?
Rachel Thompson: Urban green spaces play a very important role in supporting family health and well-being. They are really important spaces for fostering family connections and time together. Especially in New York City, where everyone’s going a hundred miles per hour, parks can be a quiet oasis to relax, reconnect and just enjoy family time together.
Parks also create opportunities for play and physical activity, which is especially important for families who may not have access to private backyards or costly extracurricular activities.
Lauren Mullenbach: It’s easiest to connect parks and green spaces to physical health. A place where you can get physical activity, especially if it’s easy to get to, can improve your health.
Then there’s a whole body of research showing that spending time in nature is good for your mental health. Just being around trees, grass and flowers can slow your heart rate, reduce blood pressure and make you feel calm and serene.
It can be hugely beneficial when families live near spaces where they can just spend time together—parks, playgrounds and leisure spaces play a role in family cohesion and helping families through hard times. A neighborhood where families feel safe walking around, the nearest green space is close by and the facilities are well-maintained is a great place to foster family connection and leisure.
Q: What about the role that parks can play in bringing people together or keeping the neighborhood connected?
Rachel: Parks can bring communities closer together by providing settings for community gatherings and repeated contact, or short outdoor conversations with neighbors. Even just the passive presence of neighbors at parks, while you’re walking or reading a book alone, may reduce feelings of isolation and strengthen your connection to your community. We take that for granted, but during the COVID pandemic we saw how much we missed it.
Social connectedness in a neighborhood is associated with better physical and mental health outcomes, lower crime rates and also higher community resilience. Collective efficacy is the ability of a community to come together and take collective action on their own behalf. When you have a more strongly connected neighborhood, residents have more agency and power, and feel that they can effect change in their neighborhoods.
Lauren: Parks have social health effects—something as simple as saying hi to someone can give you an oxytocin boost you get from human connection. Even informal, fleeting social interactions can influence your sense of neighborhood satisfaction, sense of identity and connection to your neighborhood. Parks and public spaces that provide an opportunity for people to gather together can increase feelings of safety. You feel more comfortable in public spaces if you recognize people, like ‘I see that woman and her dog all the time.’
If you’re looking at deeper social connection, however, the results are more mixed. Saying hi to someone in the park once a week doesn’t mean you can knock on their door in a crisis. There’s a lot of interest in whether parks and public spaces can create this kind of social capital. Research does suggest that when people are similar to each other, like if they’re also a parent or in the same age range, you’re more likely to be able to count on them. That’s another potential benefit of parks—if a parent taking their kid to the playground sees another family they know or can become friends with, that can foster a relationship based on shared experience.
Say there’s a heatwave and your air conditioning goes out, if you have that kind of bonding social capital with someone in your neighborhood, that means that you can go knock on their door and say, ‘Hey, my air conditioning went out. Can I come cool down for a couple hours?’
Q: Rachel, your work has recently focused on evaluating the impact of the Community Parks Initiative. Can you tell us about it and what you have learned?
Rachel: In New York City, the Community Parks Initiative, or CPI, was launched in 2014 to address historical underinvestment in parks within low-income communities. Over $500 million has been invested in the redesign and renovation of 68 neighborhood parks across the city, with 50 more underway.
The Physical Activity and Redesigned Community Spaces, or PARCS study was conducted by researchers at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy to study the impacts of these CPI renovations. We tracked a sample of residents living near the parks receiving renovations in 33 neighborhoods and compared them to a sample of people living near parks that didn’t receive renovations in 21 similar neighborhoods. We looked at health and behavioral outcomes like park use patterns, perceptions of the park spaces, perceived stress, physical activity and children’s quality of life.
We found that families with children, and especially families with fewer socioeconomic resources, saw the largest benefits from park renovations. Latino residents showed the largest increase in park use, reflecting a strong connection to communal outdoor public space that is central to a lot of Latino cultures. Black residents had the biggest increase in satisfaction with the improved parks.
Q: How can we best design our parks and green spaces, and our neighborhoods more broadly, to support social connection and family well-being?
Lauren: How a park comes to be and how it is designed can generate community ownership. Beyond surveys and focus groups, you can host design workshops, invite local artists and involve children and young people. There’s a lot of evidence that says community ownership can foster stewardship and care, where people are less likely to litter or vandalize something that they have an attachment to. You can foster social connection and get feedback at the same time.
Knowing your audience is really important, too. A neighborhood with many older adults might still benefit from playgrounds if they’re looking after grandchildren. A younger, apartment-dwelling neighborhood might appreciate dog parks or spaces for walking and working out. Pavilions for neighborhood gatherings or benches around playgrounds so parents can talk while kids play—these physical elements foster social connection.
You can’t just plop a park in a neighborhood and expect everyone to suddenly become friends. Ideally, for green infrastructure and neighborhood amenities to be part of the social fabric, you want to have the programming and funding to make sure that that happens.
Rachel: One key takeaway from our research is that park renovations alone, while they are really important, may not equally benefit all groups, and that we need to address barriers to park use beyond just improving the spaces. Research has shown that Black residents, for example, often face more barriers to park use compared to other groups, including safety concerns and feelings of exclusion. We need complementary initiatives that can address barriers to park use and reflect the diverse preferences for different activities for different groups.
Our team has launched an exciting follow-up study called the Supporting Parks and Revitalizing Communities Study, or SPARCS, which aims to further activate eight of the recently renovated park spaces. So far, the project has led to the development of dozens of community-led activities covering all kinds of different topics, including arts, culture and physical activity. Last summer, there was a salsa dancing class at Al Quiñones in the Bronx, clay and sculpture-making classes at Hilltop Playground in Brooklyn, and a pickup basketball game at Astoria Heights playground in Queens.
We’re hoping to mobilize local groups and community members to take ownership and collaboratively develop programs that leverage the strengths, resources and preferences of the communities served by these parks. So far, engagement at these events has been quite strong. People are coming and participating.
We’re now working on bringing this to the attention of community boards and local elected officials to help them see what’s happening and how it’s been such a success in these neighborhoods. If we want to see these kinds of initiatives reach more neighborhoods in New York City, we have to advocate for sustained investment from the city.
Interview by Mahima Golani