GAI Community Solutions Group parks and public spaces practice leader Kristin Caborn discusses her team’s approach to partnering with communities to create ‘authentic’ places, related improvements in Jacksonville, FL, and her views on the wide range of benefits that parks offer communities and their residents.

Public parks are where people meet their neighbors, connect with nature, gather with friends for a pick-up ballgame—and where they can simply relax and blow off some steam. A National Association of Realtors survey reveals that 78% of homebuyers are willing to pay more for homes in walkable neighborhoods with easy access to parks and other amenities. Parks and public spaces are cherished features of our communities—a view that GAI’s Community Solutions Group (CSG) hears again and again when we gather public input as part of our parks system master planning process.

In my role with CSG’s parks and public spaces practice, I draw on nearly a decade of experience in public Parks & Recreation in collaborating with CSG’s diverse team to help public-sector clients create community-supported parks system master plans. Together, CSG’s collective experience in parks planning empowers clients with data-based decision-making guidance for park system expansion and improvements to the existing system with an eye toward equity.

Prioritizing the importance that residents and potential residents place on parks, a successful parks system master plan goes beyond planning for beautiful and functional shared open spaces to incorporate a broad range of long-term community goals and needs. Following a series of forward-thinking best practices, GAI’s CSG engages area residents, officials, service providers, and businesses to create a holistic parks system master plan that supports, reflects, and benefits the community’s identity, environment, health, and economy.

Collaborating With Community Residents & Staff

Through the GAI CSG’s parks system master planning process, we immerse ourselves in each of the communities that we work with to best understand the residents’ perspective of how their park system is currently functioning for them and how they want it to function in the future. We strive to meet people where they are, spending time in each of their parks, having candid conversations with park users—it’s a personal approach toward gaining an understanding of how local culture influences everyday life, where residents go to relax, where they take their kids to play, and what these experiences and preferences really mean to them. We also take the more structured approach of gathering public input through meetings, surveys, and open public workshops in addition to engaging closely with municipal staff.

We take our professional assessments of what we’ve heard from the public and organize them into guiding principles. These help us shape what might be a future vision for the city or county parks department and how that vision might be influenced by a range of related municipal concerns and priorities like resilience, regulatory planning, growth management, and more.

When we move into the implementation phase, CSG draws on that data and applies those principles to create a realistic plan that makes sense for that jurisdiction.

My background working in the public sector is extremely useful when we progress to creating the parks system implementation plan. We have been very successful at working with municipalities’ financial and parks departments to help them determine budgets and funding for building and maintaining the parks system as well as helping identify and secure funds and grants from both government and alternative sources.

Creating Authentic Places That Boost Well-Being and Value

A priority that we hear repeatedly when gathering input from community members is for their local parks system to provide safe places to walk. We strive to design pathways and trails that provide safe connections between parks, and our designs are informed by a Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) philosophy that can play a significant role in crime reduction.

Parks benefit physical health by providing space for exercise and help promote socialization that can benefit mental health, especially in communities that might have limited green space. Parks are also held to support social resilience, which is defined as the ability of a social system to respond to and recover from disasters.

On the environmental side, park designs can help preserve wetlands and other fragile environments, provide wildlife corridors, and incorporate green infrastructure features that can help manage stormwater or floods. In terms of the local economy, parks attract visitors and create lively foot-traffic that benefits local businesses, and as noted earlier, can have a positive effect on property values.

Successful parks are ‘authentic’ places that fit naturally into their location and reflect their community’s unique identity. One good example is the recently opened Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing Park in Jacksonville, Florida’s LaVilla neighborhood, which reflects the community’s history by honoring the legacy of famed residents James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson. The park anchors the recently opened Johnson Commons residential development that brings more than 90 new homes to LaVilla. (See sidebar for details from GAI CSG Planning Director Blake Drury, AICP.)

When we approach parks planning in our work for the comprehensive Jacksonville Downtown Investment Authority (DIA) master plan, we sometimes deal with limited land yet benefit from some really great resources that the city already has, like the riverfront where we helped design One Park Jax.

Our parks design contributions for the DIA master plan are informed by the anticipation of downtown Jacksonville’s residential growth. We’ve seen this in LaVilla’s Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing Park: the park is a focal point of the Johnson Commons neighborhood that has developed around it, and the people who live there benefit from outdoor space that is safe, clean, well-maintained, and authentic to the neighborhood.

Committed to Parks System Master Planning Success

I’m a public servant at heart. I’m committed to optimal outcomes for people and sustainable success for our clients, and GAI’s CSG is a multidiscipline community workshop that shares that commitment. From navigating the regulatory process to securing funding, engaging with residents and municipal staff, and designing an implementable plan, our service groups coordinate to support the entire parks system master planning cycle.

Our clients benefit from access to multidiscipline expertise throughout GAI. CSG’s planners and designers work hand-in-hand with GAI’s civil engineers to support design integrity; our Construction Engineering and Inspection (CEI) practice helps us determine the constructability of a site; the list goes on. It’s all in the interest of a project’s ultimate success—bringing authentic, safe open public spaces to the people.

Contact GAI’s Community Solutions Group representatives Kristin Caborn, CPRE, FCP, 312.319.3161; Blake Drury, AICP, 321.319.3125; or Andrea Penuela, PLA, 321.319.3074, for more information about GAI’s range of community and parks planning, landscape architecture, and economics services—message GAI and start the conversation about how our multidiscipline professionals can meet your unique project needs. 

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Kristin Caborn, CPRE, FCP has 24 years of extensive parks and recreation management and planning experience. She has managed several multimillion-dollar parks and recreation projects and provided master plan implementation and phasing plans services for public-sector clients. Kristin thoroughly understands the municipal park planning process through her previous experience as a Parks and Recreation Director, where she was actively involved in all aspects of park planning, including extensive public involvement and facilitation.

Blake Drury, AICP specializes in urban design and city planning focused on creating livable communities. He has developed plans for public-sector clients in urban, suburban, and rural settings across North America, including initiation, conceptualization, and design of large-scale neighborhood redevelopment projects, downtown plans, and numerous transit station area planning programs. 

Andrea Penuela, PLA is a Sr. Landscape Architect and Parks System Planner with experience in both visioning and site design for clients throughout Florida. Her experience includes public involvement, site inventory, project management, visioning, site planning, design development, and construction document preparation.