Collaborative Placemaking for Healthy Communities

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• Learn how public-sector planners are effectively incorporating a public-health perspective into a traditional planning/ community-design process.
• Identify creative and successful strategies for engaging historically underrepresented groups (kids, teens, seniors, and linguistically isolated populations).
• Integrate a health lens into a design process in a way that meaningfully reduces historic inequities.

MORE SESSION DETAILS

In 2017, Seattle Parks and Recreation undertook the South Park Community Center (SPCC) Challenge Fund Site Wide Study to reach schematic design for the redevelopment of the SPCC site. This site-wide study was an opportunity to engage with community members authentically and meaningfully (in particular kids, teens, and seniors) to redesign one of South Park’s only open spaces. From its inception, this project has had three touchstones: enhancing community health, equitably capturing community priorities for the SPCC site, and designing a dynamic community “third place.” Currently, the park is underutilized due to an assortment of challenges, including health concerns from proximity to State Route (SR) 99, poor sight lines to and from key park elements (particularly the playground), other crime and safety concerns, insufficient lighting at night, sports fields that do not meet league standards, and lack of facilities that draw multi-generational use and spontaneous play. Learn how a private agency led community engagement, assesses existing conditions and current uses of the site, provided recommendations based on best practices and peer-reviewed literature, and developed a final conceptual design for the site.