April 2019 - Parks & Recreation - 65

director of Rebuild by Design, a
project of the Van Alen Institute
in New York City; Jason Hellendrung, vice president for Tetra
Tech, a worldwide design and
engineering firm; Kokei Otosi,
project manager of Keeping Current, a solutions-oriented initiative
targeting South Florida; and Jordan Wildish, a research analyst at
Earth Economics, a think tank that
applies market-based solutions to
environmental problems, gave their
thoughts on how cities must use
a systems approach to first assess
vulnerabilities, not just of physical infrastructure, but also of the
health and well-being of vulnerable
populations that are often the most
affected by extreme events.
Parks play a prominent role in a
systems approach that seeks to provide multi-benefit solutions because
of their recreational, public health,
community development, economic health and environmental benefits through living shorelines, green
infrastructure stormwater management and flood-control benefits.
On the second day of the lab,
a second panel, composed of
Na'Taki Osborne Jelks, chair
of the West Atlanta Watershed
Alliance and professor at Spellman
College; James Murley, the chief
resilience officer for Miami-Dade
County; Sonia Succar Rodriguez
of the Nature Conservancy; and
Tom O'Hara, a former managing
editor of several newspapers and
now project editor for The Invading
Sea, spoke on the economic, environmental and social dimensions
of resilience.
Key takeaways from this session
highlighted the environmental and
social injustices of vulnerable populations that often have the least

Innovation Lab participants toured the
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral
Gables, Florida.

means to deal with acute shocks
from extreme events, such as hurricanes, storms and drought. Presenters agreed that parks play a vital
role in developing resilient communities because they are so strategically located within communities.
Osborne-Jelks noted that " process
is as important as results. " To gain
community buy-in, planners and
implementers of resiliency solutions must have a community-centered approach and engagement at
every level - in planning, preparing and implementing solutions.
One of the highlights of the Innovation Lab was an interactive
workshop, led by Joanna Lombard, a professor at the University
of Miami's School of Architecture,
that was organized around a Design Thinking Process that focuses
on human-centric solutions. Working at tables on chosen climate resiliency topics, participants worked
through a collaborative process
to learn about their partners as
they would learn about their own
communities. It led to constructing a point of view based on user
needs, to brainstorming and coming up with creative solutions and
to building representations of their
ideas through a prototype. Finally,
the Thinking By Design exercise
let participants test their ideas and
share them with their partners. It
was a highly stimulating and productive way to think about resilient
parks and what it takes for them to
become so through a full community effort.
Maria Nardi, director of Miami-Dade Parks, Recreation and

Open Spaces department said it
best in her summary of how Miami-Dade approaches making
parks more resilient: " First, develop a master plan that is holistic and
includes a system-wide approach
to resiliency. Second, evaluate the
impact of climate change to the
entire system, which allows greater ability to prioritize individual
sites and assess the natural and
built environment. Third, implement a Design Thinking approach
that builds a strong partnership
network necessary to develop and
implement collective efforts. Park
professionals play a key leadership
role in providing climate solutions,
and I believe there is no one better
at bringing people and communities together than parks. Parks will
save the planet! " she says. " We will
make sure of that. "
To learn more about resilient parks,
log in to the March 14 webinar, " The
Day After Tomorrow: Making Parks
Climate Resilient " on the webinar archive page at https://learning.nrpa.
org/webinars-archived.
- Richard J. Dolesh, NRPA's
Vice President of Strategic Initiatives

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Parks & Recreation

April 2019 - Parks & Recreation

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