March 2018 - Parks & Recreation - 20

Member to Member

Welcome to the Mayor's Mile.
4 TIMES AROUND THE
PLAYING FIELD EQUALS 1 MILE
pense, more park clutter and more opportunities for graffiti. A comparison between
park and shopping center signs is instructive. Although shopping centers also have
stringent rules of conduct, those regulations
are rarely posted in the kind of stark lettering and unwelcoming terminology usually
found in parks. (Of course, shopping centers, unlike most parks, have uniformed
guards to supplement their written rules.)
Dogs are a flashpoint in parks, probably because of the sharp growth in the
nation's canine population and people's
changing expectations. Most communities don't beat around the bush: from Lincoln, Nebraska's matter-of-fact " Leash
and Clean Up After Your Dog. It's the
Law " ; to Los Angeles' scientific " Dog
defecation must be removed immediately by owners under penalty of law. "
But not all signs are restrictive or punitive. Many are like positive advertisements: " Healthy Parks, Healthy People.
Take a Walk in the Park with SF Rec and
Parks. " Or, " We're Ready for Supper!
We're Serving a Hot Meal to All Children
Ages 5 - 18. " Lincoln, Nebraska, seems
to have a policy that its park signs be respectful and helpful to the populace: " Attention Practice Teams: If field is chalked,
you can practice but please keep off the
chalk. Thank You. " Lincoln also posts
signs giving web addresses for four relevant public and private bird organizations
in various metro birding areas, and it also
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Parks & Recreation

rewards park sponsors with their name on
an " Adopt-a-Lincoln Landscape " sign.
Lincoln is also part of the growing
trend to educate users about the ecological benefits of parks and about some
new design elements within them. The
city has a detailed " Rain to Recreation "
poster-type sign with a textual and artistic explanation of park features that help
reduce water pollution (plus the parks
department logo). San Francisco does
something similar at Jefferson Square
Park, first giving park rules in a respectful
style, followed by a detailed description
of the city's water conservation protocol
within its parks. (Even if the signs are too
wordy for the average recreationalist, every educational opportunity helps.)
Acknowledging Funding Sources
Finally, there are signs that gently bring up
the issue of funding, alerting park users to
the source of the amenity they are enjoying. While funding traditionally has been
an opaque process that makes parks appear
to be the magical largesse of government,
the recent tightening of municipal budgets
has made many park departments vulnerable to and fearful of cutbacks. Some have
become more outspoken, pushing users to
think twice about the facilities at their disposal. A sign at Alvey Park in Kansas City
has two federal logos and reads: " National
Park Service, U.S. Department of Interior, Land and Water Conservation Fund.

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This park was supported by the Land and
Water Conservation Fund, which helps
states and communities provide outdoor
recreation and open space for all. " And, an
outstanding (although wordy) sign at San
Francisco's Bernal Heights Park provides
a description and a map, and then highlights the different school and park bond
measures that the public passed to create
the park.
Conclusion
Signs do appear to influence people,
even if they often seem to be ignored and
sometimes scorned. Using regression
analysis, the Neighborhood Parks study
determined that parks with signs promoting physical activity have a higher
usership than parks without those messages (after adjusting for acreage, population density and poverty).
Even parks with signs prohibiting certain
types of physical activity, such as skateboarding or bicycling, get a bump in usership! Like the famous experiments that
show the healing power of placebos, maybe it isn't so much what a park sign says as
the fact that its very existence shows that a
park department cares enough to communicate with its park users.
For instance:

THANKS FOR
READING
THIS. HAVE A
GREAT DAY
Peter Harnik, former Founding Director of the
Trust for Public Land's Center for City Park
Excellence, is a member of the National Study of
Neighborhood Parks (peterharnik1@gmail.com).

March 2018 - Parks & Recreation

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