Principles for Public Park Planning and Design

About

Designing the Parks is a public-private partnership to promote the importance of well-designed public parks in contemporary society. Designing the Parks provides a forum for collegial, interdisciplinary discussion through workshops, competitions, and pilot projects that aims to build a common foundation of design principles for guiding 21st century public park planning and design.

Background

In May 2008, the National Park Service (Northeast and Pacific West Regions and the Denver Service Center) joined with five other partners to co-sponsor Designing the Parks – a two-part examination of the past, present, and future of park planning and design. Public parks will face unprecedented challenges in this new century. Shifting demographics, climate change, rapidly changing communications technologies, new transportation prototypes, and economic constraints are but a few of the urgent issues confronting today’s park designers, planners, and managers. This initiative comes at an historic moment in particular for the National Park Service and other public agengies and localities as they help carry forward President Obama’s agenda for national economic recovery. This is a time when popular interest in the design of public spaces has never been higher.  This renaissance of interest is in a large part stimulated by an intense focus on energy conservation, sustainability and climate change. It is equally responsive to a growing commitment to broader inclusion and engagement of diverse communities and demographic groups who have not been traditional park users.  How we plan and design our public parks in response to these changing imperatives will have an enormous impact on how successful we are at creating welcoming, meaningful, healthy, and enduring places that last well into the future.

Designing the Parks has launched the initial forum for envisioning this new park design future.  The NPS has a statutory responsibility and a unique opportunity, as its centennial approaches, to take a leadership role along with its partners in moving the principles forward and setting new paradigms for park planning and design in the 21st century. 

How This Initiative Took Shape

Designing the Parks evoked a high level of interest in the design and planning communities.  Co-sponsors for the conferences included The Cultural Landscape Foundation, the University of Virginia, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the Institute at the Golden Gate, the George Wright Society, the National Parks Conservation Association, and the Van Alen Institute. Part I: The History of Park Planning and Design, held in Charlottesville, VA (May 19-22), drew over 275 people from the public and private sector in the fields of history, landscape architecture, architecture, historic preservation and related fields participating.  The conference examined lessons learned from park planning and design both past and present 

Paper and panel presentations presented at the Part I conference were summarized and disseminated to a larger audience through the Designing the Parks website which provides an foundation for examining the challenges and opportunities for park design in the 21st century.  The conference website has sponsored a number of on-line forums on planning issues that are well attended and continue to stimulated rich and diverse dialogue. 

Part II of the conference, The Present and Future of Park Planning and Design, was held at the new Cavallo Point Lodge, at Golden Gate in San Francisco (December 9-12).  Part II participants represented the municipal, state, and national park design and planning communities and drew 150 attendees who not only demonstrated an intense level of engagement but also expressed a clear message that this effort needs to proceed to the next level.  Through a combination of plenary sessions and facilitated round tables, the conference participants produced a preliminary set of design principles to guide 21st century park planning and design at all levels.