Our EPAC team (Elm Playlot Action Committee) distributed 800 flyers, by hand, to every house in the neighborhood. They also stapled flyers (in both English and Spanish) to every lampost near Elm Playlot

Involving youth from the community, some young parents; what do they want to see? How can the park serve their needs?

Soliciting input from the mothers and grandmothers; of the Iron Triangle, some who played at Elm Playlot as children

Everyone’s got an idea

Pictures taken at a special workshop for children, where we asked them to draw anything they’d like to see in Elm Playlot

For one week, our community team, EPAC, met every day to fine-tune and practice asking questions for our door-to-door neighborhood survey. In seven days, we knocked on 343 doors of houses that are situated within 1/4 mile of Elm Playlot –– and ended up interviewing 118 residents. Here are pictures of our process and team.

Whenever a playground in a city park is renovated, the script goes something like this: the playground designer (usually  a landscape architect) holds a few (1 or 2) community meetings to present ideas, and asks the community what they want––which turns out to be, typically, some sort of pre-fabricated play equipment, like a slide or swing.

The designer returns to his/her office, figures out where to put this play equipment, and creates a rough design that he/she presents to the community. The community suggests some changes, approves the design, and the park is re-built.

This is today’s system for designing children’s play environments.

To follow are pictures from two of our initial “traditional” community meetings -- both were well attended and provided us with helpful guidance and insight. But the insight we gained is that we needed to work more deeply with the community, and help residents themselves envision how to transform this little park so that it serves the needs of––and becomes a hub for––children and families living in the Iron Triangle.

Consequently, we made the decision to slow down, and focus on developing the capacity of our team of eight, dedicated, and diverse community residents to plan, design, and re-build Elm Playlot from the ground up.

Except for a few breaks, we have been working together, steadily, since March 2009. 

To follow are some snapshots of our journey.

Community Meetings 1-2

Door-to-Door Neighborhood Surveys

Beginning September 21, EPAC has been meeting at Elm Playlot to create a general layout and vision for the park that we all like. To follow are a series of photos taken from this period.

Rough layout for Elm Playlot designed by Pogo Park and EPAC team

November 15, 2009

Working together to re-imagine and re-design Elm Playlot

Anthony Allen, an Iron Triangle resident who has training as an architect, joined us to teach our team basic drawing and drafting

Stacey and Chris measure the location of picnic tables and BBQ pit

Anthony Allen trains our team how to draw our plans to “achitectural scale”

We’ve found that by measuring where things go––and then marking it in the ground––helps us to get a feel of what the park will be (because it’s in 3D!). Here we’ve marked the location of the park office and storage container.

Measuring how far circle benches come out from the tree

The tipis represent the footprint of where other, child-sized houses will be placed at Elm Playlot to form a little kids’ village

Hammering 10” nails into the hard ground and tying string around each nail helps us to plot the 405 foot trike path

Damien, 22 months, joins the action while his parents work at Elm Playlot to re-design the park

Some close up drawings of one mother’s idea: circle benches that go around three of the five sycamore trees

Marking the curve of the trike path that encircles the entire park

Our site plan, converted to 1/4” “architectural scale” by Chris Gonzalez

ABOVE: Stacey uses his architectural ruler to create a scale model of the zip line made of balsa wood

Karina, Chris, and Stacey creating model of the park’s five, large sycamore trees

ABOVE RIGHT: Anthony shows us how to create a scale model of our “circle benches” that go around the base of three of Elm Playlot’s five, big sycamore trees; BELOW: Stacey’s notes from learning how to read architectural symbols

SCALE MODEL

Anthony Allen weighs in

We decided that tire swings are space efficient; four kids can use at a time

Painted shipping container for storage and flagstone porch

Starting to take shape!

Trike path and flagstone path

Goodyear blimp view

Entrance to the park

Model of the perimeter fence

Daniela and Chris get it done

Ron shows us how to do it

Park office, painted storage container, flagstone porch

Entrance

Exit

“The walls of many town halls are papered with good intentions. How can they be turned into positive action? The important thing is to find ways to articulate the variety of local community values, to motivate the apathetic “don’t knows,” and to explore collectively the options and consequences of action, recognizing that local residents are the experts when it comes to managing their own turf.”

ROBIN C. MOORE, Childhood’s Domain 1986