Things considered: minor updates to small parks can make a huge difference for everyone.

Stumbling upon a quaint green park amidst tall concrete buildings in a large city is always a refreshing find--an oasis to vast urban life. Such small parks are integral to the inclusion of metropolitan green space. These parks are designed as a neighborhood amenity--complete with playgrounds, turf grass, scattered trees, ball courts and athletic fields.

These facilities constantly need renewing: deteriorating play equipment and changing recreational needs require park renovations every two to three decades. This cycle of park renovation provides opportunities for redesign. With demographic and cultural changes and an increase in ecological awareness, those involved in designing, redesigning and maintaining parks can use these renovation opportunities to enhance the public space and ecological networks of the urban landscape.

Of course, small parks are not always a cookie-cutter image of traditional neighborhood parks--they also include left-over pockets of natural areas, formal town squares and other smaller parks, but opportunities abound to respond to new knowledge about people, ecology and environment.

The Renovation Opportunity

When people hear the word "management," they naturally think of the physical maintenance of a park. Yet parks are social and ecological resources that require more attention than just grounds maintenance. Park management appears in a number of areas in order to protect park integrity for future generations. This approach is directly related to the sustainable use of natural resources.

Managers monitor long-term social and ecological issues in relation to their management goals, making sure these goals are adequately funded to meet the public's expectations and stewardship needs. However, it is too often that management of the overall green space system is fragmented among different agencies. These agencies often have competing goals, resulting in a park not achieving its potential benefits.

Two important themes help flame a strategy for ongoing park updates: (1) management zones, (2) maintenance of habitat and ecosystem management.

Management Zones

As human populations have grown and diversified, demands on parks have increased. With the population aging, parks must cater to older adults as well as children or adults playing active sports. The reinforcement of different cultural groups bring with them preferences for new park activities--from soccer to festivals--often requiring parks to accommodate large groups.

Pat Hoagland, ASLA, with the design firm Brandstetter Carroll, Inc., in Lexington, Ky., agrees, saying that park design is becoming more heavily focused on older populations and facilities to accommodate large groups. "Senior citizens are healthier now than they used to be," he explains. "For that reason, we see an increased importance on walking trails in parks."

Hoagland also says that recent parks that he has designed in culturally diverse cities in New Jersey and Ohio have required facilities to accommodate large crowds of people for festivals and similar events.

In addition to activities, preferences vary among groups as well. Many people like parks to have a naturalistic style of park design that is also highly maintained. Others want a wilder aesthetic that reflects the regional ecology. Still others consider parks to be important recreational facilities and want a highly manicured look and the presence of play equipment, gardens, benches, picnic sheds, toilet blocks, concession stands and similar amenities.

In a large park, it is possible to have numerous athletic facilities, picnic spots, flower beds, natural areas and playgrounds, all occupying different spaces. Small parks need to be more sensitively designed for multiple activities and users who must share space more closely.

Small parks can include a wide range of management zones related to three issues that affect the long-term quality of the landscape: human activities, ground and surface conditions, and vegetation and habitat types. One of the major concerns for park designers, planners and managers is how intensely parks are used, and by whom, and if this use causes any unusual patterns of wear and tear or safety concerns.

A small park may have just one of these management zones. For example, a square in a densely populated central neighborhood probably only has cultivated landscapes, although even these landscapes can be better designed for user groups from a range of cultures and ages. In contrast, a larger park on the urban edge may have open grassy areas for sports, but also other areas that are managed rather than groomed, or even areas that are wild on the edges of water, wetlands, forests, grasslands, scrublands and deserts.

However, even very small parks can include opportunities for different management approaches. For example, a small butterfly meadow with crisp edges but a naturalistic style in an otherwise groomed area can provide opportunities to see nearby nature. Even a well-placed bench can allow people to experience nature up close.

In addition, a park may be just one management zone within a larger green space strategy that prioritizes such activities as tree planting and habitat restoration in the larger urban landscape. Having different public and private agencies cooperate in green space management is often difficult but remains an important goal.

The size of small parks may result in more intensive per-acre use, making it more expensive to maintain. Managing park areas for native landscaping potentially reduces costs, counterbalancing the size premium. The amount saved depends on the site's initial condition, the amount of invested money in standard maintenance equipment (such as mowers) and the flexibility of maintenance crews dealing with native landscapes. In addition, small parks may have fewer wasted areas and more usable acreage, meaning that per capita costs may be lower than larger, less intensively used parks.

Maintenance for Habitat and Ecosystem

Humans constrain the capacity for ecological benefits in small parks where space is at a premium. However, recent research on plants, animals, air and water quality, provides evidence that small parks provide important environmental benefits in an urban context.

As small patches of open space, they provide different and supplemental benefits from larger spans of space by improving connections between open spaces and natural areas in the metropolitan environment. Vegetation in small parks can be a suitable habitat for certain wildlife species, or the vegetation may serve as stepping stones to a better habitat if connected by greenways and large parks.

Rachel B. Ramadhyani, ASLA, is a landscape architect and project manager for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. She says that natural designs in small parks have benefits, but also require large investments of time.

"One great thing about these natural areas is the educational and aesthetic benefit for the community. Many times, this is the only opportunity for urban citizens to see native plantings" she explains. "However, there is a balance. There has to be a commitment to doing it properly."

Ramadhyani adds that areas restored to their natural form require at least five years of meticulous maintenance for them to become established.

Researchers who have studied fragmented landscapes in Australia, advise that management activities should directly focus on controlling external factors that disturb ecology of remnant or small areas. These ecological principles also apply to adaptive management, which is another ecologically-based management approach that structures management problems like scientific experiments.

This article is based on Ann Forsyth's and Laura Musacchio's book, Designing Small Parks.

These parks have different zones of management. In the left hand image above, a clearly defined area of lawn is surrounded by a desert-style area of decomposed granite. From an ecological perspective, this design has little wildlife habitat value for desert animals or plants. The trees and lawn combine to create the look of a park in a temperate climate, but the high maintenance area is restricted to a small zone. In the right hand image, natural prairie plantings require little maintenance and provide habitat and color in the park.

Areas of lawn require more maintenance but are desired by people who use the park for recreational activities. Plantings of annual flowers also have maintenance requirements, but create an attractive formal entrance to the park. The mix of maintenance levels allows the park to appeal to a variety of people who use the park for different reasons and keeps overall costs down.

Sources: Laura Musacchio and Metropolitan Design Center.