Common Yards

In November, Valley In Motion had the honor of being invited to participate in a national forum exploring the powerful intersection of parks, green space, and public housing.  

Common Yards: Green Space and Public Housing Reimagined, was a joint effort of Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit that works to connect everyone to the benefits and joys of the outdoors, and Design Trust for Public Space, a nonprofit that unlocks the potential of New York’s public spaces, catalyzing design ideas into action for a more just and equitable city. 

Common Yards brought together public housing authorities, nonprofit housing and community development organizations, and housing advocates from across the country to explore this nascent idea – providing responsive recreation areas for public housing residents – and ways to implement it. 

Many public housing communities have underutilized open spaces, whether from decades of disinvestment, deferred maintenance, or demolition. Through our work with Trust for Public Land, we know that these underutilized public places hold significant potential to serve as vital community infrastructure. They support recreation, health, social connection, climate resilience, and economic opportunity – the vim and vigor of our communities. We also know, as the conveners note, that “unlocking that potential requires navigating constraints around funding, policy, and capacity that no single actor can resolve alone.” 

This concept resonated deeply with our Valley In Motion team because it is central to the work that we do. Four areas of our work, Community Schoolyards, the South Scranton Connector Trail, the Connell Park Walking Club, and Outdoor Towns and Creative Communities initiatives in Carbondale, Forest City and Archbald, not only benefit from the insights, efforts, and cooperation of our many partners, the work simply would not be feasible without them. 

At the forum, we learned how Public Housing Community Fund (PHCF), a nonprofit organization, conducts extensive, authentic community engagement around the outdoor recreation needs of and with New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents. Through its Connected Communities program, funded by private donations, PHCF organizes resident-led participatory design processes that transform open space based on the very needs of the public housing residents themselves. Using private funds provides PHCF with more flexibility, allowing it to nimbly navigate around the bureaucracy of NYCHA instead of slowly through it. By pairing its innovative and responsive capital projects with art installations and activation programming, the organization attracts philanthropic support and, as such, does not compete with the residential units for the already-insufficient public funding available.  

It can be invigorating to learn from others at a conference. We left Common Yards propelled by both these new ideas and the enthusiasm with which those ideas are enacted across the country. Just as helpful as the suggestions regarding funding structures, policy changes, and engagement approaches was witnessing how others have achieved their goals – alike to those of Valley In Motion – in different contexts and places. Often, this work involves linking problems that have overlapping solutions, like leveraging parks’ open spaces with green infrastructure to improve stormwater management, unlocking additional funding that would otherwise be unavailable. 

Partnerships help us to navigate pitfalls and constraints, and they also can lead us on an entirely new path in an effort to achieve an established goal. Much of our work at Valley In Motion centers on outdoor recreation, public art, neighborhood-level connectivity, walkability, and bikeabilty, and the link among them all. At Common Yards, we heard Justin Cutler, Director of Parks & Recreation for the City of Atlanta describe Mayor Andre Dickens’ desire for the City “to be the best place to raise a child in the United States.” That struck a chord with our team. How would our communities be designed if the needs of our children were placed front and center? Would there be safer routes to schools and parks, to work and shopping, to our homes? Would there be more schools and parks, dispersed throughout our neighborhoods and within a 10-minute walk? Would there be beautiful public works of art to contemplate on the way?  

After hearing Atlanta’s guiding principle, we have been referring back to it as we focus on our own work in Carbondale, connecting people to the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail, to the Lackawanna River, to school, shopping, work, and home. We are examining our proposals with this thought in mind: what would make this the best place to bring/raise a child and how could those considerations improve these spaces for everyone? 

If this is a topic that interests you, dear blog reader, then return in a few weeks for a subsequent post, in which we will take a look at Atlanta and apply some of its lessons for improvements to the built environment to our work in Carbondale. 

Alyssa Kelley

Project Manager, Valley In Motion