Playgrounds
If you're wondering what the difference is between the best cities and the worst cities to live in across the United States, here's a hint: look at the public spaces. Rundown cities typically have rundown parks, playgrounds, and other public venues. Vital, thriving cities have fresh flowers, clean playground equipment, and maintenance workers seemingly everywhere. It doesn't have to be cost-prohibitive to revitalize community spaces.
Here's another hint: cities with safe, clean, enjoyable community spaces often have an active, engaged community. These are people who spend time in their local parks, attend festivals and farmer's markets, and put money back into the city, which can then put that money back into the community. It is a positive cycle that feeds itself in the most productive and progressive ways. Here's how to get it started:
The first and possibly easiest step to take toward revitalizing your community spaces is to update your playgrounds. Parents around the country can tell you how frustrating it is to arrive at a playground with their kids only to find the swings are broken, the slides are busted, and trash is strewn all about. Eventually, word will spread, and fewer families will show up at these locations, which makes them targets for criminals and a refuge for the unhoused.
It doesn't take much to send a maintenance worker around to the playgrounds in your community and ensure they're kept clean and in good repair. If necessary, you can replace broken swing sets and busted slides. When your budget allows, you can even install entirely new equipment with fun features that attract today's kids, like musical instruments and splash pads.
Few things show a community is well-loved better than a wealth of parks and playgrounds. When you drive through a town, looking at real estate and imagining yourself living there, one of the things you look for is community space where you can take your family. And parks can get quickly overcrowded on weekends, so you really cannot have too many. If you have large open lots of land that belong to the city, consider installing a new park.
If your city already has plenty of playgrounds, you can design a natural park, an arboretum, or a garden that community members can enjoy. And vice versa; perhaps you have plenty of green spaces, but not enough playground equipment for young families to enjoy on lazy weekday mornings or relaxing Sunday afternoons. It is in these spaces where your citizens will meet, make friends, and breathe life into your city.
Bike paths, walking paths, nature trails, and hiking trails are all opportunities for the people of your community to get out and run into each other. How often do you see people stopping to talk on city paths like the ones described here? All the time! When you don't have these types of walking and biking spaces in your city, people will leave your community to find them, leaving your spaces empty.
Many cities have natural spaces where trails or paths can be marked out, paved, or at least flattened and maintained. It doesn't have to be an endless trail either. It can be a couple of miles of pretty, walkable, and bikeable pathways for the community to get onto for some daily movement. For example, San Clemente in Southern California has a trail along the beach that's just over two miles long and sees dozens of people of all types each day.
While it can be hard to do after a city has already been planned, you can still take steps to ensure your city has walkable environments. Urban and Suburban sprawl can be a blight on neighborhoods and entire cities. These are areas that require a vehicle to drive several miles to get anywhere. Whether it's a trip to the park, the store, or a school, citizens have to gas up their cars and drive.
But it doesn't have to be that way. A city can decide to grant mixed-use permits, which means businesses can go up in the same neighborhood as houses. Think of every older city you've been to San Francisco, New York City, New Orleans, and Los Angeles are great examples of cities where the members of the community can walk from their doorsteps to the shop, eat, and play. These environments generate energy and vitality in a city.
Finally, keep your city clean. There are few things worse in terms of walking or driving through a city than seeing trash everywhere. And it becomes a kind of infection that spreads rapidly. The more trash you see, the more trash is tossed into the streets. Gutters fill up, what garbage cans do exist are overflowing, and people start to feel like trash for living in a trashy city. Tourists might even think your city smells.
You can take simple measures to clean up the streets, parks, and open spaces of your city by pushing for increased funding for maintenance. A community should have plenty of trash cans, maintenance workers to clean up community spaces, and hefty fines for dumping or polluting. The revenue from those fines can then go back into city maintenance. Public buildings should also have fresh coats of paint and the streets and sidewalks should be regularly repaved.
In the end, keeping a community alive and well requires regular maintenance, updates, and innovations. The good news is, you will be hard-pressed to find people who don't want to live in a clean, vibrant city with an active community. Start talking to the people in your city, and you can likely drum up the energy to get your city revitalized, as it should be.
