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Challenge: Overstructured sports experiences The Play: Reintroduce Free Play
From the Sport for All, Play for Life report: Make sure there’s room not just for organized play but experiences that children can own.
Unorganized free play often disappears due to park maintenance concerns. Unlike many cities, Oakland’s public works department – not the parks and recreation department – handles all park maintenance. This practice is not ideal because it creates added layers of bureaucracy to maintain parks, said Terra Cole Brown, Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation (OPRF) executive director. Brown said Oakland parks are historically maintained and invested in separately without a long-term strategic plan. Although 89% of Oakland residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park, the amenities (49 out of 100 score) and investments (52 out of 100) are much lower than comparable U.S. cities. 10 In a study by the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation, 55% of participants said poor park maintenance was a barrier to visiting or fully utilizing Oakland’s parks. 11 Participants bringing children were 13 percentage points more likely to report maintenance barriers. The biggest complaints about parks: bathroom conditions (53%), safety concerns (46%), homeless encampments (41%), litter and deterioration (40%), and drug paraphernalia (31%). “I wouldn’t ever want my kids at parks by themselves,” one Oakland parent told us, reflecting a common theme we heard.
FIVE KEY FINDINGS IN OAKLAND Access to quality Oakland parks is unevenly distributed.
More than half of surveyed Oakland youth (58%) told us they have played sports at a park or playground. However, residents in Oakland neighborhoods where people most identify as a person of color have access to 66% less park space per person than those in predominantly White neighborhoods. 7 Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation’s 2018 survey found that parks in the city’s higher income neighborhoods were more likely to receive “A” and “B” maintenance scores, while the “D” and “F” parks were generally located in economically disadvantaged or gentrifying neighborhoods. The pandemic showed how essential parks are to the health and well-being of people and communities, but people living near unsafe or poorly maintained parks suffered. The life expectancy of Black residents in the West Oakland flatlands, which along with the East Oakland flatlands has the fewest well-maintained parks, is 14 years shorter than White Oaklanders in the hills. 8 The lack of quality parks in the flatlands dates back to redlined maps of Oakland from the 1930s. For decades, the hills benefitted from federal investment and cheap mortgages; the flatlands were subjected to pollution, denied federal investment or access to loans, and considered valuable only for their proximity to industry. 9
STATE OF PLAY OAKLAND
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