People Make Parks is a project to help New Yorkers participate in the design of their parks.  Find out more at: PeopleMakeParks.org.

People Make Parks extends Partnerships for Parks’ mission to engage communities in the well-being of their parks by providing groups with tools and resources to help them participate in Parks’ building and design process.  Physical changes happening in a park offer a great opportunity for community involvement, by allowing residents to have a tangible impact on the public space in their own neighborhood.  And community participation in the design process not only makes park improvements better and more responsive to park users, but also serves as a jumping-off point for ongoing stewardship. When people feel their voices have been heard regarding a park’s design, they tend to feel ownership over the park and are more likely to become park users whose involvement will help the park thrive.

The goals of People Make Parks are to support communities in:

• working with Parks to create a true culture of collaboration around capital projects;
• understanding the capital process and the many levels of approvals, both inside and outside of Parks, that a park design must go through, so that they can be more effective collaborators;
• accessing tools, resources, and activities that let them participate at every stage of the capital process and productively communicate the results of their efforts to Parks;
• learning from best practices of successful collaborative projects to inspire and educate them about what’s required to see a capital project through to completion;
• involving non-English speakers and youth in creating a vision for a park;
• leveraging the excitement of people who shared their input and keeping them involved in the park once it reopens.

People Make Parks is a joint effort of Partnerships for Parks (PFP) and the Hester Street Collaborative. Hester Street Collaborative (HSC) is a nonprofit that works to improve public space through a participatory design approach that engages under-served populations, especially youth and new immigrants, in the creation of meaningful places.

NYC Parks informed the development of People Make Parks, working with Hester Street Collaborative and Partnerships for Parks to ensure that communities become involved in capital projects in an informed, effective way. Partnerships for Parks will continue to support People Make Parks by helping communities use the Web site and related documents to learn what their community wants in a new or redesigned park and help them bring that information to Parks in a constructive way.

For more information about People Make Parks, please contact Wylie Goodman at wylie.goodman@parks.nyc.gov or (212) 227-3626.