59 To determine which areas should be prioritized for environmental conservation and restoration and regional and rural recreation—using equity as a guide—LA County Parks relies on GIS technology. “In the 30×30 Initiative, the focus is more on traditional conservation, which involves protection of additional natural lands,” said Clement Lau, departmental facilities planner with LA County Parks. “At the county, we’re emphasizing the need for restoring degraded lands, especially in park-poor communities. We’ve developed parks on brownfields before and are working on converting a landfill into a regional park in Puente Hills. There are also opportunities to convert oil fields into additional parkland in Baldwin Hills.” Lau noted that communities of color are overrepresented in areas in need of restoration. “There’s certainly an environmental justice angle to it,” Lau said. “Supervisor Holly Mitchell referred to our underserved communities as unfinished. They’re a work in progress—in need of more attention—to have the infrastructure like parks and recreational services they deserve.” Pioneering an Equity-Based Funding Model LA County Parks’ planners pioneered an equity-based approach in 2016. Their needs assessment used GIS technology to map existing facilities and identify demand for parks in communities countywide. They found that Los Angeles has the least amount of accessible park space among major US metropolitan areas, with the worst access to parks in communities of color. The analysis of park equity helped fuel the passage of Measure A in January 2020, a tax on property improvements that now funds park improvement and development projects in perpetuity. Measure A mandates that dedicated funding be set aside and allocated to very high and high park need areas. “Since we did the needs assessment, the whole county has been more equity driven,” Lau said. The pioneering work now has a follow-on focus to review the needs of rural communities, look at park needs regionally, and identify priority areas to conserve and restore land for parks and open space. In December 2022, the LA County Board of Supervisors adopted the final report, PNA+, that analyzes and maps land conservation, rural recreational needs, and restoration priorities along with transit options to parks. “We mapped health indicators, access to public transit or personal vehicle, and the combination of those things in the rural north of the county,” Lau said. “These communities are land rich, but park amenities poor. They are surrounded by open land but do not have the things urban folks take for granted, like swimming pools, splash pads, playgrounds, and ball fields. That analysis gave us a much better understanding of rural recreational needs.” Mapping Needs and Vulnerabilities Melissa Erikson, principal and director of Community Design Services at MIG, the planning firm that LA County Parks contracted with to conduct the GIS analysis, credits the PNA+ report with an expanded view of conservation. Environment The regional site inventory maps the various parks, recreation facilities, and conservation areas that are open to the public. Map courtesy of LA County Department of Parks and Recreation and MIG.
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