60 Erikson and her team gathered an inventory of parkland in rural parts of the county and conducted proximity analysis to transit stops, driving distances, and biking options. LA County is divided west to east by the San Gabriel Mountains, contained mostly within the Angeles National Forest. The Santa Monica Mountains mark the northern boundary. And the Mojave Desert begins in the northeastern part of the county. In these northern rural regions, it gets cold in the winter, which limits the distance people are willing to walk or bicycle. “Many people in LA County don’t have cars,” Erikson said. “If it takes you two and a half hours to get to the beach using public transit, that’s a pretty big burden and barrier to access.” Analysis of anonymized cell phone data was used to see who visits park facilities, regional parks, trails, beaches, and open spaces. “The snapshot showed that visitors are predominantly wealthy and White,” Erikson said. That’s one of the reasons that remediating degraded lands looks so attractive—to create parks near people of color who disproportionately live near those lands. “LA County wants to address land where people live,” Erikson said. “That’s smart, because how can someone appreciate the need to conserve some pristine location if they have no connection to nature?” The PNA+ report focused on population vulnerability, going beyond population density to ensure that everyone in Los Angeles County has access to nature and recreational facilities. Map courtesy of LA County Department of Parks and Recreation and MIG. Adopting Degraded Lands for Parks Considering who visits parks changed some of the strategies of the PNA+ report. “Originally this was just the regional and rural edition of the park needs assessment,” Erikson said. “But as we started digging into these disconnects, it allowed us to ask, ‘Why just look at traditional conservation?’ There are some significant improvements that can be made on degraded lands to counter the conditions.” LA County has expanded the idea of creating parklands by adopting utility corridors and looking for opportunities to create small parks on vacant land. “Typically, where powerlines are fenced off, they become places where people dump their trash,” Lau said. “We see those areas as win-win opportunities because if they’re not a park, they’re a nuisance, and a lot of that land is located in areas that lack parks.”
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