Designing for Equity: New Parks Prioritize the Community

Two new parks under construction in the Bay Area — India Basin in SF and Mosswood Park in Oakland — have the specific mandate to create equity in their communities. Come learn from the clients, the community members, and the design team about the design process and how the projects benefited from this new approach.

On each side of the San Francisco Bay, a park is under construction whose design aims to increase equity in a neighborhood that saw neglect over past decades, while the surrounding urban areas boomed. To do this, each of the City Parks’ departments set out to empower neighbors as leaders in the design process by flipping the traditional relationships between designer, client, and community.

What lessons do these projects have for architects, designers, and city change-makers seeking an inclusive approach to the design process? What specific approaches did these two projects take to addressing social and economic inequity? What challenges did the projects encounter, and what lies ahead for projects facing similar challenges?