Park equity initiatives have big impacts for Metro Detroiters, from students to elders

This story is part of Equity in Our Parks, a series highlighting the people and organizations advancing equity through Southeast Michigan’s parks and related programming. It is supported by Oakland County Parks and Recreation, Wayne County Parks and Recreation, Huron-Clinton Metroparks, City of Detroit, and Detroit Riverfront Conservancy. 

Vanessa Williams never would have expected she'd be able to take her three kids camping in Brightmoor, their northwest Detroit neighborhood. But she seized the opportunity when the nonprofit Sidewalk Detroit offered a free overnight campout in Brightmoor's Eliza Howell Park this past summer. The nonprofit provided camping gear for Williams and her kids – twin sons aged 6 and a daughter, 5 – and taught them basic camping skills.

"[The kids] loved every single moment of it," Williams says. " ... That's something that they normally don't get to do on an average day. So to be at the park and be able to play outside with the bonfire and everything like that, they definitely enjoyed it."
Sidewalk DetroitA campout at Eliza Howell Park.
Williams says she'd been camping before, but it was her kids' first time. She suspects that most of her neighbors who joined the outing were first-time campers as well. She feels it's important to have programs like the campout available for Detroiters, who often have little or no access to such activities, particularly within their city.

"It helps build the community," she says. "It helps with keeping the children ... in a positive environment with people that have the same focus – you know, making sure the kids do well."
Sidewalk DetroitA campout at Eliza Howell Park.
The camping event is representative of Sidewalk Detroit's mission to "improve livability for residents through the promotion of spatial equity" in the Eliza Howell Park area, and it's just one of many efforts to advance equity in Metro Detroit's parks. We talked to Williams and other local residents about how these programs have impacted their lives and communities.

Science for students

As a science coach at the Ann Arbor-based charter school management company Global Educational Excellence (GEE), Thomas Long didn't often have opportunities to get his students out into nature for hands-on learning. GEE's charter schools are primarily located in low-income communities and/or communities of color, including Detroit, Dearborn, Hamtramck, and Ypsilanti. But over the past three years, Long's students have had a plethora of outdoor adventures, at almost no cost to their schools, thanks to a partnership with the Huron-Clinton Metroparks.
Thomas LongGlobal Educational Excellence students on a field trip.
When Long saw a Metroparks staffer present a program at a GEE school, he reached out to the parks system about building an ongoing relationship with his classes. In addition to offering programming for any school in the Metroparks' five-county Metro Detroit service area, the Metroparks also have a robust focus on equity and making science and nature education accessible to underserved students. Long and Metroparks staff initially created a program that offered students a weekly field trip to a park in exchange for students developing materials that could be used for parks marketing. But in response to student feedback, they eliminated the marketing activities to focus the program solely on Metropark field trips and in-class education presented by Metroparks staff.

"Students had never been to the parks and just were kind of in awe and wanted just to experience it and just be out there," Long says. "A lot of them are from the inner city and have not had the opportunities to go to the local Metroparks, and so taking them on field trips was was eye-opening to them."
Thomas LongGlobal Educational Excellence students on a field trip.
The Metroparks provide the field trips, classroom programming, park entry, and other materials for free, as well as reduced-price bussing. Long says the initiative is beneficial on many levels for his students, giving them ideas for nature-related career opportunities and helping them to understand why it's important to preserve nature.

"I'd love to have our students just get out and explore nature and look at other ways that they can remain healthy for their kids and also use those parks in the future," he says. "They're going to be future parents and they're going to be, hopefully, residents of [Metro] Detroit for a long time. I hope that they really will take advantage of and use it for their kids growing up and and access that nature. I think it's just good and healthy."
Thomas LongGlobal Educational Excellence students on a field trip.
Long hopes his partnership with the Metroparks will continue to evolve, perhaps to include physical outdoor activities like skiing or canoeing, or even education on park management.

"It's been a great partnership with the Metroparks, and it's an evolving animal," he says.

Socialization for seniors

The concept of equity is often associated with efforts that focus on communities of color or low-income communities, but equity initiatives can cater to a variety of underserved populations – including, in one Detroit example, older adults. The Cody Rouge Community Action Alliance in northwest Detroit has offered a variety of programs for elders through its Senior University initiative. While computer education has been a major focus for the program, it's also included multiple components aimed at connecting older adults to their community park, Rouge Park.

Senior University has hosted community picnics in Rouge Park, as well as a guided tour of the park. Longtime Cody Rouge neighborhood resident Joyce Branham says she hadn't spent much time in the park before participating in a Senior University tour, and she was surprised to learn "how beautiful the park is."

"I learned about the different horticultural programs that they have to prune different trees, and how they have trees that produce fruits," Branham says, adding that she also learned about "exploratory events" offered in the park. "You can hike. You can learn about different vegetations. You learn about wildflowers and things of that nature."

Branham says the tour made her want to spend more time in the park, and she even joined the Friends of Rouge Park after participating in the tour. She thinks many of her neighbors don't often visit the park, and she hopes the tour will change their relationship to it in a similar way. At an even more basic level, she says it's important just to have some kind of supportive programming for elders in her community.

"The socialization with seniors was very beneficial," she says. "They need to socialize."

Mary Marsh also participated in the Senior University park tour. She says it's "great to see what goes on in the park."

"I've learned a lot that I didn't know about the park," she says. "I think that people are excited to see it. They ask questions, and I think it's very, very interesting and important that they do this. There's a lot of seniors excited to go on it."

Revitalizing a neighborhood park

In the O'Hair Park neighborhood in northwest Detroit, many longtime residents have taken equity into their own hands as they've advocated to revitalize the 78-acre park that is their community's namesake. Ed Magee has lived in the neighborhood since 1975 and he says the park began to fall into disrepair around the time the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013.

"It was kind of embarrassing to live by the park because you got relatives coming in from out of town to visit and they got to see that," he says. "It was growing up into a wilderness."

Patt Taylor Braxton, former president of the O'Hair Park Community Association, says that as the city began to bounce back from bankruptcy, the neighborhood and its park were often overlooked in favor of other, better known parts of the city.

"The rebuilding of the center, of Midtown, of Downtown, brings the money in, and that's fine," she says. "But the people that live in the city, that have been here for decades and have endured, need to get some of that. They need to get part of that celebration and that appreciation that's going on. It needs to be done in Uptown."
Colleen FlahertyPeople at an event at O'Hair Park.
Father Donald Archambault and Colleen Flaherty formed the O'Hair Park Community Association in 2012 to advocate for the neighborhood, and they've been remarkably successful in drawing new investment to the park since then. The city of Detroit has invested $2 million in the park, resulting in the creation of eight soccer fields, two softball fields, one baseball field, a one-mile walking path, two pavilions, and restrooms. The Detroit Pistons have also installed two new basketball courts on the property. 
Colleen FlahertyKids play on a basketball court at O'Hair Park.
Taylor Braxton says the park has transformed from a "dumping ground" to a "jewel." Magee agrees, saying his relatives remarked on how nice the park was when he had them over for Thanksgiving this year.

"It's uplifting," he says. "It's something that we can be proud of now, instead of being ashamed of."

Flaherty says the community association's efforts are "sending the signal to everybody" that "what you see here can happen elsewhere." Taylor Braxton agrees, asserting that it's "very important" for Detroit residents to feel they can have the same quality parks that they might see in Detroit's suburbs.
Colleen FlahertyA child plays at O'Hair Park.
"It shows the ability of the people to rise up and to keep going," she says. "That's what I want people to understand: that we'll never give up on the struggle for extra equity."

Patrick Dunn is the lead writer for the Equity in Our Parks series. He's also the managing editor of Concentrate and an Ypsilanti-based freelance writer and editor.

Eliza Howell Park photos courtesy of Sidewalk Detroit. Global Educational Excellence photos courtesy of Thomas Long. O'Hair Park photos courtesy of Colleen Flaherty.