Promotores for Parks? The Potential of a Public Health Model to Improve Outreach and Community Engagement in Park Planning

Abstract

Underprivileged urban communities often have less parks than wealthier communities. Even when new parks are built and are physically accessible to such communities, park design and programming is often undertaken without community input and may result in psychologically inaccessible parks. To address this problem, the California Department of Parks and Recreation piloted a community outreach intervention in a newly created Los Angeles park. It employed the promotores model, which uses community members as outreach ambassadors. Using participant observations, interviews, and a survey, we evaluated the intervention’s success in recruiting and training promotores, organizing community outreach, and making the park more accessible to underprivileged communities. We found that the promotores helped increase community involvement in park programming, thus enhancing procedural justice, and also helped enhance park use by previously underrepresented groups. We conclude with recommendations about how the promotores model can be improved and used more effectively in park planning.

Keywords:

• Community engagement
• parks and outdoor recreation
• procedural justice
• promotores

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank our two graduate research assistants, Julia Heidelman and Michelle Einstein, who helped with data collection for this study.

Notes

1 All socio-demographic data are drawn from the 2010-2014 American Community Survey, 5-year estimates.

2 The 2018 survey included all the questions of the 2014 survey, but added questions #2 and #8 (see Appendix).