February 18, 2025

The new project initiative launches with a new website and survey City launches website and survey to gather community input on park needs through and announces the development of a Park Needs Assessment

LOS ANGELES – The City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks is undertaking a Park Needs Assessment to evaluate the nearly 16,000 acres of public parkland and amenities in the City. As critical infrastructure in our communities, parks are a foundational part of life in Los Angeles.

The Park Needs Assessment process was commissioned by the Department of Recreation and Parks to identify the current needs, challenges, and opportunities for improvement across the Department’s vast network of parks and recreational facilities. It will guide future investment in park infrastructure and amenities that is reflective of the diverse communities across the City and its projected population growth.    

The Park Needs Assessment will include four phases and the public is encouraged to engage at each step of the process. The first phase will help the Department of Recreation and Parks to understand the public’s knowledge of the park system and gather feedback on its overall performance.

Community meetings to launch the project will be held on the following dates:

• Tuesday, March 4, 2025: Ramona Hall (CD1) from 6-8pm
• Wednesday, March 5, 2025: Wilmington RC (CD15) from 6-8pm
• Thursday, March 6, 2025: Algin Sutton RC (CD8) from 6-8pm
• Saturday, March 8, 2025: Victory Vineland RC (CD2) from 10am-12pm
• Tuesday, March 11 2025: Tarzana Child Care Building (CD3) from 6-8pm
• Thursday, March 13, 2025: Westchester RC (CD11) from 6-8pm
• Saturday, March 15, 2025: Lincoln Park SCC (CD14) from 10am-12pm
• Tuesday, March 18, 2025: Virtual, from 6pm-8pm

“Assessing park needs and community priorities is foundational to maintaining a world-class park system for both Los Angeles residents and visitors,” said Jimmy Kim, General Manager, Department of Recreation and Parks. “The team is looking forward to engaging with community members across the City this year and developing an innovative and equitable assessment that will guide the department’s future efforts.”

Importance of the Park Needs Assessment

“This park needs assessment will be the best in its class,” said Jon Christensen, a UCLA professor who has studied park needs assessments around the country and is serving as a consultant in the process. “It will set the stage for improving and expanding our park system across the city, prioritizing areas of highest need, and focusing park funding to achieve visible, tangible results for the residents of Los Angeles.”

“We are honored to support the City of Los Angeles in the development of a robust park needs assessment that will serve the residents of LA for decades to come,” said Jessica Henson, the project’s Consultant Lead from OLIN. She continued, “Parks are critical for our communities, providing not only places to recreate and rest but also places where people come together to learn, create, and celebrate.”

Community Engagement Process

The Park Needs Assessment process will include numerous opportunities for the community to share ideas and feedback through a variety of engagement methods, such as in-person and virtual community meetings, pop-up events, partnerships with community-based organizations, equity-focused events, key group meetings, surveys, and a project website. With a focus on equitable, innovative, and creative community engagement, the process aims to ensure that all Angelenos’ voices are heard and valued, using both in-person and digital tools to encourage active participation. The feedback gathered throughout this process will help inform future decisions related to park improvements, funding, and new development.

Survey

The team will be conducting a statistically valid survey to help ensure input from a representative cross-section of Los Angeles residents. Surveys can be completed online, at parks across the city, and also in-person at an upcoming March engagement meeting. The survey allows people who do not have time to attend in-person events to share their ideas and experiences about the park system. Go to the project website to take the survey and/or share with your family, friends and neighbors at needs.parks.lacity.gov.

Next Steps

• Spring/Summer 2025: Community outreach will focus on understanding and refining public priorities for existing park amenities.
• Fall 2025: Draft Park Needs Assessment for Public Review
• Winter 2025-2026: Anticipated Completion of Park Needs Assessment

PROJECT INFORMATION

ABOUT THE CITY OF LA DEPARTMENT OF RECREATION AND PARKS

The Department of Recreation and Parks operates over 550 park sites and 92 miles of trails that cover over 16,000 acres of land in Los Angeles.

The park system includes some of the world’s most iconic parks such as Griffith Park, Sepulveda Basin, Echo Park, and MacArthur Park, as well as hundreds of community and neighborhood parks, Venice Beach, Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, and 12 museums.

PROJECT TEAM

The project is being led by the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. A Technical Advisory Committee, a Steering Committee, City of LA elected offices and staff, government departments, and organizations will provide guidance to the project team.

Through a competitive “request for proposal” process, the City selected OLIN and their team that includes their subconsultants Kounkuey Design Initiative, Agency: Artifact, The Robert Group, Estolano Advisors, Geosyntec Consultants, GreenInfo Network, HR&A, Better World Group, Dharam Consulting, Calvada, LANDAU Design + Technology, ETC Institute, and West of West Architecture, and was approved by a unanimous vote of the Board of Recreation and Parks Commissioners in December 2024.

For more information, and to stay updated on community events and engagement opportunities, please visit our project website at needs.parks.lacity.gov.

“We as a species can no longer stand on the sidelines. It is the responsibility of every human to commit to some form of CLIMATE ACTION. As designers of our environment, OLIN is actively working toward a more resilient planet and enthusiastically endorses ALSA’s Climate Action Plan.”

Lucinda R. Sanders, Ed.D., FASLA
CEO and President of OLIN

OLIN’s Lucinda Sanders joined a group of 26 CEOs representing the world’s largest and most influential landscape architecture firms released a public letter committing their firms to achieve the goals laid out in the American Society of Landscape Architects Climate Action Plan, most notably a commitment to make landscape architecture a zero-emissions profession by 2040. The firms signing onto the letter have designed many of the most-visited parks, public plazas, stadium grounds, waterfronts, and transportation corridors across the United States and around the world, representing tens of billions of dollars of public and private infrastructure.

The letter reads in part: “Because we work so closely with land and water, landscape architects are natural leaders in designing climate-resilient communities—from stormwater management to green infrastructure to sustainable transportation to biodiversity conservation. Every day, we design nature-based solutions to help build communities that are more resilient to extreme weather, more equitable for everyone, and more supportive of human health and wellness.”

The letter expresses key business commitments: “We publicly and expressly endorse, support, and commit to the goals articulated in the American Society of Landscape Architects Climate Action Plan, which sets specific and extraordinarily ambitious goals for the profession of landscape architecture to become a zero-emission profession by 2040, including in our business operations, designed landscapes, and the materials and products used in our work.”

The businesses represented on the letter collectively do more than $350 million in revenues annually and lead or contribute to projects with more than $1 billion in construction value annually. Their work influences millions of acres in more than 50 countries every year.

“Leaders of more than two dozen top-tier firms that influence billions of dollars in infrastructure spending and millions of acres of land have just pledged to make their profession zero emissions by 2040—this is a really big deal,” said American Society of Landscape Architects CEO Torey Carter-Conneen. “These are people who have the skills and imagination to make it happen: They’re already designing resilient waterfronts, parks that soak up stormwater, and urban forests that take greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere and cool our cities. Landscape architects know how to get it done. Every sector of the economy has to tackle climate resilience, and landscape architects will do their part.”

The CEOs called on governments, clients, and peers in the closing section of the letter, writing in part: “We call on our colleagues in allied disciplines to partner with us in designing and implementing solutions. We call on leaders in government at every level to prioritize resilience, emissions reductions, and human wellbeing in their policymaking. We call on our clients to be bold and curious as we design the future together.”

The full letter is available here.

OLIN is a design studio comprised of an enthusiastic team of landscape architects, planners, urban designers, and collaborators, based in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Our work is predicated on developing innovative and tailored approaches to social engagement, environmental and social responsibility and justice, and financial and operational sustainability in the context of awe-inspiring and beautiful designs built with finesse and craft. Our award-winning projects cross boundaries of scale, typology, and site condition, yet are all driven by our central vision: To Create Places That Enhance Life. Furthering our deep belief in enhancing biodiversity and utilizing nature-based solutions, OLIN has made a commitment to address carbon reduction and climate action through our operations, practice, and advocacy. This ethos is embodied in OLIN’s leadership and advocacy in the field, advancing new tools for carbon calculation, developing and sourcing more sustainable materials, and translating learning directly into our practice.

We understand the need to constantly deepen our understanding of the complexities of our work, which we do through OLIN Labs. As a conduit between academia and practice, OLIN Labs recognizes the value of open dialogue and knowledge sharing among individuals with different expertise and methods but with common purpose.

Starting in 2023, OLIN Labs hosted programming aligned with global Climate Week, consisting of internal discussions with allied professionals advancing climate justice, biodiversity, the carbon economy, and sustainable materials. These conversations highlight synergies between fellow practitioners, academics, and researchers who are united in creating better solutions for planning and design that prioritize planetary survival; we aspire to accomplish this by reducing energy consumption, restoring and enhancing natural systems, building community resilience, conserving resources, fostering widespread economic prosperity, and improving quality of life outcomes, with the goal of inciting action and a collective future vision.

Connecting ideas to action, OLIN Labs declared 2024 to be the Year of Climate Action. Labs is incubating multiple initiatives that are advancing discrete climate themes, from communication, to metrics, to sustainable specifications.

We know that planning excellence requires a community-driven and inclusive process so residents are meaningfully involved in deciding the future of their parks and cities. From our years of experience in park systems, river systems, infrastructural systems, long-range planning, resilience and climate planning, and park design and programming, we know that getting this right takes time and investment in the process. We create teams with a robust and sustained community leadership structure to guide the process, and policies, from end to end, involving community leaders at each step—to help spread the word, shape messaging, encourage participation, and ultimately shape the strategy itself. We strive to have a hyper-local approach to make sure we know a community’s leaders and unique characteristics, building trust and relationships that will allow us to work from a strong foundation.

We also understand that a plan is only as successful as its ability to integrate well with other policies, and to provide a runway for smooth implementation and transparent decision-making. This can only be achieved by creating substantial buy-in through the process. For that reason, we put emphasis and time into building trust through deep and meaningful conversations with communities—putting them in the driver’s seat rather than simply checking a box.

LEARN ABOUT SOME OF OUR RECENT BIG PLANS!

Caño Martín Peña Comprehensive Infrastructure Master Plan | San Juan, Puerto Rico
In San Juan, Puerto Rico, we worked with residents from the eight communities of the Caño Martín Peña District to develop a comprehensive infrastructure plan. This plan works to improve their collective health and quality of life through a holistic approach that incorporates nature-based strategies and climate change risk analysis while safeguarding the communities’ deep social bonds.

Sepulveda Basin Vision Plan | Los Angeles, CA
OLIN led the design and planning team for the once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine the the 2,000-acre Sepulveda Basin and improve the lives of millions of Angelinos.

The Sepulveda Basin Vision Plan (SBVP) which was released to the public in June of 2024, enhances natural systems, recreational and cultural programming, and climate resilience driven by community needs and priorities of adjacent climate vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.

Origin Park | Clarksville, IN
OLIN’s work on Origin Park seeks to restore this 400 acre site to be a connector and catalyst for surrounding Southern Indiana communities.

The park functions at a site level and regionally to be a model of a contemporary large urban park as a resilient, climate-adapted landscape that invites visitors to the dynamic power of nature and a layered cultural history through direct landscape experience.

Cleveland Parks & Recreation Plan | Cleveland, OH
OLIN led a groundbreaking citywide Parks and Recreation Plan for the City of Cleveland which serves as a guide to how the City can improve parks and recreation to better meet residents’ needs. This plan is the first to specifically use an equity-based prioritization framework for future city investments. The multi-faceted engagement process helped ensure that a representative sample of residents were heard and allowed areas of consensus to be found to identify the differing needs in different areas of the city.

As a foundation for developing the Parks and Recreation Plan, OLIN led a multifaceted engagement process. Open houses, mailed and online surveys, youth workshops, neighborhood meeting kits, and interviews were used to hear from residents what their concerns are and what they envision for the future.

LA River Master Plan Update | Los Angeles County, CA
In 2022 the LA River Master Plan was adopted by LA County as a blueprint for reimagining the LA River from single-use flood channel to multi-benefit publicly accessible open space and ecosystem. Check out Partner Jessica Henson on PBS Earth Focus talking about the 51-mile LA River.