When Maitreyi Roy first arrived at Bartram’s Garden a decade ago, it was a hidden gem along the banks of the Schuylkill River in southwest Philadelphia: 50 acres of green fields and trees surrounding a historic house and lawn whose roots date back three centuries.
The only thing missing is the people.
As the new CEO, Roy had his paintings cut off. Early investigations revealed that many neighboring residents, who are mostly black, did not even know that Bartram was a public park. It took time and more commitment to know what types of systems and facilities they needed to get the space up and running.
Within a few years, about 100,000 people used to travel to Bartram each year to walk, sail, fish and bird watch, 3 to 4 times more. Attendance continued to grow until 2020, when Roy shut down many systems to protect visitors from COVID-19.
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Then something unexpected happened. Roy saw more visitors than ever queuing up to fish along the banks of the Schuylkill. So much so that he installed the park’s first bait sales device and established contactless rentals for fishing equipment.
As shutdowns eased and systems reopened, so did interest in other activities. Nearly two years after the pandemic, Roy still needs tactics to adapt as he tries to increase the budget to hire more staff and operate more systems.
“This winter we took a very long break for the staff as last year’s volume was intense,” Roy said. “Now we are back, recharged and in position for next (hot) season. easy again.
Roy’s party highlights the two demanding situations faced by park professionals across the country. Driven by the pandemic, more Americans than ever are coming out, according to a new study from Penn State University, the University of Montana and the Leave No Trace Center for outdoor activities. Ethics.
At the same time, outdoor recreation is still largely governed by white Americans, according to the research. Nearly all other races continued to lag behind, or even stopped coming out of the pandemic in disproportionate numbers, B said. Derrick Taff, an associate professor at Penn State and co-author of the study.
“If you take a look at the United States, recreation enthusiasts in your park or domain tend to be white, they tend to have a high socioeconomic status and higher degrees of education,” Taff said. “This is concerning because our effects imply that those increases in outdoor recreation reflect more or less the same thing. “
Since the pandemic began, about 1 in five Americans began enjoying a new hobby, from bird watching to biking to hiking, at least once a month, Taff and his colleagues found.
Previous studies have shown a sharp increase in activities at the beginning of the pandemic, adding to the crushing number of visitors to national parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite. Last year, the Outdoor Industry Association, an industry group, found that 160 million Americans engaged in less than one activity in 2020, a cumulative of 7 million from last year and the biggest jump on record in a year.
The new study looked further and found a lasting effect. Research suggests that the pandemic has brought the percentage of Americans who participate in an activity at least once a month to more than 50 percent, the highest on record.
“It’s much more than any previous exam that has addressed this issue,” Taff said. “And I think he’s most likely to stay here. “
Instead of going to national parks, the most popular activities take place closer to home, or even in the residents’ yards. According to Will Rice, an assistant professor at the University of Montana and co-author of the study, gardening is the most popular. indexed activity across respondents, followed by hiking, bird watching, running, and fishing.
“These are things that have a pretty low barrier to entry,” Rice said.
Studies have long linked time spent outdoors to a variety of fitness benefits, said Katrina Black Reed, a researcher in Penn State Abington’s Department of Recreation, Parks and Tourism. In a separate survey of 116 teens Reed and his colleagues conducted the pandemic, the findings suggest that getting outdoors helps young people adapt.
“It gave them that confidence and the ability to pass outside. Like, ‘I can do it,'” Reed said.
For adults, previous studies have linked time spent in nature to less threat of cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes and intellectual distress, noted Peter Newman, leader of Penn State’s Department of Recreation, Parks and Tourism Management and co-author with Taff and Rice. . . Because fitness disorders usually get worse during a pandemic, the price of outdoor recreation is even higher, Newman said.
“Outdoor recreation and parks deserve to be a component of public fitness discourse,” Newman said. “These are places where other people not only feel better, but also offer measurable fitness benefits. “
But studies have also found that not all Americans enjoy those benefits in the same way. Of those already going out every month before the pandemic, the study found that about 14% had quit smoking once COVID-19 had started. among this group, blacks, Latinos, Asians and other indigenous people were disproportionately represented.
Meanwhile, the other newly released people were sometimes white. Considerations of the findings are already a pressing issue in the parks and recreation profession, Taff said. Understanding why certain teams don’t feel welcome or don’t have easy access to outdoor spaces is a topic researchers hope to examine in the future.
One theory: the lack of access of city dwellers to regions, especially those who have enough area to socially distance. Previous studies have found that parks in predominantly white, high-income regions have about an acre consistent with 50 people. But parks serving primarily minority communities have only one acre consistent with 500 people.
Another possibility: Many other people of color wouldn’t feel in outdoor spaces.
Reed, the Penn State researcher Abington, is a black woman and mother of three. It links the racial justice movement that emerged around the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 to blacks’ sense of belonging in spaces frequented by whites.
On the same day Floyd murdered, Amy Cooper, a white woman visiting New York’s Central’s Park, called police after Christian Cooper, an unrelated black man who had observed birds, asked her to keep her dog on a leash where necessary.
And before that month, video footage gave the impression of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a black Georgia man who followed three white men and shot him dead as he ran in a residential neighborhood.
It stands to reason, Reed said, that such incidents have caused black Americans to perceive the outdoors as unsafe.
“Even when I went for a walk in the community (during COVID), I took my grandson with me because I wanted to look less threatening,” Reed said. “I think the reduction in the number of other people of color is attractive in outdoor recreation has something to do with it.
Such disruptions don’t end in undeniable solutions, said Andrew Mowen, a parks and recreation researcher at Penn State who collaborates with Philadelphia and parks like Bartram’s Garden. gentrification or otherwise disrupting the fabric of the community.
Instead, some parks and recreation departments have adopted the philosophy of “green enough,” a technique that emphasizes modest adjustments or small “pocket parks” that offer access to spaces without attracting unwanted attention, Mowen said. Or, if a park leads to an influx of genuine real estate investment, the public government is dedicated to making sure that economic benefits are similarly shared with local residents.
“We’ve noticed some promising developments,” Mowen said. There are local organizations that say, ‘We’re going to oppose (iniquity). ‘”
To attract varied visitors to a park, administrators want to identify a genuine and deep engagement with citizens, Mowen added. This would possibly come with listening sessions. But park managers will also have to generate effects and empower citizens to play an active role in programming.
“You want engaging shows, where it’s fun to be there, and feel welcome and not be bullied,” Mowen said. “And other visitors you can relate to and feel comfortable with. “
Roy, the executive director of Bartram’s Garden, believes her park is an example of one that does it the right way. Before the pandemic, Bartram started an on-site vegetable garden after hearing citizens communicate about the lack of new products in their neighborhoods. When the pandemic limited operations, Bartram helped 180 citizens create their own gardens.
Count them among the millions of Americans recently sensitized to the outdoors, and recently interested in their local public spaces.
“As fitness and wellness programs, as the plant grass program and network beds began to return to production, we saw a massive increase in attendance,” Roy said. “The numbers were just staggering. “