As cities invest heavily in public spaces, park leaders face the challenge of ensuring these improvements directly benefit existing residents without driving displacement. At Greater & Greener 2026, leaders from across the country gathered to share real-world strategies for healing historical urban divides, transforming neglected assets, and creating shared prosperity through public spaces.
Equitable development often requires cities to confront uncomfortable histories and reinvest in communities that have faced long-standing disinvestment. For example, our Greater & Greener 2026 host city, Austin, bears the legacy of a segregated planning history. The 1928 city master plan institutionalized racial segregation in part by siting public facilities and infrastructure to encourage separating communities of color from neighborhoods for Whites. The impact remains stark today: 62% of parkland sites remain undeveloped in East Austin, where Black residents from other parts of the city relocated, joining existing neighborhoods of color there.
Rosewood Park opened in 1929, becoming the city’s only segregated park for African Americans. At the same time, Mexican American leaders, feeling dissatisfied with the limited area allocated for their community, organized to advocate for a larger park. Their efforts led to the opening of Parque Zaragoza in 1931, specifically designed to serve the Latino community in Austin. For 95 years, these parks remained among the few publicly funded recreational areas available to otherwise disenfranchised and underserved communities. The Roots to Resilience mobile workshop, led by Black Austin Tours, featured elders in the community who highlighted the history of these parks, shining a light on segregation’s past and, despite their discriminatory foundations, on how these parks have helped build thriving, vibrant communities in East Austin.
The city of Raleigh, North Carolina, is working to redefine equity and confront gentrification by reinvesting in places long left behind. When approaching the design for Dorothea Dix Park, which sits on the grounds of a former convict leasing site and a decommissioned mental health institution, Raleigh focused on creating not just a tourist destination but a space where connections can be made, fractures can be healed, and trust can be built through their Cultural Interpretive Plan. This plan seeks to answer the question, “How does Dix Park honor the history of place in a park where most people are coming to recreate?” They have since built spaces for gathering and reflection, hosted an annual Inter-tribal Pow Wow, and continued community history and storytelling projects.
Where municipal investment has lagged, non-profit partners and community coalitions are creating new models for neighborhood revitalization.
Plagued by decades of intentional disinvestment that left behind thousands of vacant lots, Baltimore leaders are using green spaces to reverse community decline. Nonprofit Parks & People is partnering with the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development agency and the Upton Planning Committee, a group of six community associations from historic neighborhoods just north of downtown Baltimore, through the Baltimore Vacant Reinvestment Initiative. Together, they are transforming vacant, deteriorated parcels into community-managed green spaces—creating a replicable framework for neighborhood-led redevelopment and supporting community stabilization and social cohesion.
In San Francisco’s India Basin neighborhood—one of the city’s most overlooked communities—equitable development was embedded into the design of a new 10-acre waterfront park from day one. In partnership with three local nonprofits, the city operationalized an equitable development plan designed to reverse decades of environmental injustice, build resilience against sea-level rise, create economic opportunities, safeguard housing security for residents, and ensure park programming reflects local culture and identity.
The Trust for Public Land, through new research and partnerships, shared how cities are using park dedication ordinances, impact fees, and other local tools to support both infill development and equitable park access. These examples show how cities can position parks and affordable housing as complementary infrastructure rather than competing land uses, especially as the U.S. faces a shortage of nearly 4 million housing units and 1 in 3 people lack access to a nearby park.
Greenways can connect neighborhoods, anchor downtown parks and public space, provide close-to-home recreation, and spur real estate and economic development.
Through the Reimagining the Civic Commons initiative, post-industrial Akron, Ohio, is re-envisioning its civic assets, including the Erie Canalway, which traverses the city, to combat isolation and rebuild community trust. By bringing together residents, city leaders, and philanthropic partners, Akron is co-designing and co-stewarding accessible parks and trails that encourage socio-economic mixing, strengthen environmental sustainability, and drive inclusive growth.
First envisioned in the early 2000s and completed this year, the Greensboro (NC) Downtown Greenway is a 4-mile multi-use shared path encircling downtown. This public-private partnership serves as the central hub of a developing 100+ mile network of regional greenways and trails. Driven by partnerships and community engagement, the design encourages healthy activity, provides transportation, adds environmentally friendly infrastructure to the urban environment, and connects diverse neighborhoods through stories and public art programs. Last year, more than 150,000 people were counted using the trail, more than 3,800 people participated in 188 programs involving 158 community partners, and 209 volunteers contributed 413 hours. The $54 million project included $14 million from the private sector, and oversight of the greenway is now being transitioned fully to the City of Greensboro from the partnership with Action Greensboro that created it.
Healing historical legacies and centering equity in park planning are essential for creating inclusive cities, but sustaining these community-driven investments requires reliable, long-term financial backing. To put equitable development principles into practice, cities also need actionable tools, smart policy, and data-driven strategies.
The Alliance offers year-round programming and resources to help you deepen your work.
Keep an eye out for our upcoming workshop in December, Using Data to Create Equitable Park Investment Strategies, where we’ll explore how to harness data to direct resources to historically underserved neighborhoods.
Whether you couldn’t make it to Austin or want to relive the experience, you can watch recordings of our general sessions and browse the photo gallery.