Parks for Teens
By Emery Hess, Harpeth Hall Winter Intern
6 min read Making parks accessible and open to teenagers and young adults is incredibly important to support a community. Parks can help improve social interaction and increase time spent outdoors. Providing teenagers with an engaging and inclusive environment that promotes healthy competition, exercise, interaction, and learning can greatly improve the standard of living for teenagers across the Nashville area.
Importance of Parks
Parks are a crucial part of a city’s infrastructure and have a lasting impact on the communities they serve. City parks encourage active lifestyles, strengthen communities, and grant a variety of recreational activities. Additional benefits are better mental health, mindfulness and creativity, and environmental stewardship. Nashville’s youth, and specifically teens, can benefit greatly from parks. One of the top priorities created by the Nashville Youth Design Team is focused on youth-centered spaces that are safe, local, entertaining, and welcoming. The design team highlighted how teens want more youth-geared spaces that are accommodating to interests and help them build relationships with their community.
Often teens are left out of park design, with most of the focus being on a younger demographic. Many parks do not have a designated area for teenagers, which can result in teens becoming uninterested and unmotivated to spend time in public places. Teens benefit from having places to run around, play sports, hang out or study in the shade, and connections to malls, schools, and neighborhoods. Parks provide teenagers with a place to participate in and enjoy communal activities such as concerts, festivals, and athletic events. These community events along with access to nature add a sense of individuality and character to the surrounding neighborhoods. Adding these improvements to parks can ensure teens have a safe and available place to socialize and engage with their community.
Learning from Boston and Amsterdam
I have lived in Nashville for almost 5 years, and I enjoy the variety and options that the city has for outdoor recreation. I spend time frequently in the Percy Warner parks with family and friends but find myself needing more transportation options to and from the park. Driving is the only option I and many of my fellow Nashvillians have to get to a park or its facilities. Growing up I was fortunate to have the experience of living in two different cities before moving to Nashville.
Boston was the first city I called home, where I was initially introduced to the versatility and impact parks have. I was able to walk or bike to multiple parks in my area and have a multitude of activities available to me and my family. I often participated in after-school field trips where we walked to and explored the Boston Commons, which was one of my favorite parks as a kid.
The second city I lived in was Amsterdam, a very different city from Boston both culturally and structurally. Amsterdam is built around bikes and the ability to bike to most of your destinations. While living there I was able to bike to run errands, sports practice, school, and parks without having my parents worry about my safety on the roads. Because of this opportunity and freedom granted to me, I often frequented the nearby park called Vondelpark. This park has an amazing atmosphere and I enjoyed visiting the variety of food shops, playgrounds, and art while biking through on its paved trails with friends. This park had many options for places to sit and interact with people: placing a blanket on a lawn, benches, covered pavilions, restaurants, and more. In both Boston and Amsterdam, I was able to safely move through an urban environment to get to my neighborhood parks, which were able to grant me social and awareness skills as I grew up.
After moving to Nashville, I noticed a decrease in how often I visit parks. Parks and recreation facilities are no longer as accessible to me as they were in past cities I lived in. According to the Trust for Public Land, less than half of people in Nashville live within a 10-minute walk of a park, and an even smaller percentage has access to sidewalks or bike lanes to get to their neighborhood park. Nashville has many opportunities to expand its park system and increase the number of people with reliable access to outdoor spaces. By creating parks and recreational areas that multiple age groups can use, the city can foster a wholesome and engaging environment for all residents.
What Does a Park Need to Support Teens?
Parks are designed to foster social play and physical activity for children. However, most of the parks around the world are made to support pre-teen kids; with these more traditional playgrounds, there is an exclusion of teenagers in their design. After doing external research into what teens are looking for in parks, the following criteria for teen parks were created:
Accessibility
Accessibility is how accessible a location is to a person. This depends on the transportation options, location, and reliability of the location. Because teenagers are often too young to drive or do not have a car available, providing this age group with safe and reliable transport can help increase the time that teenagers spend in parks.
Safety
Safety features can help an area feel more welcoming and safe to a wider demographic. These features can include emergency contact stations, better lighting, and the accessibility of the location.
Comfortable seating/study spaces
Seating that is accessible, comfortable, well-maintained, and located in the right places is crucial to providing people with a welcoming and relaxed atmosphere.
Study spaces can offer different scenery and locations for teenagers and young adults to do schoolwork or hold discussions. They can offer a new environment and encourage more time spent outdoors.
Teen/Adult play spaces
Teens are often discouraged from playing on structures made for kids– a solution to this would be to provide teenagers and young adults with their own play spaces tailored to their age group. This could include rock walls, interactive art, and maybe even a larger version of a traditional playground structure.
Restrooms/water fountains
Access to public restrooms and water fountains
Varying terrain/landscaping and nature
There are different types of landscapes across the park, including flats, hills, woods, gardens, etc. This can provide a more natural feel to a park and grant shade/seating in some areas.
Features such as trees, grass, varying plants, gardens, and more can enhance the atmosphere of a park. Similarly to the landscaping category, these features can give shade and natural seating.
Water features
Opportunities for water play (ex. splash pads) and access to bodies of water such as ponds, lakes, and rivers can make a park more diverse. This gives visitors a variety of activities to do during their time at the park.
Areas for community events
Community events can increase engagement in a neighborhood. With open, multi-use areas available, more community events can take place and foster connections.
Multisport/fitness equipment
Having multisport fields and courts can provide a community with fitness areas and places to engage with their neighborhood. Fitness equipment can encourage an active lifestyle and give opportunities for community wellness.
Sustainability
The park’s ability to sustain itself and its community is crucial to how it functions. Having trash, recycling, and compost cans available to visitors can help keep the park clean and encourage environmental stewardship. In addition to disposal bins, trees have many sustainability benefits and help cool a park down.
Implementing a Scoring System
The above criteria were then implemented into a scoring system with ten values to base the rating on. This system allows a person to select a park and use a scale of 1-5 for five categories for a total of 25. The other five categories are less of a spectrum so a yes/no scaling is used for a total of 5 (No is 0 and Yes is 1). The individual ratings are then added together to 30, to get a more uniform number. The finished scale is as follows: 0-10 is Poor, 10-20 is Okay, and 20-30 is Good.
The following are a couple of examples of ratings done to parks in the Nashville area (notice: these were done through Google Maps, not as accurate as an in-person visit):
Percy Warner Park
Accessibility - 1
Safety - 4
Landscape and Nature - 5
Sport and Fitness - 4
Sustainability - 5
Water Features: No
Seating: No
Community Area(s): Yes
Teen Play Spaces: No
Restrooms and Water Fountains: No
Total Score: 20/30 – Ok
Watkins Park
Accessibility - 4
Safety - 4
Landscape and Nature - 3
Sport and Fitness - 5
Sustainability - 3
Water Features: Yes
Seating: No
Community Area(s): Yes
Teen Play Spaces: Yes
Restrooms and Water Fountains: No
Total Score: 22/30 – Good
The scoring system above was turned into a form. This form can be used to survey any park the user wants to rate, and allows us to collect data on parks.
Using the form, I surveyed 20 parks around the Nashville area and assigned a ranking of either Poor, Okay, or Good. A variety of park types I used Google Maps to the best of my ability, so there may be features of the parks that aren’t listed on the map. You can interact with it below:
One common theme I noticed across the variety of parks I surveyed was the transportation options available. Most of the parks, excluding those near the center of the city, fully relied on car transportation. Another aspect I noticed was how little seating there is in some parks. There are many options for activities, but there is a lack of designated places to relax. Playgrounds, not only Nashville’s, are often geared towards a younger demographic and leave out older kids. This can make teenagers and young adults feel excluded from public spaces and therefore decrease the amount of time older kids spend in parks.
Envisioning Improvements
The main thing I focused on for these drawings was for teens to have their own space. I chose a local park, Elmington Park, to do some vision planning. I wanted to highlight the importance of including teenagers in public spaces, so I added bike racks to the parking lot, designated seating along the sides of the hill, a large open community space for events, and a playground with equipment for older age groups.
To focus more on what a teen space may look like, I did a more specific sketch of the teen play area. There are swinging benches, a public art wall, more seating, a grassy area, and a tall rope climbing structure with sturdy “perches” at varying heights.
The three swings seen in the sketch above are called bench gliders– and you can swing while facing another person. This can provide both seating and play for teenagers in one package, encourage social interaction, and supply teens with hang-out spots in the park.
This conical rope climbing structure is good for when teens are alone at the park and want to have something to do, or when they are with friends and want to have a perch to hang out in. It will be a bit taller than a structure designed for a younger age group to make it more challenging and engaging to climb.
A public art wall in the park can add a communal art display and give the area more charm. Because it can be interacted with (ex. throwing a ball against the wall), it can increase engagement from a wider interest and age group.
Call to Action
To make Nashville’s public parks more inclusive, there should be an effort to include age groups not traditionally thought of when creating play spaces. Teenagers and young adults are often left out of this planning and find it hard to find public spaces that interest them. By incorporating social areas, play structures for older kids, and multi-use areas for community events, parks can become more inviting and engaging for teenagers. With the form and map I created, I hope to gather Nashvillian’s opinions about their local parks so the need for change reaches a larger audience. In the future designing of parks, planners should make sure to think of the broader community that will be using the public spaces, to make a more welcoming space for all park-goers.