Why parks matter

As a Guatemalan immigrant raised amidst the sprawling concrete of Los Angeles, attorney Robert Garcia understands how crucial parks and open spaces are to the well-being of children growing up in crowded cities. "Children of color living in poverty have the worst access to parks and schools with five acres or more of playing fields, and they have the highest levels of childhood obesity," he told Carla Hernandez, 17, when visiting Collective Roots' one-acre garden at East Palo Alto Charter School.

Garcia is the founder of The City Project, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that works on behalf of low-income communities for equal access to urban parks, schoolyards and open green space.  He currently acts as an advisor to Collective Roots' Immigrant Health Integration and Advocacy Project, which pinpoints factors that affect the health of East Palo Alto residents.

The following are excerpts from a conversation between Garcia and Carla, a senior at East Palo Alto Phoenix Academy.

'Different world'

Robert Garcia:  I lived in East Palo Alto when I was an undergraduate at Stanford, and it's shocking that there are such differences in wealth....  Palo Alto has Stanford University, one of the best universities in the nation ... it's the heart of Silicon Valley. And boom! As soon as you enter East Palo Alto, you recognize you're in a different world altogether.

Carla Hernandez:  You just cross over a little bridge [across the San Francisquito creek], and it's all neat and clean while our side is all dirty ... you see trash everywhere and no sidewalks.... It's like, ‘What happened?’

RG: How does that make you feel, the differences between Palo Alto and East Palo Alto?

CH: I'm disappointed.  I think we should do something about it.  You don't hear [about] shootings going on all the time in Palo Alto.  Maybe there are some calls like ‘Oh, there are some dogs barking in the morning,’ or there might be, once in a while, shootings ... but compared to East Palo Alto, there's a big difference.  It's unfair.

Irony of development

With the 2007 revitalization of downtown Los Angeles, Garcia witnessed the complications of bringing much-needed resources to low-income neighborhoods.  If  developers begin building, he believes the risk is that East Palo Alto may be destroyed.

RG: The people who live here now can afford to live here, ironically, because there are no services ... so the rents are lower.  If a developer comes in and puts up fancy apartments and houses, or even parks and schools, then the neighborhood gets better, and the people who have been waiting so long to have a park or a school there have to move out because the rent prices go way up and wealthier families move in.  Gentrification ... is a real serious problem.'Kids just want to play'

CH: Most of the students in my class … always play soccer, and that helps them stay in shape since we don't have sports in our school.  They don’t use parks that are local, but they use Cesar Chavez [Academy].

RG: Part of the answer [to the lack of open ground] is the joint use of parks, schools, and pools, so that if there is a park nearby, and a school doesn't have playing fields, the school should use that park during the day.  And similarly, if a school has a playing field, it should be open after school and on weekends to the neighborhood children.  That way, you make the best use of scarce land and money.  It's all public property anyway -- the taxpayers pay for it.  The kids don't care whether they're playing in a school field or a park, they just want to play....

-BY EMILY GONG, CITIZEN JOURNALIST;
REPORTING AND PHOTO BY ANNE-MARIE MCREYNOLDS