Cities Shine in Face of COVID Challenges
Creative strategies help kids and families find respite in nature
Since April 2020, more than 300 million Americans, or nearly 95 percent of the U.S. population, have been impacted by stay-at-home orders and social distancing restrictions as state and local officials attempt to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Families face ongoing challenges as they navigate remote learning, reduced childcare and canceled extracurricular and social activities.
During this time, people have turned to the outdoors for recreation and respite. Use of parks and trails has sky-rocketed, but primarily by adults. At a time when they need nature most, children are spending more time indoors and in front of screens than ever before. In communities where access to greenspace is limited due to systemic racism and lack of investment, families face even bigger hurdles to spending time in safe, welcoming outdoor environments.
But cities across the U.S. are finding creative ways to help children access the proven physical, emotional and academic benefits of nature.
“With COVID we’ve seen unprecedented use of our parks and outdoor spaces,” said Kelsey Scherchel, Special Projects Manager for the Natural Areas Division of San Antonio Parks & Recreation. “That need for people to connect with nature is there and it’s even stronger. We need to continue to respond to increased demand right now…and keep it going into the future.”
City leaders in Austin,TX, through their partnership with the school district, provided practical guidelines and support to help schools take learning outdoors, which has been proven to be safer than indoor classrooms. Baltimore, MD, took it a step further. In addition to developing standard operating procedures for outdoor learning, the city is now offering grants to help schools shift to outdoor classrooms.
In Providence, RI, city parks staff worked with school partners across the city to hand out nature activity kits alongside free meals. Seattle, WA and San Francisco, CA relied on strong relationships with community organizations to provide emergency childcare and remote learning hubs, incorporating outdoor experiences and nature-based learning into these programs.
For these cities, all participants in a national Cities Connecting Children to Nature initiative, the pandemic has helped make the case and solidify their goals for ensuring that all children have regular access to nature’s benefits.
Cities Connecting Children to Nature (CCCN) is a national partnership between the National League of Cities and the Children & Nature Network. City leaders build cross-departmental working groups to collaborate with community partners, school districts and other agencies to increase equitable access to nature. Nature connection is a proven strategy for enhancing children’s well-being; city leaders also find that it supports broader priorities for health, education, safety, youth employment, sustainability, and more.
In addition, community partnerships established through CCCN are helping cities respond to the needs of families during the pandemic.
The City of Louisville, KY is one such example. Louisville is expanding its outdoor programs with support from a local community foundation that donated funds to connect children to nature during COVID. The grant aims to provide youth with nature-connection opportunities they may not otherwise have, with a focus on health equity.
“We are really excited because this grant represents recognition and support from the community,” said Bennett Knox, Parks Administrator for the City of Louisville. “They have taken notice of our work and put funding behind it. Even during these challenging times, we are extremely hopeful for the future.”
In addition to supporting outdoor learning, the City of Austin expanded its nature-connection strategy by creating Nature-Smart Libraries, which help families connect to “nearby nature” through activities, nature backpacks, story times and more. It was “a natural fit,” said Melody Alcazar, Program Coordinator for CCCN Austin, where city leaders saw Nature Smart Libraries as a way to merge complementary goals, including community outreach, increased nature access, and improvements to public spaces.
“Nature-Smart Libraries have the benefit of already being a community hub and resource, so we’re just working to overlay nature connection and nature access into that existing experience,” said Alcazar. “It allows us to provide nature access at every age/stage of a child’s life: Outdoor Learn Environment! (0-5 yr olds), Green School Parks (3-18 yr olds), Youth Leadership programs (14-24 yr olds), while providing nature play spaces and NSL to overlap all ages.”
In Albuquerque, NM, the city’s vision to bring green schoolyards to children gained momentum when the CCCN Alburquerque team hired a landscape designer to develop schoolyard prototypes for schools and neighborhood parks. The aim is to build a streamlined process for pre-approved green schoolyard designs that already meet (and can bypass) school district approval processes. Through this effort, CCCN Albuquerque is laying groundwork that will streamline the city’s green schoolyard initiative well into the future.
“A lot of schoolyards hadn’t gone through that process before so they weren’t always successful,” said Colleen Langan-McRoberts, Superintendent, Open Space Division for the City of Albuquerque Parks & Recreation department. “We are hoping to get schools and communities set up at the onset for a more successful project through this endeavor. This is also transitioning to further conversation about outdoor school spaces during this time of COVID.”
Like Albuquerque, the City of St. Louis, MO set the groundwork this year for future efforts, with a focus on bringing green spaces to schools and communities that need it most.
“We’ve developed a school site selection process with indicators looking at the environment, education, internal community, public health as well as an equity marker, which we feel is extremely important,” said Leanne White, Project Director for St. Louis Public Schools, Healthy Schools Healthy Communities. “We are going to rank all of our 68 schools and then look at our top 5 neediest schools.”
The impact of this work in cities is backed by a growing body of research proving that regular time in nature is essential for children’s healthy development — and is particularly effective at mitigating stress. As part of its COVID recommendations, the CDC is encouraging people to spend time outdoors as a way to cope with the pandemic, but with specific guidelines around visiting parks and recreation areas close to home, reinforcing the critical role of city parks and amenities.
And while access to nature may have looked different in cities across the U.S. this year, COVID-19 challenges have inspired a renewed commitment to the importance of nature access.
Here’s a quick overview of what that progress looked like for CCCN cities in 2020:
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Leading a school garden program in Albany, N.Y., I try to hold up examples where possible of schools that have embraced outdoor instruction. If only our partner school district also got behind outdoor instruction. Baltimore’s Outdoor Learning Guidebook seems like great example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dyOxq4I8VHFL4NUqExDPay6aeC9wgCkS/view. Unfortunately, efforts to learn more about the initiative, by Googling a variety of terms, turned up nothing. I wonder if that means that the Baltimore schools’ support for outdoor teaching and learning is less enthusiastic than the guidebook would suggest.
Hi Bill. Thanks for your comment. Baltimore participates in our Cities Connecting Children to Nature initiative with the National League of Cities. I will try to get you a contact in Baltimore for more information.