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Building a Resilient Park System

in Port St. Joe

Port St. Joe (PSJ) is a relaxing vacation destination located on the Florida Panhandle. On October 2018, the City was hit by Hurricane Michael, one of the four Category 5 U.S. storms on record (Walmsley, 2019). Beyond tremendous hurricane impacts such as loss of housing and damage to utility infrastructure, the City has also been experiencing economic decline and insufficient social bonds. This project aims to take the opportunities city parks provide to retain stormwater, minimize the risk of inundation surge, promote outdoor activities and a healthy lifestyle, and establish neighborhood connections. We hope this project will contribute to a resilient and holistic neighborhood in Port St. Joe.

The project is composed of research and design. The research focuses on investigating the key factors that contribute to social resilience through a literature review and a user survey. The research results were presented to the LAA 3350C Landscape Architecture Site Planning and Design studio to assist students in redesigning the selected parks. These design proposals will help create an attractive park system that serves as inclusive and vibrant spaces for people to live, work, and play in addition to capturing and treating stormwater runoff.

The LAA 3350C Landscape Architecture Site Planning and Design studio student’s redesign of selected urban parks.

• How does the community use the PSJ parks?

• What are the critical components of the social resilience functions of urban parks? How important are these functions?

• What is the capacity of current stormwater retention/detention basins in the selected inland parks in PSJ?

• How to create a resilient park system in PSJ that engages the community, establishes connectivity, and strengthens social bonds?

• How is the stormwater retention/detention capacity of the park improved by the proposed design by students?

Urban parks play a crucial role in enhancing community resilience from environmental, economic, and social aspects. As exposure to climate change and flooding increases, there are growing interests towards using nature-based solutions to mitigate disaster impacts. According to the Landscape Performance Series, one of the largest case portfolios for exemplary ecological practices in North America, 76% of park case studies have used green infrastructure and/or low impact development techniques to reduce the flooding risk and defend against disaster impacts. In addition, Narayan et al. (2017) reveals coastal wetlands in the northeastern coast of the U.S. avoided $625 Million in direct flood damages during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Moreover, urban parks are well known for presenting opportunities to enhance social interaction and community bonds, celebrate local history and culture, and improve public health and the quality of life (Luo et al., 2019; Kazmierczak, 2013; Wolch et al., 2011).  According to the City, there are ten parks and two trails in Port St. Joe. These parks suggest great potential for resilience enhancement. In addition, the parks have several significant historical locations, offering opportunities for education and ideal locations for local festivals and events.

The project is composed of research and design. The research was carried out from January to early March 2020, and the design was from March to early May 2020. The research focuses on investigating the key factors that contribute to social resilience and understanding how PSJ residents use the existing parks. The results were presented to students in the LAA 3350C Landscape Architecture Site Planning and Design studio to assist them in redesigning parks for Port St. Joe.

We identified the indicators of social resilience and constructed a composite index of park-related social resilience from the literature review. Data for the research were collected from free and open data sources. The raw indicators underwent a process of scaling and synthesis after being collected. Following this, a survey was conducted in PSJ during March 1-6, 2020. Data was collected through an onsite, paper-based questionnaire.

The study reflects that certain park services were more easily detectable than others, including recreation, education, and social relations. In addition, people’s understanding of resilience may not be as deep and comprehensive as they thought. Though people have the consciousness of resilience, technical and particular suggestions for resilience are less likely to be put forward by the public. In comparison, detailed suggestions regarding park use can be effectively extracted via a questionnaire. The government should take charge of the scientific part of planning and design while looking into people’s real needs through surveys. We extracted resilient-related topics people discussed in parks through TripAdvisor reviews of four typical parks, to explore the social resilient functions that parks can provide. And further, we may explore the topics discussed relevant to these resilient topics through social media data. Limited by time, funding, and technical issues, these plans were not achieved in this study. Survey results were used instead.

The PSJ community helped with obtaining the background knowledge, student field research, and research survey. The research team met the PSJ government agents and other research teams of the FRC program in January 2020 and retrieved information to prepare for the research and design studio. On February 28th, Dr. Yi Luo led the undergraduate students of LAA3350C to meet with our local champion, Michael Lacour, and conducted field research in PSJ. During March 1-6, 2020, the project’s student research assistant, Kanglin Chen, conducted an onsite survey and obtained 97 responses from PSJ park visitors. Among the respondents, 72.6% are residents in PSJ, 20.2% are from other areas in Gulf county, and 6% are out-of-state tourists.

Parks play a crucial role in people’s daily life. Half of the survey respondents reported visiting a park at least once a month, and 85% reported spending over half an hour in a park during each visit. In addition, 75% of respondents have attended public events in parks during the past year. According to a stakeholder we met at the community workshop in 2019, Port St. Joe lacks a connection between the northern and southern parts of the City, physically and socially. One goal of this project is to foster community engagement and establish a connection between the north and south, and ultimately contribute to social equity and resilience.

Going forward, we would like to continue the partnership with the City of Port St. Joe related to placemaking, equity, and resiliency. One potential project is to assist with additional greenspace inventory, planning, and design. Specifically, this could include an assessment of vacant parcels and vacant city-owned lands and their potential for adaptive reuse, including nature-based stormwater management, urban agriculture, housing, recreation, or other uses to enhance the vitality, economy, and productivity of Port St. Joe. In addition, we can assist with the next steps in design development for the central linear PSJ Park, which was a focal area of this project.  Moreover, we look forward to investigating Hurricane Michael’s impacts on the mental health of PSJ residence and assisting with identifying the crucial environmental factors that are most important for improving post-disaster mental health in coastal communities, and specifically within Port St. Joe. The survey shows parks play a crucial role in people’s daily life in Port St. Joe. In the near term, the City can consider hosting more educational events such as disaster training in the parks and adding more signs to raise the awareness of nature-based stormwater treatment practices. These events can also help strengthen community bonds.  For the long term, the City can consider adopting the potential design concepts based on existing student work and developing them into construction documents for implementation.

TEAM

Yi Luo, Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture, Yi.luo@ufl.edu

Michael Volk, Research Assistant Professor, Center for Landscape Conservation and Planning, mikevolk@ufl.edu

Kanglin Chen, Doctoral Student & Research Assistant, Department of Landscape Architecture, kanglingchen@ufl.edu

Collaborating Students: Nora Abbot, Maceo Abreu, Julia Best, Eliza Breder, David Erin, Isabella Guttuso, Nicole Herrera, Yu-Ya Huang, Baptiste Humeau, Blake Linquist, Pedro Llanos, Tamarind Matthews, Kyle Peterson, Jarred Randall, Phillip Seymour, Kathryn Stenberg, Julia Walton, Hongpei Xiang, Yanni Xu.

Community Partners: Michael Lacour, Financial Analyst & Fair Housing Coordinator, City of Port St. Joe. Bill Kennedy, Port St. Joe Redevelopment Agency.

FINAL REPORT

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