Murals in Philadelphia: Part 2

I have received the survey back that i spoke of in an early post. There were 3 rating questions    (1-5), and two open ended question. 

1)How often do you visit/use the parks in your neighborhood? 1=often 5= never

2)How clean is your park that you visit? 1= clean 5= dirty

3)How big of an impact do you think you have on your park? 1=big 5=small

4)What would you want to see be changed in your park?

5) How important do you think parks are to an urban environment? 

For question one, 6 out of 17 people said they visit their park often. 7 though said that they never use their parks. The remaining votes fluctuated in between the two ends. A reason for the higher number of people not visiting their neighborhood parks could be that there is no real park around them. Many of the smaller community parks in different districts do not have proper upkeep. Asphalt is tore up on basketball courts and benches are turned in to make-shift beds for the hundreds of homeless on the streets. 

Very surprisingly though with question two 8 out of 17 stated their parks were clean, and 4 out of 17 saying that their park was pretty dirty (4). There was a 5 (meaning extremely dirty) along with a 3 (moderately dirty). This came to a surprise to me after seeing the results from question one. If the parks in their community are clean then how come they don't spend time there. I know the grass root community members are the back bone of the parks and public spaces, so why wouldn't they want to take advantage of their surroundings. 

With question three 10 out of 17 students said that they feel as if they have very little impact of their neighborhood park. 4 of them said though that they feel they have a large impact on their park. It is hard to say if the students recongnize the impact that they truly have just by either using the park or choosing not to use the park. Both I feel have a huge impact regardless of which you choose. By using the park, it would hopefully be in a positive way so that your input can create a favorable outcome. With not using your park you are having a negative impact, not utilizing all the resources of the park/public spaces in a positive way can leave the area empty and run down. 

The last two questions I chose to leave as open ended so that i could get some actual feedback from the class as to what they would want to see changed, along with how important they feel the parks are to the city. 

The majority of the answers for the first question were the idea of innolving the community more along with the youth. This can be done by more events that will cater to the youth, while bringing out the residents so that can communicate with one another about what they want to see be get acomplished in their community. A few others mentioned ideas of more jogging paths, better dog parks, and simply "clean it up". 

When asked how important do you feel parks are to the city, the natural response i got was very important. The parks are what tie most communities together. As I will explore more with upcoming posts, the parks are protection for the neighborhoods. If a park or community garden is left to rot then it will cause blight with in the surrounding blocks. Having a safe area for residents to hang out in and grow their own vegetables will have a encouraging output amongst all the community members. With the new merger that is joining the Recreation Center of Philadelphia, and the Fairmount Park Commission it will be interesting to see what happens with all the park land that is also involved with social institutions. (church, school)