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Park Visioning Process

Have a Voice in Your Park's Future

Each year, Park Pride guides two communities through a public engagement process that transforms the community’s ideas and dreams into a comprehensive conceptual vision plan for the park’s future. This plan guides and organizes park investments and improvement in directions that best achieve long-term community-focused priorities.

Hand-drawn site plan with flower field, berry patches, and greenhouse.
The Process

What to Expect

Our park visioning process hinges on a robust, inclusive public engagement strategy, which is tailored to each community and is most successful when participants are open to various outcomes. While every park visioning is unique, each community undergoing park visioning can expect:

  • Monthly meetings – Over six to eight months, a steering committee of community representatives will meet monthly with Park Pride to build an understanding of the community’s needs. The steering committee plays a key role in developing and facilitating the public feedback strategy and participates in design discussions and decisions based on data collected from the community. The steering committee should represent a broad and diverse spectrum of community interests and act as representatives for their neighbors.
  • Public input meetings – Through a series of three public input meetings, community members are encouraged to imagine the kind of park that would best suit their needs, what they would like to do in their neighborhood park, and how their park could enrich their quality of life. The process does not attempt to reach consensus but instead finds design solutions that meet the needs for most.
  • The Park Vision Plan – A park vision plan is intended to bring community voices to the planning and design process for neighborhood public parks. Once equipped with a vision plan, communities have a detailed record of shared commitment to goals–a powerful tool in leveraging support and funding. Copies of all park vision plans are archived at the Atlanta History Center in each neighborhood’s subject file.
Eligibility

Who Can Apply?

Park vision plans are available to registered Friends of the Park groups in the City of Atlanta.

Communities commited to a shared process

Support an open and inclusive public process through participation

Communities that welcome every voice

Commit to listening and getting to know your neighbors

Communities that are open to all ideas

Explore all ideas and offer informed opinions

Vision Plans

A Roadmap Shaped by Your Community

A Vision Plan is Park Pride’s most comprehensive design service: a professionally produced conceptual plan that helps guide the long-term future of a park. Over six to eight months, a community steering committee works alongside Park Pride’s design team, gathering public input, exploring possibilities and building consensus around priorities for the park.

Every Vision Plan includes:

  • Park history and context — how the park and surrounding neighborhood have evolved
  • Existing conditions — an assessment of the park today
  • Community input — a summary of the engagement process and how decisions were made
  • A conceptual park plan — visuals that bring the community’s priorities together
  • Priorities and estimated costs — a prioritized project list and itemized opinion of probable costs
Vision Plan Library

Explore Existing Vision Plans

The vision plan is a conceptual plan and comprehensive report for the entire park, produced to professional landscape design standards through a public engagement process spanning several months. This plan can then be used by community groups to fundraise and advocate for their desired improvements in the park.