Led by a registered landscape architect, the Park Visioning Program offers professional park design assistance to community groups free of charge.
Whether you need advice on next steps or assistance with long-term planning, we offer a range of design services that meet the needs of all Friends groups, large and small!
Applications will open in Summer 2024 for DeKalb County and Winter 2025 for the City of Atlanta.
Click the tabs below to learn about our service options.
Available year-round on a rolling basis, Park Pride offers design consultations to Friends of Park groups in our service area. If you want general guidance on next steps for your park improvement ideas, need help brainstorming, or want to understand how Park Pride can help, a consultation may be right for you.
Who can request a consultation?
Design consultations are available to all registered Friends of Park groups in the City of Atlanta, unincorporated DeKalb County, and the City of Brookhaven.
What to expect
Design consultations are one-on-one meetings with our park visioning staff that happen on-site at your park. Meetings typically last one hour. Consultations may result in a written summary of the conversation and/or rough sketches or simple maps intended to help identify the next steps for a park project.
Get started
Friends of Park groups interested in receiving a design consultation can fill out the form below. Park Pride will review your application within a week of submission. Applications will open in Summer 2024 for DeKalb County and Winter 2025 for the City of Atlanta.
Park Visioning Consultation Request
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Each year, Park Pride guides two communities through a public engagement process that converts that community’s ideas and dreams into a conceptual vision plan that can be used to guide community-based development of the park over a longer period.
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.
Who can apply?
Park vision plans are available to registered Friends of Park groups in the City of Atlanta or unincorporated DeKalb County, and Friends groups must:
- commit to six to eight months of public planning work,
- support an open and inclusive visioning process that intentionally represents differing opinions and diverse viewpoints,
- and be open to considering all ideas regardless of popularity, site control or budget.
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 – The scheduling of monthly meetings of a community steering committee with Park Pride’s visioning team over the 6-8 month process to inform the understanding of the community’s needs. The steering committee will help to develop and implement the public engagement strategy as well as participate in design discussions and decisions at monthly meetings. Committee members should represent a broad and diverse spectrum of community interests.
- Public input meetings – A series of public input meetings during which people are encouraged to dream big and think outside the box for what might be possible in their neighborhood park and form consensus around the priority projects they have for the design (or re-design) of their park.
- A final, conceptual park plan – The central deliverable of the Park Visioning Program is the creation of a conceptual park master plan that includes:
- an investigation of the history and neighborhood context around the park,
- a catalog of existing conditions in the park,
- a summary of the process including public engagement strategies,
- documentation of how decisions were made,
- a visual representation of the conceptual park plan,
- a prioritized project list, as well as the graphics and site plans necessary to help the community bring their dream park to reality,
- an itemized opinion of probable costs.
Get started
Communities interested in receiving park visioning services must apply, and the application pool is highly competitive.
Click your jurisdiction below to begin the Park Visioning application process: