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In 1950, Baltimore had a population of just under 950,000 people. The 2020 census put the city’s population at just over 585,000. Today, that number continues to drop with estimates of Baltimore’s 2023 population sitting at just over 565,000 people.

“There’s been a precipitous drop in population over the last 70 years, which means that a housing stock that was needed for roughly 300,000 more people 70 years ago is no longer needed today,” explains Frank Lance, President & CEO of Baltimore’s Parks & People, a nonprofit that aims to improve Baltimore through green space and education. “As Baltimore City thinks about its future, there’s a great opportunity to create green space where you had asphalt, where you had roads, where you had housing that’s not going to be redeveloped.”

That’s exactly what a public-private partnership is currently working towards. Starting roughly two years ago, KABOOM!, a national nonprofit working to address playspace inequity, convened a partnership between the City of Baltimore, its public school system, its recreation and parks department, and Parks & People to improve the city’s playspaces strategically and collectively.

“In working within the partnership with Baltimore City Recreation and Parks, Baltimore City Public Schools, KABOOM!, and with other foundations and philanthropic organizations across Baltimore, we’re re-envisioning the entire city and how green spaces need to play a part,” Lance adds.

The critical element of the partnership is how much farther the group can go together than they can apart. In addition to being the convening force, KABOOM! brings its Playspace Inequity Prioritization Index (PIPI), which maps and ranks the city’s playspaces based on their equity and need for repair. That’s laced together with the public school system’s knowledge about its playgrounds’ locations and conditions.

“During the 2023-2024 school year, City Schools’ certified playground surveyors completed a detailed assessment of all district play spaces and collaborated with KABOOM! to develop a prioritized list of schools that needed new playgrounds,” says Sonja Santelises, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools. The district has built 31 playspaces since the initiative started in 2022.

“The priority scoring formula is based on objective data, including current playground condition, age appropriateness, playspace equity score, and the neighborhood poverty index,” Santelises continues. “Using that list, every year we submit our playground replacement recommendations to KABOOM!”

When the schools’ playgrounds are considered and improved in tandem with the rec and parks department’s more than 130 city playspaces, transformation starts to happen. “In the last year, our agency has replaced 26 playgrounds. Our commitment with KABOOM! [is] to replace another 25 over the next five years,” says Dr. Reginald Moore, Director of Baltimore City Recreation and Parks. Together, the partners have made significant progress toward their goal.

“In many communities, playspaces are the one asset that all kids have access to. We can’t have athletic fields in every corner, but we can have playspaces in a lot of the communities,” he adds — which is where the collaboration with the school system comes in. “Every kid enters a school every day. Where there’s not a rec center playground, there’s a school playground.” By working together to improve all of the city’s parks and ensuring that neighborhood kids have access to school playgrounds after school hours, playspace access and equity expand.

Plus, the collaboration has allowed the partnership to focus on what the city really needs: small- and medium-sized parks. “We have Patterson Park, we have Gwynns Falls, we have Clifton [Park], so we have major parks. What we’re missing, and what other cities have really done well, is those intermediate-sized or smaller community parks,” Lance says. “So that’s what we’re trying to do today.”

But like all projects, funding is key. The City of Baltimore invested $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds and another $5 million in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief dollars to build 50 playspaces across parks and schools since the start of the initiative.

Parks & People is helping to fundraise and sustain this work.

“In a number of cases, we needed Maryland State funding in order to do the work, which usually comes in the form of a Legislative Bond Initiative, or LBI. Since Parks & People’s 40-year history is well-known in Baltimore and we have a great relationship with the State and the City, we were able to be the applicants for the LBI and then work with KABOOM! and its engine of raising money,” Lance says. “Our name and reputation allow us to do that.”

Parks & People has also been working to bring other park advocacy groups into the fold so that everyone is advocating for — and funding — the same progress. “Instead of just a Friends of Patterson Park or the Friends of Druid Hill, or Friends of Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park, we’re the convening body. We pull the bodies together and talk about what we need to do in order to move forward. Then, with a unified voice, we’re able to go before our State legislature or City legislative body and talk about what needs to change and where we need funding,” he adds.

Lance notes that when securing funding, it’s important to think beyond just capital and construction costs. Having good parks means maintaining them over time, which requires consistent operation and maintenance funding. “We’re advocating before the City and State for ongoing O&M money for all these different parks,” he says. “Because if you don’t operate them well, if you don’t maintain them well, in just a few years it looks as though the money that you invested has gone to waste.”

The key, though, is the partnership that laid the ground for Baltimore’s playspace gains. “We realize that there is power — more power than we have alone — in true public-private partnerships,” Lance says. “The key is having trusted partners at the table. When you have trusted partners at the table, you can actually move a municipality forward in ways that you otherwise can’t.”

This post was originally published on Next City.