In this episode, we hear from Sharon Sand. Sharon is an Urban Planner focused on climate change adaptation, protecting biodiversity, and providing equitable access to nature, parks and green schoolyards. She is on the Government Affairs team as Public Grants Program Senior Manager for Trust for Public Land in California (USA) to obtain public funding for land conservation and urban park projects in neighborhoods that need it most. In this role she also contributes to state and regional policy and strategy related to funding land preservation, access to green space, and climate change adaptation. Sharon is based in LA and has been part of the Stockton team since 2021. Before this work, Sharon worked in cancer genetics research and education including administering international consortia. She is author and co-author of numerous publications resulting from this work. Sharon earned a bachelor’s in Psychology from CSULA and a master’s from UCLA in Urban and Regional Planning with a certificate in Design and Development and another as a Leader in Sustainability through the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
In the episode, Sharon is incredibly generous in sharing examples from her work as grant advisor and planner for the access to nature in the U.S.A., and especially in California. She shares insights from as wide ranging examples as access to riversides, to the greening of schoolyards, and shows the crucial emphasis on community-led, bottom-up work. We also reflect a little on how the crucial role of mobility and spaces for mobility in this context.
Sharon also shares a little about the challenges that work in this field is encountering especially now, with a politically less advantageous arena, and how this is requiring pivoting to find funding for such important initiatives for ensuring access to and contact with natural environments for people from all economic situations and diverse abilities.
Sharon ends on recommendations focused on this connection to nature and we end up hypothesising that perhaps it is both the communities planners work with, and planners themselves, who may need to re-connect with their natural environments more.
Small correction of a detail mentioned in the episode: the EPA Community Change Grants were for $20 million max not $50 million.
Take-aways for planners, by Sharon Sand:
* Prioritize communities and their connection to nature
* Think about how people can connect to nature, and water(scapes) specifically, as this is crucial for health and well-being
Links to various examples mentioned:
ParkServe shows access to parks in most cities across the U.S.A. (except very small ones)
ParkScore ranks the parks in the 100 largest cities of the U.S.
Richmond Wellness Trail, which connects the Iron Triangle neighborhood to transit, schools, medical center and to the Bay Trail and the San Francisco Bay itself (see also: https://richmondrisingca.org/projects/)
More on Stockton parks work can be found here: https://www.tpl.org/city/stockton-california, and more on the Great California Delta Trail Master Plan here: https://delta.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/GDT-Master-Plan-508.pdf
