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All Ages, All Abilities, All the Time: How Socially Sustainable are Your Parks?

Friday, May 29 | 2:00 - 2:50pm
Location: Fuji Rooms 3-4

Speaker: Tim Barrett, Regional Manager, Landscape Structures 

Description:

Many parks today face the challenge of providing environments where all visitors can engage, with less funding and fewer resources.  One way is to create environments where all visitors can feel safe, secure and fully engage in play, namely creating designs that fully embrace social equity and social sustainability.  Participants will be provided with current data on how the world population is aging and encountering disabilities in all age groups. In this presentation, participants will be introduced to the concepts of social sustainability as they apply in park and playground settings.  Each component will be defined in relation to universal design principles in recreational environments.    Two case studies will be presented illustrating how these park communities enhanced social equity and inclusion through thoughtful design practices.

The presentation will show how this data supports the need for creating recreation spaces that support these community members in a greater way.  In particular, the use of universal design principles will be embraced as a way to address this growing community need.

Learning Objectives:
  • Understand the definition of Ability as defined by environmental conditions.
  • Identify the concepts of social equity and social sustainability and how they are supported by Universal Design.
  • Articulate each principle of universal design and how they contribute to a park design that goes beyond accessibility and encourages inclusion.
  • Explain why incorporating the concepts of social equity and social sustainability is important to the long term success of parks.

Speaker Bio: Tim Barrett, Regional Manager, Landscape Structures

Tim Barrett has worked for Landscape Structures and within the playground industry for close to 20 years and has traveled throughout North America and Asia presenting on key topics that impact the playground industry. Through the 20 years Tim and his wife Monica have raised three active kids and play has always been a great part of parenting and his personal life.  
Through his travels both presenting and representing Landscape Structures Tim has realized the importance of education and knowledge based consulting in designing, manufacturing and installing quality play environments. Tim has presented on over 300 occasions in the past 20 years and has been known to be very energetic and non-boring to the audience. Passion is the hallmark of what Tim infuses into his seminars and presentations. Stories are relevant and memorable and examples are current and applicable to the subject.

The main objective Tim has for every session he presents on is for the audience to go home that night and share a little of what they learned with the people close to them. “Our business is about kids and how we can make kids and family lives richer, when we educate first, listen to concerns and work together to make every play environment meet the needs of the community – we succeed”.