Close to Home: Planning for equity and health in Santa Rosa

Roseland resident Viki Hernandez values having nature nearby. “I love Bayer Farm. It is close to my home, and I can take my kids to walk, play and plant vegetables. I feel really relaxed when I can plant the garden plot with my kids. Many households don’t have green spaces or trees at home. The park and garden have helped my family and other families of the neighborhood to exercise and clear our minds.”

According to the Center for American Progress, many people, especially people of color, live in places where there are no shady parks. While just a quarter of white people lack access to nature, two-thirds of people of color lack that same access. This disparity is not a random one. In the 1930s, Home Owners’ Loan Corp., a federal agency, passed exclusive zoning laws, and neighborhoods where minorities lived were “red lined.” This meant home mortgages and parks were not provided in those areas, while freeways and polluting industries were allowed.

Bayer Neighborhood Park & Gardens in Roseland is a planning and health equity success story. It supports recreational opportunities for people of all ages and incomes and enhances the physical and mental health of its neighbors, while its trees and gardens cool the summer nights and remove carbon from the air. Access to parks is associated with a lower risk of obesity, heart attacks and strokes. Plenty of studies have documented what Hernandez noticed: spending time in nature reduces stress, anxiety and depression. Particularly during the pandemic, parks have been important for walks.

As a local equity success, LandPath’s Bayer Farms can inspire us to create plans and policies that will improve the health of Americans, especially those living in disadvantaged communities. The current Santa Rosa general plan update process will guide decisions made in the future. This update includes a focus on “healthy city” policies with the support of a Kaiser Permanente grant. Those funds promote the involvement of underrepresented communities, those with limited access to planning activities and/or those who face greater health disparities.

Why are public health professionals involved in city planning in Santa Rosa? They want to improve the health of residents by addressing historical planning inequities while building healthy behaviors into residents’ daily lives. This can be done by redesigning suburban sprawl to incentivize healthy behaviors, such as offering safer options for walking or biking for physical health. This process can also be used to address future health challenges.

In terms of climate, health professionals and planners are looking to mitigate the impact of heat-related health conditions, such as heat stroke. One method is to plan and design cities to reduce “heat islands.” These are places where temperatures are hotter in the summer due to a lack of shade from trees. Asphalt and buildings heat up during the day but cool down very slowly, if at all, at night. These islands are hotter by about 3 to 7 degrees in the summer than wealthier, shade-dappled areas.

In this plan, a “healthy city” policy can be added to reduce heat islands in Santa Rosa by adding shade trees in areas that currently lack cover. Santa Rosa could then apply for climate grants. These grants would fund nonprofits to organize volunteer work days to plant and set up irrigation for shade trees in low-income heat island areas.

This effort to increase tree cover in targeted neighborhoods would make it possible for disadvantaged residents to benefit from cooler air. These shade trees would reduce household energy bills, remove pollutants and carbon from the air and bolster the mental health of nearby residents as our local climate continues to warm.

How can residents advocate for these healthy city adaptations today? Use our online survey at santarosaforward.com to give us your comments. If you would like visioning workshops to be presented in English or Spanish to your organization or group, contact the project team at SRForward@srcity.org.

And for a cooler tomorrow, plant a shade tree in your front yard if you can.

Lois Fisher of Windsor is an urban designer with Fisher Town Design, and Beatriz Guerrero Auna is an equity and public health planner for the city of Santa Rosa.

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