Design for Active Living

While flood risk poses a serious challenge to Louisiana communities, it is not the only threat to local resilience. Residents also experience significant environmental, social, and chronic health challenges that threaten individual and community wellbeing today and the ability of communities to adapt and thrive in the future. Designing communities to support active lifestyles can help increase physical exercise and provide opportunities for socializing that improve physical and mental health. In this way, designing spaces for active living can improve wellbeing and social cohesion to strengthen community resilience.

After the 2016 flood, community members identified updating parks into usable spaces as a priority in Baker’s long-term recovery plan. Parks improve wellbeing by encouraging physical activity and by offering gathering spaces to build and improve social connections. Integrating parks and bike lanes into new developments can play an essential role in providing these services to citizens in their everyday lives. Parks and other outdoor recreational spaces can also reduce flood risk by creating spaces throughout the community to hold excess stormwater.

Design for Active Living means identifying and investing in the design elements and programming that allow recreation to be a year-round endeavor.

In a place that sustains high temperatures for much of the year, designs for yearround outdoor space should incorporate natural elements (e.g. trees for shade, water fountains and features) sittable space (e.g. benches, ledges, movable tables and chairs), ample lighting, and food options (e.g. food trucks, picnic areas) that give life to a space.

Strategies

Activate Public Space

Designing the perfect space is only half the battle in creating public spaces that are actually used by community members. Programming is often needed to activate public spaces. Activation invites residents to the space and provides examples of how different design elements can be used. The city can work with local churches, clubs, organizations, schools, and other community partners to create programming that celebrates community and local culture.

Design at the Human Scale

At its most basic, creating a human scale environment means making sure that the objects that we interact with every day are of a size and shape that is reasonable for the average person to use. The term is often used to distinguish between those who are accessing the city on foot, versus those who are viewing it from a car window. Though both involve people, we use human scale to refer to pedestrians, which leads to the companion term: automotive scale. When we consider community design, the term human scale can apply to any perspective from the amenities of physical space such as sidewalks, lighting and trees for shade; to psychological considerations such as how a space makes the user feel (e.g. safe vs. unsafe, comfortable vs. anxious).

Benefits and Considerations

Provide Multiple Functions

Through intentional design, outdoor recreational spaces can serve multiple functions. While parks and trails provide spaces to engage in walking or cycling, they can also reduce flood risk by creating spaces throughout the community to hold excess stormwater. This reduces stress on drainage systems and may alleviate nuisance street flooding during heavy rains.

Strengthen Social Connections

Outdoor spaces support wellbeing by providing gathering spaces that strengthen social bonds. Encouraging the development of strong social bonds among residents can improve community resilience to future disasters.

Improve Health + Wellbeing

Design for Active Living improves health + wellbeing at the individual and community level, which can translate into increased resilience. Encouraging physical exercise through walking, cycling, and being outside has a direct, positive impact on physical and mental health. Design for Active Living can help residents with chronic health issues, such as obesity or high blood pressure, that can be improved through exercise. Addressing chronic health issues improves community resilience because residents may be better able to respond during disasters.

Design for Safety

The design of a space influences perceptions of safety. External factors, such as time of day, gender, and age, also influence if users perceive spaces as safe or not. In community engagement processes, safety emerged as a high priority among residents. Safe spaces have adequate lighting and offer high visibility without places that conceal or isolate people.

25 Being active in nature increases mental and physical health.

Design for Active Living in Baker

E D

B

E C

A In Baker Estates, stormwater lots can be designed as parklets with trails and recreational spaces. Installing outdoor grills near shaded seating provides the necessary elements to support active lifestyles and social gatherings on beautiful days.

Toolkit

A. Benches

B. Community Gathering C. Spaces D. BBQ Picnic Areas E. Street Lighting

Design for Active Living Toolkit

Natural Elements

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In southern Louisiana, outdoor spaces need natural elements to be hospitable for year-round human activity. Mature trees along pedestrian and bike pathways provide shade and protection from the summer sun. Many community members also want water features, such as splash pads and water fountains as places to play and relax.

Implementing Natural Elements

Tree planting/protection: Tree protection regulations and planting requirements found in the landscape ordinance are common strategies to provide trees, such as live oaks, that provide the most benefit.

Living with Water Connection

People naturally gravitate to waterways and features. Greenways and paths along natural waterways provide opportunities for exercise as well as storage for stormwater when needed. Requirements and specifications for these features may be found in subdivision and/or floodplain ordinances.

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Lighting

Lighting along roads is often built high in the air to provide clearance for trucks and oversized vehicles. To encourage active living, lighting should be scaled to human height. Creating well lit pathways increases feelings of safety for cyclists and pedestrians.

Food Options

To support active living, gathering spaces should also include facilities for sharing food with friends and family, which is an important part of local culture. This may include permeable surfaces where food trucks can park as well as grassy, shaded picnic areas with and without tables and benches to accommodate the needs of different community members. Local ordinances can encourage food truck vending by setting affordable prices for food truck permits.

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Sittable Space

Sittable spaces can be created in many different ways. Plans should include a mix of permanent benches, moveable tables and chairs, and ledges strategically placed along pathways, at transit stops, and in parks. Seating should be combined with shade elements to create a peaceful resting environment. Green stormwater infrastructure, such as building rain gardens in planter boxes, can be designed with wide ledges to accommodate seating and to beautify rest areas.

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Recreational Equipment

Installation of outdoor recreational and exercise equipment encourages physical health + wellbeing. Many community members stated they want water features, such as splash pads and water fountains as places to play and relax in nature.

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Cultural Aspects

The inclusion of cultural aspects can take many forms, such as art installations, historical markers, welcome signs, or locations for special occasion pictures. Sculptures and other artwork can be installed along pathways or at transit stops. Residents suggested using benches to showcase the talents of local artists, who could submit ideas through a local design competition that allowed community members to select the winning ideas.

Vision for a Healthy & Resilient Baker

Introduction

The previous chapter introduced how driving concepts can be woven together in urban design plans to promote physical health and social wellbeing and create complementary benefits. This chapter shows how these concepts can be applied throughout the entire community to create a city-wide multifunctional infrastructure network capable of reducing risk and improving quality of life for all community members.

Existing Issues

This project identified five types of conditions in the heart of Baker that experience flooding during heavy rain events: subdivisions (neighborhoods), corridors (main streets), canals, parks, and commercial parking lots. For each condition, the project team selected a test site to serve as an example for design and policy strategies that could reduce flood risk and improve quality of life for community members. Based on a community mapping exercise, the team selected Baker Estates for the subdivision test site, Groom Road for the corridor test site, Brushy Bayou for the canal test site, City Park for the park test site, and Walgreens as the commercial parking lot test site. Although the project focuses on District 3, which the August 2016 floods hit hardest in relation to other parts of the city, the recommended design and policy strategies can be used throughout the entire city.

Baker’s unique geographic location straddles two watersheds−Cypress Bayou to the northwest and White Bayou to the southeast. There are on-going discussions for a large-scale drainage project to address flooding in the Cypress Bayou watershed. While this is good for the city overall, it may not alleviate flood risk for parts of the city located in the White Bayou watershed. As such, this study focuses on potential integrated stormwater management and green infrastructure interventions at multiple scales (i.e. neighborhood, street, park, parking lots, etc.) that can transform the typical suburban environment into a model for capturing rainwater and reducing flood risk. This chapter provides strategic landscape and policy interventions that can increase quality of life while reducing flood risk for the long-term viability of the city as a whole.

The project sites reflect locations residents reported as flood-prone during the Community Design Open House in March 2019.