Atlanta Community Schoolyards: 10-Minute Walk Campaign
What is the 10-Minute Walk Campaign?
The 10-Minute Walk Campaign is a nationwide movement launched in October 2017 to improve access to parks and green spaces for every person, in every neighborhood, in every city across the United States.
So far, the 10-Minute Walk has been endorsed by more than 220 U.S. mayors—from across the political spectrum and from cities large and small—who have committed to working toward universal park access. First Mayor Reed and now Mayor Bottoms have signed on to make Atlanta a 10-minute walk city and the Community Schoolyards initiative is a powerful approach to help achieve the goals city-wide.
Atlanta Community Schoolyards
ULI Atlanta will advance the 10-Minute Walk goals in partnership with TPL, Park Pride and Atlanta Public Schools (APS), using schoolyards as ground zero for helping increase park access. Schoolyards would be open to the public after hours, during the summer and on the weekends. ULI Atlanta’s role in the project is bringing together the intersection of walkability, mobility and greenspace, with a key priority of advancing inclusive and walkable communities.
Walkability adds value to a community, allowing children to walk to school safely and adults to transit stops and stations and provides options for recreation and social engagement. Through the Atlanta Community Schoolyards project, ULI Atlanta members are identifying and evaluating all mobility options surrounding ten school sites with a keen focus on walkability – sidewalk infrastructure and street crossings. The aspirational goal is to increase safe access to the schoolyards and expand access to parks and greenspace.
ULI Atlanta’s Assignment
Ten schools will participate in this project over three-years. Each school represents a broad cross-section of APS school clusters and geographic diversity within the City of Atlanta (with schools in the north, south, east, and west). The information collected and related analysis by the ULI Atlanta team will serve as the foundation for the improvements needed to achieve the goals of the 10-Minute Walk Campaign in each school community.
Specifically, the following three questions were posed for each site:
- What is the current nature of a 10-minute walk around the school?
- Which needed improvements are currently funded and/ or are there existing plans that be leveraged to address those improvements?
- What additional improvements are needed to make a desirable and effective 10-minute walk?
During the 2019 pilot year, ULI Atlanta conducted walk analyses within a half-mile radius of each school, generally representing the distance that an average adult can walk in ten minutes. The first two schools to participate were Dobbs Elementary and Kimberly Elementary.
Over the last three years, ULI Atlanta member volunteers have assessed the walking conditions for the following schools: