Durant Park Design Team: West Oakland, California
Durant Park is a small vest-pocket park located on 29th Street between West Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way in West Oakland. Once a thriving neighborhood park where children played and families gathered for barbeques and social events, it has become in recent years a magnet for drug dealers, prostitutes and the homeless. The park is frequently littered with trash, hypodermic needles and condoms, and parents no longer allow their children to play there. In a 2004 community survey conducted by the City of Oakland, residents living on 29th Street and the surrounding blocks identified Durant Park as a serious problem contributing to neighborhood blight and attracting illegal activity.
In October 2004, Durant Park became a focus of activity for the Oakland City–Council Violence Prevention Initiative. Launched by Mayor Jerry Brown in response to growing levels of violence in Oakland, this initiative uses a community-building approach to violence prevention. The Violence Prevention team began talking to the residents on 29th Street about their interest in becoming involved in a community effort to revitalize Durant Park. Many neighbors were eager to become involved. The City of Oakland's Department of Human Services then approached CCI about leading a community design process. Professor Walter Hood from UCB's Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, CCI Director Heather Hood, and four graduate students from UCB's Department of City and Regional Planning agreed to lead the initial design stages of the project. The IURD team gathered input from residents and developed several different design scenarios. They presented these back to the residents at the second workshop. The input for this workshop was then incorporated into the final design recommendations included in a report titled Durant Park: West Oakland, California.
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