City Parks Alliance Inc

Programs: Greater & greener conference: we completed preparations for a five-day international urban parks conference to be held in the twin cities of minneapolis and saint paul, july 29 - august 2, 2017. The event aims to attract 1000 people from cities across the world. We raised grant funds from foundations and corporate partners to enable eleven "city teams" to attend the conference.

urban parks advocacy: we continued to build our bi-partisan mayors for parks coalition in support of the land and water conservation fund. We published infographics that make the case for why city parks are a smart investment for america's health, economy and the environment. We worked with the researchers at rand corporation to analyze the second round of observations as part of the national study of neighborhood parks. The study is a four-year research project conducted in partnership with rand corporation, funded by the national institutes of health. City parks alliance is a subcontractor of rand. Fy17 was the fourth year of the project.

community capacity building: we continued to test a park partnership training program around public-private park partnerships. We conducted a session at the nrpa conference in fall 2017, a two day session with birmingham in february 2017, and prepared for a three hour session at the greater & greener 2017 conference, as well as a full-day session to take place in san jose in fy18. We continued our partnership with the trust for public land on a creative placemaking in parks project, which includes the creation of a field guide that was presented at the greater & greener 2017 conference. This three-year project is funded by the national endowment for the arts. We received renewed support for phase ii of the project, which includes our partnership training. City parks alliance is a subcontractor of tpl.

communications: we launched a 5-part video series, city parks: america's new infrastructure," with speakers from 12 cities around the country, in partnership with georgia tech research institute. The videos focus on parks as infrastructure from a resiliency, transportation, economic development and health perspective. The series is supported by the speedwell foundation. Web-based technology and information sharing for member outreach. We hired a new communications and marketing director and began publishing monthly op-eds.