Summary: Tori Kjer, PLA, Executive Director of The Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust The Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust was founded in 2002 to address Los Angeles's park inequities. We focus our efforts exclusively in communities of color that have little to no access to green space. Since 2002, we have added 13 acres of accessible green space by helping to create 27 urban parks and community gardens. As a result, we serve over 380,000 Angelenos living within a 10-minute walk of our green spaces. By the end of 2020, we will complete four additional parks and gardens, adding 13 additional acres of green space for Los Angeles County. Our successful community development model engages residents from the beginning of our design process, through construction and ultimately the stewardship of the parks and gardens we create. To ensure the long-term impact of our efforts, we are working towards equitable green space development through grassroots policy reform. Los Angeles currently ranks 74th out of the 98 largest cities in the country for the number of people living within a 1/2 mile of a park. While there is a significant lack of green and recreational space throughout Los Angeles, low-income communities of color fare much worse. A 2016 countywide analysis of green space found that communities with very high or high park need were 90 percent predominately communities of color. http://larchitect.org/
