As we all know, parks have been popping up everywhere these days. No matter your city, neighborhood, town, or country, everyone enjoys a good park! Especially with the recent boom in health consciousness and the America’s growing love for exercise and fitness, parks are becoming increasingly important aspects in our daily lives. Urban parks have been especially on the rise. This is due to the desire of urbanites to incorporate natural elements within their daily lives in the concrete jungle. Mapleton-Fall Creek is no different. MFC is much greener than some other neighborhoods surrounding Indianapolis, and initially drew city dwellers because of its tree-lined streets and luckily, those trees still remain today. On top of the natural scenery that embodies MFC, the residents have been hard at work developing even greener environments for the neighborhood.
Mapleton-Fall Creek has long been known as one of the most well kept historic neighborhoods of Indianapolis, which is really owed to the residents themselves. Ever since the 1960s, when the name Mapleton-Fall Creek first became attached to the area, group organizations have taken hold of the neighborhood with prosperity in mind for its residents. Enter Mapleton-Fall Creek Development Corporation. The MFCDC has been in play since 1985 and has numerous projects constantly in the works, all of which are there to better the environment that is Mapleton-Fall Creek.
MFCDC is a non-profit organization built to “serve as the community’s tool in rebuilding and revitalizing the area”. They see great potential in their neighborhood and take pride in its residents. They have developed a few pillars of prosperity, if you will, that include environmental sustainability, economic prosperity, and social equality. Granted this is just a mission statement, but one needn’t look further than their concrete accomplishments to see these words come to life. The organization has programs in myriad areas including housing, economic development, parks and public spaces, infrastructure, sustainability, and community building.
This group of proud neighborhood residents is constantly on the look out for new trends in urban and neighborhood development. One such trend that the MFCDC has recently jumped on is that of “pocket parks”. Pocket parks are usually very small yet open spaces that have been developed into parks. They are usually on vacant lots of irregular pieces of land without previous practical use. Typically brought fourth by neighborhood organizations or community individuals (such as the MFCDC), pocket parks are a quiet space where locals can make a quick stop, have some lunch, grab some shade, or catch up on some reading. The term “pocket parks” comes from the fact that these spaces are usually pitted between existing developments on all sides. This is in contrast to the regular parks that typically fill entire city blocks and are lined by streets on all sides.
In recent years, pocket parks have grown, not in size, but in popularity. A part of the responsibility for the explosion in pocket parks is due to the New Urbanist movements that have been happening as of late. New Urbanists are urban designers looking to return to the traditional form of neighborhoods. Neighborhoods that contain bustling town centers, have increased walkability, and create comfortable spaces for its residents. This style of development can be attributed to a group of “renegade architects and planners” in the 1990s, who were sick to death of the lack of quality in suburban sprawl that took place during the automobile era.
“From Vacant Lots… to Valued Spaces”; this is the motto of the MFCDC when it comes to creating these wonderful little pocket parks. This Mapleton-Fall Creek organization has thus far created three different pocket parks in the area. The general aim of the parks is to improve quality of life for its residents that also include encouraging home rehabilitation, new home construction, economic development, and infrastructure refurbishment.
With neighborhoods like Mapleton-Fall Creek putting such effort into revitalizing and rejuvenating its own neighborhood, you can only imagine what the rest of Indy’s neighborhoods might do next!
