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What Are Parkour Parks?

This article is a part of the Public Parkour Park Roadmap Series by Caitlin Pontrella

This is a deceptively simple question. While there are maybe a dozen purpose-built parkour parks in North America as of 2020, informal parkour environments have existed all over the world in every single city in an unlimited number of forms for decades.

The reality is that the practice of parkour does not require a dedicated facility or location. Practitioners have been finding creative ways to transform the places they live into the places they play for over 30 years, discovering their own parkour parks and equipment in the wild–disguised as buildings, public squares, old playgrounds, large fountains, stairwells, construction scaffolding, and landscaping. (Wondering why should you bother with building a park if it can be practiced anywhere?)

I want you to start with this perspective: that everyone who has ever been in a park or public space has enjoyed a parkour environment. This is a powerful frame because it can open up new perspectives on how to enroll the wider community in the design these dedicated parks.

Question: What do recent parkour parks look like?

Components
Most purpose-built parkour parks and gyms are composed of geometric forms and structures of different shape, size, and height. These components have different adjacent, density, distance. Components are designed in consideration of the various movement typologies–running, jumping, swinging, climbing, crawling, balancing, etc

Materiality
Materials are as variable as any other type of playground–wood, concrete, brick, stone, plastic, steel, and rubber–and are permanently fixed. Flooring is designed for reducing impact such as grass, loose rubber, poured rubber, sand, or wood chips. This leaves a lot of room for designers to get creative.

Location, Size, Budget
Parks spaces have been (1)components in larger master plans, (2) independent stand alone builds, and (3) temporary installations. Size can vary from micro interventions (such as a bench re-design) to large scale action parks for 50+ people. For this reason, budget on a project can range from $1000 – 100,000+

These PK Parks are well suited for the ‘left over’ spaces of cities — beneath bridges and overpasses, in-between buildings–with lighting, signage and open access.

Furthermore, these are year-round accessible, with parkour practice encouraging training in diverse environmental conditions.

Users
Users are inter-generational, with teens and adults the primary user groups. You can learn more about the types of users that could activate this space in this article.

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From Fired Up to Burning Out.

Over the last 10 years, I have seen so many passionate community leaders light up, explode with effort, and slowly but surely burn out. Having burned out hard once or twice, it is painfully obvious when I see someone now heading full speed for that same painful wall.

One thing that has helped me manage my energy and avoid burnout is knowing more about the Maslach Burnout Inventory. MBI identifies six areas that lead to burnout:

  • Workload (too much work, not enough resources)
  • Control (micromanagement, lack of influence, accountability without power)
  • Reward (not enough pay, appreciation, or satisfaction)
  • Community (isolation, conflict, disrespect)
  • Fairness (discrimination, favoritism)
  • Values (ethical conflicts, meaningless tasks)

This gives me a framework for reflection, evaluation, action, as well as for self-care. By being able to identify the contributing factors to my exhaustion or approaching burnout, I can often take the necessary steps to implement meaningful change and recalibrate.

For leaders who are responsible for small communities or non-profit organizations, the burden of responsibility (workload) is at times extreme and often paired with feeling a lack of appreciation and acknowledgment (reward).

Make sure to set up a time to check in and evaluate!

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On Failure, Creativity, and the Iterative Mindset

“If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t taking enough risks.”

I have seen this quote in most writings and talks on finding success in the world of leadership and innovation. However, what is often lost or overlooked is the larger message around failure mindset.

Ed Catmull, founder of Pixar, reflected: “The better, more subtle interpretation is that failure is a manifestation of learning and exploration. If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it. And, for leaders especially, this strategy — trying to avoid failure by out-thinking it — dooms you to fail.”

In a culture that is constantly testing and measuring the intelligence and capacity of our students and workers, and punishing underperformers (socially, financially, etc), it is no wonder that most people are focused on ‘getting things right’ the first time and optimizing processes to minimize failure/error in the future. We get conditioned early on to carry the mindset that there is a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answer to most problems, and that we must avoid being ‘wrong’ at any cost possible.

Yet the largest problems we face as a society today aren’t so clear cut, and this type of thinking is both limiting and dangerous.

Progressive Iteration

Innovative thinkers are capable of stepping outside an absolute way of thinking (Right vs Wrong). Instead of being concerned about ‘getting it right’, they are concerned with progressive iteration and comparative evolution.

The process of Progressive iteration is the most important skill that I acquired during my study of Architecture. It is an effective mindset and method of creatively approaching problem solving, focused less on arriving at some final solution and more on perpetually evolving from the previous checkpoint. It starts with generating multiple solutions, critiquing and comparing outcomes, searching for blindspots in partnership with outside perspectives, and then synthesizing all that new information to generate more ideas that move the needle further.

Rinse, Repeat. Rinse, Repeat.

From Failure to Potential

Additionally, when engaged in progressive iteration, we don’t really talk about ‘failure.’ Rather we framed our critiques as ‘missed opportunities’ and ‘untapped potential’ or ‘sites for future exploration’. This is a subtle perspective shift but profoundly impactful.

By viewing every effort as a chance to advance forward in some way, by reframing failure as an information-gathering opportunity, you will be liberated from the fear of failing. And, once free, you likely will be emboldened to more often step outside the box, test out wild ideas, challenge long-held norms–all of which open the door to truly transformative innovation.

“In a fear-based, failure-averse culture, people will consciously or unconsciously avoid risk. They will seek instead to repeat something safe that’s been good enough in the past. Their work will be derivative, not innovative. But if you can foster a positive understanding of failure, the opposite will happen.” – Catmull

In school I also learned to emotionally accept and embrace that even with all the information, with hours and hours of study and work, with tons of expert input, I still could end up with outcomes neither expected nor wanted.

…Because in actuality, contexts are constantly shift, people are unpredictable, and life doesn’t rarely has one clear cut ‘right or ‘wrong’ approach.

Safety, Failure, and Leadership

Finally, the last I have to say on this is simply that it is incredibly important to reveal and own failure when in a position of leadership.

“If we as leaders can talk about our mistakes and our part in them, then we make it safe for others.” We humanize ourselves, debunk conceptions around what it means to be an expert, and invite others to take risks too.

Our ability to be vulnerable is the foundation to inspirational and powerful leadership. Creativity, authentic self-expression, honesty, and trust, key ingredients to radical innovation, can only fully exist when one has the ability to safely take risks and make mistakes without fear of repercussions.

When people feel safe to make mistakes, when people feel safe to fail, they will rise, learn, and evolve more quickly. They will be more willing to push into unexplored frontiers, equipped with confidence in their own decision making and abilities. They will create and innovate and possibly even take on the great challenge of changing the world.

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M: Killing the self in order to live authentically; De-conditioning the mind

“If you want to understand, really understand the way things are in this world, you’ve got to die at least once. And as that’s the law, it’s bette to die while you’re young, when you’ve still got time to pull yourself up adn start again.”Giorgio Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis ; Dedication quote in Nobility of Spirit by Rob Riemen.

For me this quote makes me think to killing off my ego, as well as deprogramming myself out of the conditioning that I have been subjected to. Sometimes our social programming is so strong that the only way out is by destroying everything around us–the world we live in is so tightly interwoven that we are unclear as to what is ours and what is theirs.

So we burn it all down. Destroy everything. Kill the life we had in order to rebuild and discover the life we want.