How South L.A.’s Parks Help Men Heal
The Region Is Slowly Getting More of the Green Spaces and Gardens It Needs
“Hey man, did you ever just lay in the grass and look at a cloud pass?” said Marlon, a physically fit, 30ish African-American man. He was in South L.A.’s Martin Luther King Park with Antar Tichavakunda, a member of a research team from USC who’s working with me on a multi-year study to understand how people use the area’s parks.
“Cloud watching” is not just a data point for researchers like myself, it’s also a critical moment for Marlon, who had recently been “on vacation” (a local euphemism for being …
