{"id":264033,"date":"2026-04-12T14:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T14:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/264033\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T14:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T14:25:09","slug":"park-inequality-in-southern-california-creates-health-risks-especially-during-the-heat-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/264033\/","title":{"rendered":"Park inequality in Southern California creates health risks, especially during the heat \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rod McThompson is only weeks away from earning a master\u2019s degree in engineering, but he says that doesn\u2019t mean he knows anything about how sensors mounted on the International Space Station, orbiting 250 or so miles above the earth, can measure the surface temperatures of strips of land not much bigger than the parcel under his two-bedroom home in South Gate.<\/p>\n

Or about how that technology produced the data used in a new report<\/a>, conducted by researchers from UC Irvine and Chapman University, that shows how parks in South Los Angeles are hotter \u2014 by about 15 degrees, on average \u2014 than the parks in West Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

What McThompson does know is this: If he wants to take his 3-year-old daughter, Jada, to the park closest to their house, they have to drive. And once they get to the park, he needs to make sure Jada is wearing a long-sleeve top and what the toddler describes as, \u201cMy tiny, tiny, tiny yoga pants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe slides get hot. The swings, the monkey bars, all that (stuff); it\u2019s all hot,\u201d McThompson said during a recent hot spring day at Circle Park in South Gate. \u201cIf she got burned, she\u2019d be upset. And of course I\u2019d be upset. And my wife would be\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

He laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s just say it wouldn\u2019t be good for me, either.\u201d<\/p>\n

The McThompsons make the best of a situation that\u2019s common and complex: park inequality.<\/p>\n

Some elements of the problem aren\u2019t new. Cities throughout Southern California \u2014 sometimes even multicity regions \u2014 can be divided into unofficial zones: park haves and park have-nots.<\/p>\n

Residents and city planners intuitively understand this, and recent data bears it out.<\/p>\n

In Santa Ana, only about 3% of the city\u2019s land is devoted to parks, one of the lowest parkland ratios of any big city in the nation. In Irvine, the parkland ratio is about 27%, according to the 2025 City Park Facts report by the Trust for Public Land<\/a>, a nonprofit aimed at developing and preserving urban open space.<\/p>\n

Other data, from the cities themselves, show other park discrepancies throughout the region.<\/p>\n

Baldwin Park has roughly a quarter acre of parkland for every 1,000 residents while in Whittier, just across the freeway, the ratio is about 3.4 acres per 1,000 residents. (Both cities fall well under the national standard, which is 10 acres of park per 1,000 people.) Manhattan Beach, a city of about 33,400, has 81 acres of park. Nearby, Lawndale has about 30,160 people and roughly 30 acres of park. In Pasadena, officials approved spending $25.8 million on parks in 2024. In South Pasadena, the city plans to spend $8.8 million on parks over the next five years. And so on.<\/p>\n

This slice of the park problem \u2014 the simple existence or non-existence of parks in a given community, often described as \u201cpark accessibility\u201d \u2014 has been known and debated long enough that there\u2019s already been a concerted public effort to fix it.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Los Angeles County voters approved a spending plan (Measure A) that allocated more than $1 billion to city parks. In 2018, California voters approved the \u201cParks, Environment, and Water Bond Act\u201d (Proposition 68), which allocated $4.1 billion statewide to build more urban parks. About 20% of that money was aimed at communities deemed historically disadvantaged, park-wise, including the McThompsons\u2019 hometown, South Gate.<\/p>\n

Both programs have created some parks and open space that are helping to alleviate, if not fix, the basic issue of park access.<\/p>\n

But the report released this month from UCI and Chapman, the one using satellites and heat sensors and lots of public input, reveals a different slice of the park problem.<\/p>\n

Not all parks, it turns out, are created equal.<\/p>\n

Public threat<\/p>\n

The parks used by the McThompsons and others in South Los Angeles include a lot of heat-trapping materials \u2014 artificial turf, concrete, hard plastics, rubber mats. Also, because they\u2019re often newer or carved out of land in or near industrial zones, the parks in South Los Angeles don\u2019t have as many mature, shade-generating trees as the parks in West Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

The upshot is that some parks offer residents a sanctuary they can use to dodge extreme heat, which is the biggest factor in climate-related illness and injury. Others don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

During summer days from 2021 through 2024, the surface temperature in dozens of parks and open spaces and school yards in Los Angeles averaged about 105.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or roughly 14 degrees hotter than similar temperatures at parks in West Los Angeles, which averaged 91.6, according to the new report.<\/p>\n

Those differences aren\u2019t trivia. The report found that roughly 1 in 3 parks in South Los Angeles routinely got hot enough to exceed the human pain threshold which, on land, is about 111 degrees. None of the parks in West Los Angeles hit that mark.<\/p>\n

A potential factor, of course, is the ocean breeze. It blows through much of West Los Angeles; it doesn\u2019t in South Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

It also doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink of it like when you\u2019re walking on the beach, in, say, Santa Monica, and you\u2019re barefoot on the sand. The wind and the ocean are making you cool, but your feet might be burning. It doesn\u2019t matter what the breeze is doing; that sand is hot as hell,\u201d said Joshua Fisher, a climate scientist and associate professor at Chapman University who helped lead the report.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the parks in South L.A., it doesn\u2019t matter what the breeze is doing, that place is soaking up energy,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re a kid going down a slide, you might have the breeze to cool off your face, but your skin is going to burn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to taking a job at Chapman about five years ago, Fisher spent a dozen years working at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena. He helped create and run the ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (a.k.a. ECOSTRESS), which uses devices mounted on the International Space Station to track the daily surface temperatures of small patches of earth, at different times and days. Information as diverse as plant hydration and urban hot zones \u2014 the temperature spikes that happen in places like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Inglewood \u2014 are tracked and stored for public use via the ECOSTRESS system. And everybody from climatologists and firefighters to farmers and urban planners use that data to help make decisions.<\/p>\n

The information about the parks in South Los Angeles, he noted, dovetails with other ECOSTRESS data about where heat tends to pose the most danger to the most people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe places where parks are super hot also are places where residents don\u2019t have as much access to places where they can get relief from the heat. And it\u2019s happening at a time when heat is becoming an increasingly common threat,\u201d Fisher said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s bigger than parks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JasonJason Douglas, UC Irvine associate professor and vice chair of health, society and behavior, conducts fieldwork measuring the surface temperatures of park equipment. (Photo by William Pomeroy)
\nUseful data<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also bigger than wonky talk about climate science and global warming.<\/p>\n

The parks report was launched, in part, by what Fisher and a UC Irvine public health expert, Jason Douglas, heard during meetings with people who live near the parks in South Los Angeles. Douglas, along with others connected with the study, hopes the findings can be used in ways that go beyond academic research.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis whole project really began after we went into the community and heard about these issues from the people who experience them,\u201d said Douglas, an associate professor and vice chair at UCI\u2019s Joe C. Wen School of Population & Public Health who specializes in working with historically marginalized communities to investigate public health issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe eventually worked with more than 100 residents to map, specifically, where the problems were,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur philosophy was that all this NASA tech is amazing, but it can\u2019t tell us how residents experience these places, and what the ramifications of climate change \u2014 extreme heat, in this case \u2014 are in their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ChapmanChapman University student Ashley Agatep is the lead author of a study that found Los Angeles parks in lower socioeconomic areas are 15 degrees hotter because of fewer trees and available shade. She is pictured at the university in Orange on Wednesday, April 8, 2026. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register\/SCNG)<\/p>\n

The paper\u2019s lead author \u2014 Ashley Agatep, a 20-year-old junior at Chapman \u2014 agreed. She said she first got interested in using the ECOSTRESS mapping data to study parks in disadvantaged communities three years ago, when she heard about the idea from a graduating senior who didn\u2019t have time to finish the project. After that, she said, she became more motivated by what she heard from people who use the parks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was recording a lot of the testimonies from residents, and they were talking about what it was like for their kids to go to the park. One kid, the bottom pieces of his soccer cleats had melted,\u201d Agatep said.<\/p>\n

Now, she added, she\u2019s excited about the idea that the report might be used by some residents to push city and county officials for better parks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis paper shows the role that science can fill for communities,\u201d she said. \u201cIt isn\u2019t getting lost in Google Scholar; it\u2019s being used to make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Agatep added that she plans to pursue a doctorate, probably in environmental science.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve fallen in love with research,\u201d she said. \u201cI just want to make sure my science serves my community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rod McThompson is only weeks away from earning a master\u2019s degree in engineering, but he says that doesn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[17700,643,2306,48,52,51,47,50,49,100,645,136,35412],"class_list":["post-264033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-chapman-university","tag-environment","tag-higher-education","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-news","tag-science","tag-top-stories","tag-uc-irvine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}