Project Spotlight: Connected Parks

“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”― Martin Luther King, Jr.

Louisville Metro Government's Office of Parks and Recreation, along with Louisville Parks Alliance, and Metro Technology Services, opened the Alberta O. Jones park in the California neighborhood in November of last year with improvements that included public Wi-Fi. Now the plan is to connect all of Louisville's 120 public parks with Wi-Fi and digital charging stations by the end of 2025, focusing first on parks in low-income communities.

These connected parks provide many Louisvillians, who don't have other access to Wi-Fi, to connect with out-of-town family members, search for employment, healthcare, and other resources, and gives them and their children the ability to use the tool for education and self-improvement. They also bring neighbors out of their homes and into Louisville's plentiful greenspaces, allowing for in-person connection, sunshine, and much needed fresh air.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was reminded how important person-to-person connection and our outdoor spaces were, along with the independence and ease that technology provides, and how dependent society is on it.

This exposed the Digital Divide, the gap between those people that have access to technology and those that don't.

By connecting our parks, it will connect our people, our neighborhoods, and our world. It will promote stronger interpersonal relationships, increase our access to knowledge and learning, and make our town more open and equitable.

Broadband

Although we are living in an age of highly advanced technology, making it easier to access knowledge and resources, not all Louisvillians have this ability. 

Through ARP funding, along with district funds from Metro Councilman Stuart Benson (R-20), Louisville Metro is working with Spectrum to ensure all citizens of Jefferson County, no matter how rural, have access to high-speed internet. 

This is something most of us living in urban or suburban areas of the county take for granted. The COVID-19 pandemic taught us how important having this resource is. It allowed for students to do their schooling from home and allowed parents to work from home.

The team estimates being able to connect 1,800 households within the next year.

“All is connected… no one thing can change by itself.” – Paul Hawken

ArcGIS, Power BI, and Data Dashboards

Growing up in Nigeria, Oreoluwa Adebayo (Ore for short), saw his mother working with data analysis and was intrigued. He began learning more about it and then traveled to the US to study it further at UofL. While at UofL, he was employed by Louisville Metro and has developed several dashboards related to ARP.  These have helped LMG with their visual analysis of ARP funds and allowed for the continuation of open data and transparency of spending for the citizens of Jefferson County. Oreoluwa is working on dashboards for both the Broadband and Connected Parks projects. From this link, Louisville Open Data you can access other open data dashboards regarding additional LMG projects.

Oreoluwa currently works as a Senior Data Analyst with the Louisville Accelerator Team. He is able to combine his 8+ years of experience working with GIS and other data analysis tools to make meaningful contributions to the work that the team is doing for LMG.

His strengths are in spatial analysis and modeling of large datasets in relation to population and town planning. He's skilled in cartography, spatial data analysis, image analysis, data display, geoprocessing script, and model development.

In 2022, Oreoluwa graduated from UofL with a degree in Business Analytics and in 2023, he got the opportunity to attend a conference on ArcGIS where his mother gave a presentation. 

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.” – Herman Melville