Turning Community Insight Into Action for More Equitable Park Access

The Challenge

The challenge was not merely to collect feedback. It was to gather insight that was candid, specific, and strong enough to support action.

Many of the communities most affected by access barriers had good reason to be cautious. Some had participated in previous outreach efforts that felt superficial or unproductive. Others were wary that a project like this could become entangled in politics, internal resistance, or ideological opposition and ultimately be sidelined before anything changed. That skepticism was not abstract. It shaped whether people believed there was any value in speaking candidly at all.

A standard engagement process would not have produced meaningful results. To get beyond guarded, generalized responses, the project needed a structure that could build trust, support honest conversation, and surface the lived realities shaping how different communities experienced Oregon’s parks.

Our Approach

RDG designed and led a statewide engagement process built around direct, community-specific conversations.

Whenever possible, meetings were held face-to-face with organizations and representatives across the state. When in-person sessions were not feasible, discussions were conducted remotely. In every case, participants were given a clear explanation of the project, the purpose of the conversation, and how their input would inform the final recommendations. That clarity helped create the conditions for stronger participation and more honest dialogue.

Just as important, RDG chose not to collapse multiple constituencies into broad, catch-all focus groups. That decision was deliberate. Too much equity work treats communities as interchangeable, flattening distinct identities and experiences into generic categories that obscure more than they reveal. RDG recognized that if the work was going to be credible, each group needed space to speak for itself, in its own terms, about the specific conditions shaping access. Participants included representatives from BIPOC communities, immigrant communities, LGBTQ communities, disabled communities, neurodivergent communities, low-income Oregonians, outdoors organizations, and parents of disabled youth, among others.

Each meeting began with a consistent set of core questions to preserve rigor across the process, while leaving room to follow the most important threads within each discussion. That balance of structure and flexibility made it possible to gather comparable information across a wide range of participants without reducing their experiences to a reformatted framework.

All conversations were transcribed and analyzed in depth. RDG reviewed the material qualitatively and used thematic and keyword analysis to identify patterns across interviews. That made it possible to examine the findings on two levels: first, by understanding the distinct experience of each community, and second, by identifying the recurring issues that cut across groups.

That second level of analysis became one of the most important contributions of the work. Many barriers that initially appeared isolated turned out to reflect shared root causes. Challenges often understood as cultural or demographic were also shaped by transportation, economic constraints, unfamiliarity, intimidation, and prior experiences that affected whether park spaces felt welcoming and accessible. By separating symptoms from causes, RDG helped the agency see where intervention could have the broadest impact.

What RDG Delivered

RDG’s primary deliverable was a comprehensive, action-oriented report designed to help the agency move from insight to implementation.

From the outset, the report was built not as a repository of findings, but as a decision-making tool. Its purpose was to synthesize a large and complex body of community input into a clear set of issues and a practical path forward.

The report was structured to do three things.

• It documented the barriers identified across communities and explained how those barriers shaped people’s experience of Oregon’s parks and outdoor spaces.
• It distilled those findings into a concise set of core issues, with particular attention to the intersectional barriers that appeared repeatedly across different populations.
• It translated those findings into clear action steps and programmatic solutions the agency could use to improve access in a focused and measurable way.

That final step was central to the value of the work. The report did not stop at showing where the agency could act. It laid out what to do, where to prioritize, and how specific changes could be implemented in realistic ways. The recommendations were targeted, practical, and designed to create meaningful impact rather than symbolic movement.

View the Full Report

Project Leadership

The project was directed by Seth Revoal, RDG’s co-owner and CEO, who led strategy, stakeholder engagement, interview facilitation, synthesis, and final recommendations. Seth brought both advanced academic training and applied research discipline to the work, drawing on formal study in marketing and brand strategy at Johns Hopkins and public relations strategy at Cornell University.

He also brought deep cultural awareness and fluency in diversity-related issues, shaped by his professional experience with DEI-centered initiatives, his cultural background, and RDG’s status as a Woman- and Minority-Owned firm. RDG does not approach equity issues as an outside observer trying to interpret lived experience at a distance. As a woman- and minority-owned firm, RDG brings forms of perspective, context, and lived understanding that many firms simply do not. The firm sees that as a real strength and a meaningful advantage in work that depends on trust, nuance, and credibility.