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    Amy Acton to Lead Parks and Greenways Effort

    Last summer, a group of planners presented their visions for transforming and connecting Central Ohio’s five main river corridors.

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    The presentations and related materials were posted online and also made into a book. Several months later, that book found its way into the hands of Dr. Amy Acton, who today was announced as the leader of a new nonprofit organization dedicated to turning those plans into reality.

    “This is about helping our communities build the largest integrated parks system in the country,” Acton said, “activating our five major waterways and tributaries, our parks, the Central Ohio Greenways…all of it coming together.”

    It’s a major boost in both visibility and ambition for the RAPID 5 initiative, an effort launched in late 2019 to highlight the region’s rivers and to start to generate ideas about how to improve them and make them more accessible to a wider range of people.

    “It would be nice if we quit apologizing that we don’t have mountains, or that we don’t have oceans, or we don’t have a lake, because regretting it isn’t going to create it,” said Keith Myers, who has worked with the Columbus chapter of the Urban Land Institute to advance the RAPID 5 concept from its inception. “What we do have is these five amazing streams and, if we could embrace them, we could create something that would be envy of almost any city of the country.”

    The new nonprofit organization will help to raise funds and raise awareness, working closely with other nonprofits, business leaders, Metro Parks, Columbus Recreation and Parks, and the many cities and towns in the region that have already been involved with the project or expressed interest in moving it forward.

    RAPID 5 (which stands for Rivers and Parks + Imagination + Design), encompasses the five major north-south waterways – Big Darby Creek, Scioto River, Olentangy River, Alum Creek and Big Walnut Creek – which neatly divide Franklin County into five sections.

    Courtesy of RAPID 5.

    For Acton, who helped to lead the state’s response to the pandemic as the director of the Ohio Department of Health, the new role feels like a continuation of the work she has been doing her whole career.

    “It’s really about creating the community conditions in which all people can flourish and live a vibrant life,” she said. “No one would doubt that we are living in what have been very difficult times – the pandemic, there’s nobody that’s been unscathed – and nature was this one place we could all go, and it was a joy.

    “It’s one of those last places of common ground and common good, and what it means for our mental health and our physical health…it’s profound.”

    Kerstin Carr, of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, dropped the RAPID 5 book off at Dr. Acton’s house last winter after a conversation about some of those connections between health and access to nature.

    “I was so taken with it, I said ‘oh my goodness, who is imagining this big, who is thinking this big?’ This is exactly how we should be thinking in this city,” Acton said, explaining that she reached out right away to say she’d love to be involved.

    “This is truly the way to connect us to nature and to one another, and to really be a part of the transformation of our region,” she added. “It puts nature within a mile of every resident, it activates the hidden gems of these five river corridors….and what’s beautiful, and really speaks to my public health background, is that this is incredibly inclusive, this is every neighborhood, top to bottom.”

    For more information, visit rapid5.org.

    One of the ideas from the RAPID 5 presentation and book – by NBBJ.
    Video via RAPID 5.
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    Brent Warren
    Brent Warrenhttps://columbusunderground.com/author/brent-warren
    Brent Warren is a staff reporter for Columbus Underground covering urban development, transportation, city planning, neighborhoods, and other related topics. He grew up in Grandview Heights, lives in the University District and studied City and Regional Planning at OSU.
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