Having a strong community sense of civic activism is only part of the solution to saving public space. You also have to have a good plan developed based on historical evaluation and tempered by the resources you have at your disposal. The purpose of social and recreational needs assessments are to literally count and map facilities in and around your city. To do that, a community team must identify issues of supply and demand for facilities, assess the potential for improvements to those facilities, and finally to work with everyone from your local recreation and parks service to the city council to identify opportunities for funding.

Here are some links to provide your group with some background information on our home state of Florida, as well as historical information from around the country.

GENERAL FLORIDA SITES

http://www.soflo.org/index.htm
- A great focus on disappearing public space in Florida
http://www.floridahistory.org/
- Florida History
http://dhr.dos.state.fl.us/flafacts/shorthis.html
- Short history of Florida
http://flahum.org/index.html#home
- Florida Humanities Council
http://sustainable.state.fl.us/fdi/fscc/director/index.html
- A networking site to keep Florida counties in contact with each other
http://www.americanparknetwork.com/parkinfo/ev/history/index.html
- Everglades National Park history
http://www.library.miami.edu/RichterNews/everglades.html
- UM Everglades Project
http://laws.fws.gov/lawsdigest/coasbar.html
- Coastal Barrier Resources Act

GENERAL HISTORICAL RESOURCE SITES

http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/GEO/geog08.htm
- An Outline of American Geography: The Deep South
http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/history/hista.html
- Basic web guide for history
http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads/asw/
- American Studies- Crossroads Site
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/
- History Matters Web Site
http://www.library.wisc.edu/etext/WIReader/Contents.html
- Wisconsin electronic Reader

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