Smart Cities Connect conference recently announced that solartonic in partnership with Trust for Public Land (TPL) has been listed as a finalist for the 2023 Smart 50 Awards, for our project “Trust for Public Land, South Oak Cliff Renaissance Park, Dallas , Texas”.  The top three projects will be announced at the Smart Cities Connect conference on May 15, 2023.

Click here to see a short video on the project and click here for more details on the project.

How has it made a difference, thus far?

The community has been overjoyed to see South Oak Cliff Renaissance Park come to life, and it is already benefiting the thousands of residents and students who live and learn within a 10-minute walk. “Our community, students, and neighbors are so excited to be able to use this new park for exercise and recreation,” said Derrick Battie, community liaison for South Oak Cliff High School, at the park’s opening celebration in November 2021.

Driven by the community’s request for both lighting and security cameras in the park, and in the interests of improving public safety on-site. solartonic, also in partnership with Dallas Park, have been continuously and remotely operating the security monitoring services via a smart, cloud-based monitoring and control system.  This has enabled both Dallas Park and the Dallas Police Department to receive valuable, time-sensitive data, footage and information related to emergency incidents in the park.   

The nighttime smart solar lighting provides excellent visibility for safe passage through the pathways.  There is also additional lighting for the park’s new basketball court and coupled with the added protection of solartonic’s high-performance security cameras, this has allowed local children to continue to play basketball after sunset.

The park’s dedicated public Wi-Fi installation, that is a priority feature requested by the local community, is continuously managed and serviced by solartonic. Remote access to data analytics records demonstrates that the network is being used regularly by visitors every day together with successful logins to the park’s web portal.  The portal uniquely provides links to useful information about the project and related activities. 

Why is this project influential?

South Oak Cliff Renaissance Park is the first park to open within Trust for Public Land’s Five Mile Creek Urban Greenbelt Master Plan. Adopted by the City of Dallas in 2019, the master plan calls for a network of parks and nearly 13 miles of trails following Five Mile Creek and its tributaries across Oak Cliff, connecting this part of Dallas with the city’s existing trail network. This Renaissance park is a wonderful demonstration of how smart parks within this greenbelt network will directly improve health, education, and the environment, and play a foundational role in the equitable development of southern Dallas.