An Appeal from Recife: How an Inclusive 50,000m2 Park Became a Desert in Pokémon GO

Nomination Support
1

First of All, Here is the Parque Eduardo Campos video

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Hello, Niantic team and Wayfarer community,
I am writing with a heart full of passion for Pokémon GO, but also with great frustration regarding the player community in the South Zone of Recife, Brazil.
Our city recently opened Parque Eduardo Campos, the largest park in the South Zone, spanning over 50,000 square meters. It is fully fenced, extremely safe, and inclusive, featuring wheelchair-accessible playground equipment. It is the dream scenario for any trainer, yet playing there is currently impossible.
While Parque da Jaqueira in the North Zone is filled with Pokéstops, the South Zone has been forgotten, leaving us with only 1 Gym and zero spawns. Our city of 1.6 million people has only one official community leader. This leader does an outstanding job and deserves all the praise, but it’s the North Zone, again, it’s a 50.000m² park in the South Zone, with only one Gym and no support,new could be doing gatherings and events but losing it all due bureaucracy and lack of support.
Ironically, while this secure park is empty, there are three Gyms located just outside in a nearby neighborhood. These areas are unsafe and difficult to access, especially at night. It makes no sense for players to take risks outside while a brand-new, secure park is abandoned by Niantic.
I want to help build the game in my region, so I personally submitted over 32 high-quality Pokéstop nominations inside the park. After more than a month, 2 were rejected by the bot, 1 was approved, 2 are in voting, and dozens of perfect submissions are still stuck in the queue.
This massive park has distinct sports areas, skate parks, and inclusive playgrounds that need dozens of stops to reflect its real-world attractions. Niantic, please help us unlock this park so we can play safely and host events in the South Zone too.

TLDR: The new Parque Eduardo Campos in Recife’s South Zone spans 50,000 square meters, being completely safe and inclusive, but only has one gym and zero spawns in Pokémon GO. Meanwhile, the North Zone has excellent support from the community leader which is an amazing one, and Pokémon Go Fest 2026 at Parque da Jaqueira (North Zone) was exceptional, but that is the North Zone… I personally submitted over 32 perfect Pokéstop nominations that have been stuck in the Wayfarer review queue for a month.

2

Welcome to the forums :slight_smile:

This looks like a newly developed area - the aerial images still show construction.

It is entirely normal that a new park will not be filled with pokestops and gyms at the beginning, because wayfarers have to submit the wayspots and get them accepted.

Not everything you submit will be automatically accepted, because the wayspots here will be treated just like any other wayspot - check and reviewed. There will not be any special treatment.

The Pokemon Go Community Ambassador Program has given you a lot of extra pokestops in Parque da Jaqueira so that this area has more going on than most players get to experience. Hoping to get this repeated is not impossible, but expecting it unrealistic.

A month in review is not a long time and does suggest they are stuck. If this is longer than reviews normally take, one possibility might be reviewers being unable to confirm the wayspots exist and skipping the reviewers. It is up to the submitter to provide the evidence to help the reviewers.

3

Actually, that area under construction is not part of the park. In the image I provided, I deliberately left those Gyms out to show the actual park boundaries. It tapers off to exclude that orange area, which is completely outside the park. You can clearly see this if you look at the fence surrounding it.
And of course Parque da Jaqueira has much more activity. It is currently impossible to play at Parque Eduardo Campos because there is absolutely nothing there yet.
While the park was inaugurated in December and fully completed in April, we are missing out on all the major events in the game. Our city has 1.5 million residents. As wonderful as our local Community Ambassador is, they live in the North Zone (Zona Norte) and exclusively organize events there. Meanwhile, this park in the South Zone (Zona Sul) could be a thriving, safe haven for players to gather. Instead, we are stuck in bureaucratic limbo when we really should be getting some support to speed up the process.

4

The video for Parque Eduardo Campos looks cool. It looks like a great place to hang out.

I see that you have submitted a lot of Wayspots. Once approved, that will potentially add more Pokestops to the park.

Even then, you should not expect it to look like Parque da Jaqueira. The reason Parque da Jaqueira has so many Pokestops and Gyms is because there are 26 Community Ambassador Pokestops, Gyms and Power Spots. These get added outside of the normal game density rules.

Pokemon Community Ambassador program and their special game items are not part of the scope of the Wayfarer program or Wayfarer staff.

5

Do you review nominations yourself? If you do, you can earn upgrades to apply to these nominations to send them to a wider review pool. You will also realize that it is difficult to trust that nominations exist where they are pinned, when satellite view does not show the completed park.

Some things you can do to help future submissions be decided faster is to point out ways for reviewers to confirm the locations. Maybe they can see them in street view. Maybe you can find a map of the park to link.

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This is the latest google aerial image of the park - streetview is newer. This is a newly developed area as you have said. You cannot reasonably expect something that has only existed for three months to immediately get filled with pokestops and gyms.

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But it could be at least a bit better than how it currently is. Even if it does not have the same amount of Pokéstops and Gyms, we could at least have wild spawns, right? I mean… Wild spawns at least…

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That is something I’ll definitely do!
I’ll try to find a drone image from above like it’s a second Google maps view to add to the requests, thanks!

9

with web submit, you can use multiple supporting photos, too.

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And I have to say, if it weren’t for our ambassador, this city, by this point, would be in a completely different state. Because I have absolutely nothing bad to say about him. He breathed life into this city, organizing events in an unimaginable way. If I could, I would write five paragraphs here praising him. Because if today we have an active Pokémon Go community in the city, even though it’s mostly in the north zone, while the south zone has a more restricted group because we don’t have a fenced-in park like this one, which makes the hunt much safer here in the region, but if there is activity and major events, just like this Go Fest was, it’s because of him, specifically him. Because if it weren’t for him, Go Fest wouldn’t have been the magic that it was, because it was absolutely perfect. I think we have one of the best ambassadors in the world in this regard.

11

To get the spawns, it helps to have pokestops and gyms. It also helps when a space is used. You should find spawns naturally increasing - I suspect that the more players using an area, the more spawns there are, but players don’t tend to use areas without pokestops and gyms :slight_smile:

Using the web submit method that @cyndiepooh pointed out will make it easier to provide visual
evidence that something exists at the location you have submitted the wayspot. You can’t add extra photos after submitting, but if you have lots of submission slots, you could look through your pending submissions and consider redoing them if you can see that reviewers will struggle with them (Withdraw and resubmit)

12

So, my dear friend, that is exactly it. Finally. That is exactly the main point. If the area does not even have wild spawns, on top of having no PokéStops and gyms, there is no activity. If there is no activity, it creates a vicious cycle where there will also be no system recognition or perhaps prioritization for the area to develop. It might even develop, I admit, but it will take much more time. Much more. My goal was more to bring visibility to a problem so that, in some way, it would get a kickstart. And I think in that regard the goal has been achieved. I am going to do exactly what our colleague said and add more photos through the browser and not the game itself. And let’s see if we can break this vicious cycle, where there are no stops or gyms because there are no wild spawns to attract players, and in turn, what increases the amount of wild spawns is the number of PokéStops and gyms.

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Check into Open Street Maps and see how the area is marked there. Pokemon Go seems to use this tool for spawn information. They use years old information, and updates are infrequent, so best get that updated as soon as possible. I don’t use Open Street Maps, so can’t help with editing that.

14

There is no vicious cycle :slight_smile:

You simply have a new area that can have more wayspots, which is also an area where people will want to play. The solution is simply to get more wayspots accepted - everything else will follow from that.

15

Sounds like a fun wayfarer project to build a new park from scratch! I did this in my area when wayfarer launched in Go. The park only had a handful of things around the edges, and 1 play area, and I was able to add a large number of new stops over time :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: it’s now an incredible place to play.

I would recommend looking at how the S2 cell grid works for your park so you can plan where to pin larger items like play areas and sports fields to get the most stops. And if queues are slow, highly recommend reviewing to both help the queue move, and also earn upgrades to push your nominations out more widely.