Comments on: Improving Access to Parks

By: Walkability Shown to Improve Home Values « City Parks Blog

Walkability Shown to Improve Home Values « City Parks Blog — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:02:56 +0000

[...] to pay a premium on properties within short distance of parks, independent of other factors. We featured one tool cities can use to determine where to locate walkable [...]

By: Brooke

Brooke — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:01:26 +0000

We are developing urban park planning guidelines for Montgomery County, MD and one of the guidelines we considering recommending is for urban areas is to have a park or a park-like open space within walking distance of all residences and businesses. We want to use a “real world” analysis and wonder if you can direct us to the software.
On the question of what is the right distance, (1/8 mile, 1/4 mile, etc), would it be productive to analyze some park systems in cities where we know people choose to live there because of good access to parks, and then extropolate that to see what we think is the right distance?

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:39:18 +0000

Thanks, Woody!

That’s a great point on what should be considered a park. A natural area isn’t the same as a soccer field or a playground. And its not practical, for example, that every resident be within walking distance of a swimming pool. We’ll try to get into that issue with further posts.

Ben – thanks for mentioning the varying forms of how one could describe access. From what we gather here on park agencies, most don’t have any type of standard. (see this article, http://www.tpl.org/tier3_cd.cfm?content_item_id=20545&folder_id=3208)

By: Woody Duncan

Woody Duncan — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:28:32 +0000

Cool blog! Way to go you all…nicely done….;)

Most people will walk at least a mile to a nearby park – and the highest caloric expenditure across the board is most often in getting to the park. Once a majority of people get to a park – they most often park it! So I wonder if in hopes of getting people in better shape…parks should be located over a half a mile – but less than a mile away from a majority of residences. That way they are still close enough to walk – but far enough away to get exercise.

One question I have is – do you all consider a park just a park? It seems like distant and access should be based on “specific types” of parks and the surrounding demographic spaces.

In your map example above – a park is just a park…:)

~Woody

By: ben from KaBOOM!

ben from KaBOOM! — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:28:39 +0000

When we think about playspaces at KaBOOM!, it’s in relation to quality, quantity and access, and this type of analysis would be extremely beneficial to our work and the communities we serve.

I’d love to hear what others set as a definition for access (quarter mile, 4 blocks, brisk 10 min walk, etc.) and if the ‘Network Analyst’ approach is replicable (and at what cost)

Great stuff.