NRPA is hosting an online town hall with leaders from parks & recreation from around the country on managing and dealing with proposed and actual budget cuts. A description from NRPA’s policy shop on the event: What happens when your budget gets cut by 20%? 50%? Or even more? Do you lay off staff? Can [...]
Filed under: funding | Tagged: budgets | 1 Comment »
From Kaid Benfield, we learn of a new study furthering the evidence that access to urban parks and green space results in healthier children. (We posted last month on a similar study from Britain, and TPL’s publication the Health Benefits of Parks collects more research into one summary.) What makes this new study interesting is [...]
Filed under: health, planning | 3 Comments »
Houston is making further efforts to create parks and better facilities for biking and pedestrians along the Buffalo Bayou, a main waterway flowing through the city – with the support of a Mayor who believes in their economic benefits. In one project, the city has increased access to parks in park poor neighborhoods and connections [...]
Filed under: economics, planning | Tagged: houston | Leave a Comment »
Seattle is working to build a trail along its Lake Union, that will increase connectivity between parks and neighborhoods a stone’s throw from downtown. The effort aims to complete a loop around the lake. An article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer describes that when complete, the result will be the six-mile Cheshiahud Lake Union Loop [...]
Filed under: planning, transportation | Tagged: bikes, seattle | 2 Comments »
Some news in parks from the week: County donates $1 million for Detroit river walk improvements (Detroit News) Will soccer fields make this Minneapolis park safer or unsafer? (TC Daily Planet) Atlanta lays off 97 workers; parks take brunt (Atl Journal Constitution) David Brooks: Federal investment should focus on creating town centers. (NY Times)
Filed under: uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Interesting article here on parks and public spaces in Abu Dhabi, a city of almost one million in the United Arab Emirates. Basically, the city was designed around the car, and now the most popular public spaces are not the parks but so-called “leftover spaces” that appear where people are but weren’t really meant to [...]
Filed under: planning | Tagged: connectivity, international | Leave a Comment »
TPL’s Land & People magazine is out and has a nice feature article on the role of playgrounds in child growth and development. Here’s an excerpt: Well-designed parks and playgrounds can mimic opportunities for exploration and risk-taking in nature, says landscape architect Jennifer Worth of TPL’s Parks for People-Bay Area initiative. Playground designers are moving [...]
Filed under: facilities, planning | Tagged: child development, playgrounds | 3 Comments »
To all the northern cities out there, there’s the question of how to make best use of parks during the winter months – or how to provide good fun winter activities. Ice rinks for general skating, figure skating hockey and broom ball are one such way. They run from the scraped away rink atop Minneapolis’ [...]
Filed under: facilities, programming | Tagged: ice rinks | 3 Comments »
We’re following up on our earlier post on the street grid and parks. This time we’re taking a closer look at how physical and perceived barriers can prevent access to parks – using TPL’s GIS mapping of park service areas to illustrate. There are two different approaches that TPL currently uses to determine how well [...]
Filed under: planning | Tagged: accessibility, gis | 5 Comments »
