Today, with the launch of The Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore, it became easier to answer these questions – and more importantly, to begin to develop solutions to park shortages. ParkScore is the most comprehensive park rating system ever developed, combining advanced GIS analysis and data collected by the Center for City Park Excellence.

San Francisco came out on top of the ParkScore rankings, edging out Sacramento, Boston, and New York. Credit: Flickr user Phillie Casablanca.

The Trust for Public Land analyzed the park systems of the nation’s forty most populous cities, and ranked them according to three categories:

Acreage: a city’s acreage score is based equally on two data points – median park size and the percentage of the city’s area covered by parkland.

Access: a city’s access score is based on the percentage of the city’s population that lives within a half-mile walk of the nearest park, taking into consideration the layout of the road network and barriers to access such as railroads, freeways, and fences.

Service & Investment: a city’s service & investment  score is based equally on two data points – total spending per resident and playgrounds per 10,000 residents.

Park access in Dallas, which placed 21st overall in ParkScore. Areas without walkable park access are either red (very high need) or orange (high need), depending on three demographic factors: density, income, and presence of children. Interactive maps for all cities are available at the ParkScore website.

Combined, these factors provide a fair and comprehensive basis for comparison within cities, between cities, and over time. ParkScore is designed to help city residents quantify their need for more and better parks, and for city governments to craft effective and efficient plans to create excellent park systems.

There is a wealth of information in ParkScore that we will delve into in much greater detail in the coming months. For now, here’s an overview of the best urban park systems and those most in need of improvement. Visit the ParkScore website for all the in-depth rankings, maps, and information.

East view of the Mall from the Washington Monument. Credit: Coleen Gentles

Eighteen months ago, the National Park Service (NPS) in conjunction with the Trust for the National Mall, created the 2010 National Mall Plan, a vision for the kinds of resource conditions, visitor experiences, and facilities that would best fulfill the purpose of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Stretching west from the U.S. Capitol to the Potomac River, and north from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial to Constitution Avenue, the National Mall is primarily under the jurisdiction of NPS, but multiple governmental agencies and organizations also have ownership over lands and roads within and adjacent to the National Mall.  These other entities, the Architect of the Capitol, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Department of Agriculture, the General Services Administration, the District of Columbia, and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, all provided critical input into the National Mall Plan.

A nine-month National Mall Design Competition targeted three focal sites for redesign, and in April, the Trust for the National Mall chose four finalists for each area from a pool of 58 entries.  Those finalists were on display for public comment, until a panel of eight judges consisting of landscape architects, academics, architects, critics, and historians, selected the three winning teams last week.  The three sites to be redesigned are:

• Constitution Gardens, a natural area adjacent to the Reflecting Pool and World War II Memorial, which has suffered from poor drainage and underuse.
• Washington Monument Grounds, including Sylvan Theater, an underutilized performance space near the National Monument.
• Union Square, located directly west of the Capitol building, home to the Capitol reflecting pool and Grant memorial.

And the winners of the design competition are:

• Rogers Marvel Architects & Peter Walker and Partners for Constitution Gardens near the Lincoln Memorial, whose designs include an overhauled water basin for model boats and ice skating, and a new restaurant pavilion to overlook the park.
• OLIN & Weiss/Manfredi for the Washington Monument grounds, whose designs include a wooded canopy for Sylvan Theater, and a new pavilion with a cafe for the walkway to the nearby Tidal Basin.
• Gustafson Guthrie Nichol & Davis Brody Bond for Union Square Union Square and the Capitol Reflecting Pool, whose designs remove the reflecting pond that lies parallel to the Capitol and adds a pond at the nearest grass panel on the Mall.  (This design plan will be forwarded to the Architect of the Capitol.)

The Trust for the National Mall, NPS’s not-for-profit fundraising and advocacy partner, will conduct a $350 million fundraising campaign over seven years to support the capital costs of revitalizing these three spaces.  The Trust will begin fundraising for its two projects, while the Architect of the Capitol will handle fundraising for Union Square.  The entire National Mall Plan should cost about $700 million.  The next phase of the competition will identify and evaluate costs ahead of implementation, with roughly half of the costs coming from the private sector.

West View from Washington Monument, with World War II Memorial in foreground, Lincoln Memorial in back, and Constitution Gardens on right. Credit: Coleen Gentles

The National Mall Plan aims to better accommodate the high level and diversity of use the National Mall receives.  With 25 million visitors each year, the National Mall is one of the most highly trafficked parks in the country.  As a result, it requires resilient design and a variety of visitor-serving facilities.

To this end, the National Mall Plan proposed enhanced circulation and access for pedestrians, a goal the NPS had already begun to support through park-wide investments in new signage.  It also proposed new performance space, food and beverage concessions, shaded seating areas, restrooms, and recreational opportunities and facilities.

The Plan recommends specific uses for each of the design competition sites, which are reflected in the designs of the finalists.  It prioritized improved food venues and enhanced pedestrian access at Constitution Gardens.  The redesigned Sylvan Theater will better accommodate local events, and additional facilities will offer food service, retail, and other visitor services.

Union Square was planned as a First Amendment demonstration and event space; however, in December, jurisdiction over the site was transferred from the National Park Service to the Architect of the Capitol due to security concerns.  It remains unclear whether the proposed plans and winning design for this location will be implemented.

The Mall’s scale and formality, combined with large-scale federal/institutional and roadway adjacencies, create a space that is most successful at showcasing monuments and memorials, and perhaps less effective at welcoming visitors and providing community space.  It provides few dedicated places to stop and linger: to have a picnic, play recreational sports (the Mall is particularly ill-configured for the kickball games it so often hosts), enjoy a cultural program, or rest between site-seeing destinations.

If properly executed with quality design, active programming, and able stewardship, the rehabilitation of these spaces will provide new destinations with food, seating, programming, and signature design.  These amenities can anchor and sustain the strong tourist economy and provide authentic and desirable gathering places for local and regional residents.  This constitutes a unique and untapped opportunity to integrated community spaces and national icons at the heart of the city.

This will be the Mall’s first major renovation in nearly 40 years.  Groundbreaking for the first project will take place by 2014, with the first ribbon-cutting expected by 2016, the Mall’s centennial anniversary.

View renderings of the winning designs here.

Madison Square Park Conservancy, Madison Square Park, New York

Jaume Plensa’s Echo sculpture in Madison Square Park, New York. Credit: Tom Giebel (Flickr Feed)

Madison Square Park was officially dedicated in 1847. In 1870, soon after the creation of New York City’s first Department of Public Parks, the 6.2-acre park was re-landscaped with well-defined walkways and open lawns to capture both formal and pastoral elements. In the late 19^th century, the neighborhood surrounding Madison Square Park was one of Manhattan’s most elite, flourishing as a bustling commercial district with fashionable residences and hotels.  But by the 1990’s, despite its prominent location and cultural significance, the park had fallen into disrepair with cracked and broken asphalt, eroded lawns, decaying monuments, visual clutter, insufficient lighting, and confusing signage.

In response, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation asked the City Parks Foundation to take the lead in organizing a revitalization campaign in 1999.  The “Campaign for the New Madison Square Park” led to restoration in 2000-2001 and the creation of a “Friends” group in 2002.

The renovation restored elements of the original 19^th century design, and the park now features lush green lawns, colorful flowering shrubs and plants, World’s Fair-style benches, a restored fountain, a contemporary reflecting pool, new gateways, new paving, and ornamental lighting.  Another major accomplishment included the reinstallation of the 1920s-era Eternal Light Star (commemorating the end of World War I) with financial support from ConEdison, New York City Parks and Recreation, and Sentry Lighting.  Additional amenities in the park include six statues/monuments, a playground (with a Playground Associate during the summer), Star of Hope, a temporary outdoor art installation, and the Shake Shack food stand.

The “Friends” group was renamed the Madison Square Park Conservancy in 2004 to move from general advocacy for the park to more long-term care and maintenance. In addition to its annual budget, the Conservancy has raised over $10 million for capital improvements and for a permanent fund to support park maintenance.  (Any surplus revenues from operations go into the capital budget.)  Donor companies have included Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, New York Life Insurance Company, Credit Suisse First Boston, Rudin Management, and Union Square Hospitality Group.

The Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, financed and built by the Conservancy for $750,000 in 2004 (and operated by a third-party) was an instant success and is one of the highlights of current restaurant concessions in New York City parks.  It usually features long lines of customers waiting for frozen custard, shakes, concretes, Shack burgers, Chicago hotdogs, and “shroom burgers.”

A dense mix of office buildings, retail establishments and restaurants border Madison Square Park.  Restoration has also spurred new residential development, including approximately twenty luxury condominium buildings in the surrounding area over the past five years, with two more coming in 2012-13.  New hotels have also opened in the neighborhood.

A Business Improvement District surrounds Madison Square Park Conservancy, but there is no formal connection to the Conservancy.  There is more business retail than residential development surrounding the park, so visitation counts fluctuate throughout the year.  After two surveys of users last summer, the Conservancy estimates 1.25 million visitors during peak months (May through September).

The Civic Center Conservancy, Civic Center, Denver

Colorado tribute to Veterans Monument and the City and County Building in Civic Center Park, Denver. Credit: Cliff (Flickr Feed)

Civic Center Park fills the grand space between Denver’s two most important civic buildings – Denver’s City and County Building and the Colorado State Capitol. Accented with tree groves, its structures include the Greek Theater and its Colonnade of Civic Benefactors, the Voorhies Memorial and adjacent “Seal Pond,” a historic balustrade wall and historic Carnegie Library turned municipal building. With the Pioneer Monument nearby, the park itself contains three bronze sculptures: “Broncho Buster,” “On the War Trail,” and the Columbus Monument. It has an illustrious history, including designs by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., but in recent decades the 12-acre park was largely empty, lacking amenities, programming, and connectivity. With the City’s operational and capital budgets shrinking, there was a backlog of deferred maintenance.

In response, a group of private citizens passionate about revitalizing Civic Center Park – including Elaine Asarch (founding Conservancy board chair and current board member), Dennis Humphries (architect and recent chair of Denver’s Landmark Preservation Commission), Chris Frampton (current board chair and local real estate developer) and others – founded the Civic Center Conservancy in 2004. “We wanted to reintroduce people to this historic urban oasis and engage the community in its future,” said Conservancy Executive Director Lindy Eichenbaum Lent, who came to the job from the Denver Mayor’s office in 2009.

The Conservancy partners with the City and County of Denver to restore, enhance, and activate Civic Center Park, with efforts focusing on four key areas:  advocacy around design/infrastructure/policy; events and programming to activate the space; marketing and public engagement; and fundraising for capital improvements/activities/initiatives to support Civic Center’s ongoing revitalization.

Some major accomplishments of the Conservancy include advocating for Civic Center’s inclusion in the 2007 Better Denver bond initiative (which voters approved, resulting in almost $9.5 million for restoration), and providing input into the 2009 design guidelines for the park.

In its quest to elevate and sustain Civic Center as the vibrant cultural and community hub its founders envisioned more than a century ago, the Conservancy hosts a variety of arts and cultural programs, including the twice-weekly summer Civic Center EATS Outdoor Café (with 20+ food trucks, bistro-style seating and live music), an annual Independence Eve Celebration (featuring a free Colorado Symphony concert and a fireworks/light display that attracted more than 100,000 people in its second year and was broadcast live throughout Colorado), and a new Bike-In Movie Series on summer evenings. With these new programs, combined with longstanding annual festivals and general traffic resulting from the surrounding cultural and civic attractions, the park attracts over a million visitors a year.

These obvious truths have implications for public health, but recognizing the problem does not automatically offer simple solutions for mayors, city councils, park directors, or urban planners. Creating new parks in a crowded, built-out city is a slow, arduous, and often expensive task. It can be done—it is being done in almost every city in the country—but it is not the only way to bring people and green space together. Much can be done outside the park fence, in the neighborhood, where the normal processes of urban construction, rehabilitation, and change occur at a faster pace.

Sometimes easiest to fix is the problem of accessibility. Some parks are underused simply because they are too hard to get to. Users may be blocked by steps, fences, walls, cliffs, railroad tracks, highways, waterways, or an unbroachable row of private residences. Some parks require a long jaunt to the other side just to gain entry. Others are literally visible from a home but unreachable by children without a chaperoned car ride.

Park access might be improved by constructing a ramp or pedestrian bridge in a key location, or by installing a traffic signal on a busy road. While such fixes might cost from $50,000 to several million dollars, that is a small price compared with what is routinely spent on highways and parking lots and would be more than offset by savings in health costs resulting from more frequent park use.

People are more likely to use parks that are close to places where they spend time: restaurants, shopping districts, libraries, gyms, and other meeting areas. In some cases parks can be sited close to such destinations. In other instances businesses and attractions can be allowed or encouraged to locate near existing parks. A mistaken Victorian sensibility sometimes holds that the “purity” of parks should not intersect with the “untidiness” of commercial areas. In fact, people like that proximity. They welcome the opportunity to buy picnic food or an ice cream cone to eat on a nearby park lawn or bench—and if that sojourn can be combined with a brisk walk, jog, or basketball game, so much the better.

Or, a large downtown destination park might be considered for a bike station, like the one offered at Chicago’s Millennium Park. There, for a membership fee, park users have access to one of 300 secure bike spaces along with lockers, showers, and a repair shop. For tourists, there are rental bikes. Completed in 2004 for $3.2 million, the facility today is so popular that it has a waiting list.

Best of all is the provision of plenty of housing near parks. This is an old concept with a new name: park-oriented development. From Lincoln Park in Chicago to Riverside Park in New York to Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, the parks surrounded by lots of people are the ones that can provide the greatest total amount of health benefits. But often U.S. cities are zoned so as to prevent that outcome. Some communities are averse to the look of taller buildings around parks; others may even think that the fewer people in the park, the better.

If denser development is not possible, park use can also be increased by improving accessibility through walking, bicycling, and public transit. (Automobile access is less desirable because it requires acres of parking and eliminates the health benefit of walking and cycling.) Ample park entrances, great sidewalks, and bike lanes on connecting streets; pedestrian-friendly perimeter roads with plenty of traffic signals and crosswalks; and easy grades and smooth trails for elderly and wheelchair-bound visitors: all these contribute to great access. In large parks, high-use destinations such as playgrounds, basketball courts, and swimming pools should be sited near the edge of the park, not deep in the interior.

"Catchment Circle." The area of a circle grows by the square of the radius. If a park is easy to reach by bicycle, 16 times as many people can get to it in the same amount of time it takes to walk from a mile away. Illustration: Helene Sherlock.

Bicycle access extends the “reach” of a park 16-fold over walking. This is because cycling is about four times faster than walking, and the “catchment circle”—the surrounding area from which park users can be drawn—increases by the square of the distance from the park (see diagram on right). Thus, improving bicycle access is an important way to get more people to the park (not to mention the health benefit from pedaling there and back).

Good public transit improves park access even more. It is no coincidence that eight of the ten most heavily used parks in American cities offer subway or light-rail access within one-quarter mile, and all of them have bus service that comes even closer. In New York City major parks almost invariably have subway service. Other parks well served by subway and rail include Boston Common, Forest Park in St. Louis, Millennium and Grant parks in Chicago, and the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

As new transit lines are built, it’s sometimes possible to align them with parks. Seattle’s new streetcar line terminates at 12-acre South Lake Union Park. The city is working to increase housing and commercial density in this near-downtown location, and the alignment of park and transit is particularly helpful in reaching the goal. “Especially at lunchtime,” says former Seattle Parks Foundation Director Karen Daubert, “you can see the crowds walking off the streetcar right into South Lake Union Park. It’s the perfect connection to this waterfront refuge.”

For larger parks, internal transit can also promote access. At 130-acre Washington Park in Portland, Oregon—home to the popular Rose and Japanese gardens—special Tri-Met buses not only connect to the nearest light-rail station but also make eight stops inside the park. The service is inexpensive (or free with a transfer), runs every 15 minutes, and is aggressively advertised by the park department, Tri-Met‚ and event promoters. The route gets about 500 riders per day on weekends and 420 on weekdays. From a health perspective, taking transit results in far more walking than accessing the park in a private automobile.

Here are a few examples of the ideas presented above:

Piedmont Park, Atlanta. Health-promoting park systems appreciate density. Credit: Ashley Szczepanski.

In recent years, Atlanta’s Piedmont Park has shown a marked growth in users. There are several reasons for this, including policies that have reduced auto traffic in the park, the rehabilitation of facilities, better signage‚ and additional programming. But also significant is the fact that more people now live in areas bordering or near the park. Unlike many other urban places, the Piedmont Park neighborhood is densifying, and the park itself is serving as a significant lure for development.

Between 2000 and 2009 alone, the City of Atlanta approved building permits for 16 new multi-unit rental and condominium apartment buildings within a half-mile of Piedmont Park, and the neighborhood gained nearly 100 single-family homes. All told, the park neighborhood gained 1,880 units, or about 4,500 people, over the decade. These people are the heaviest users of the park facilities. They compound their health benefit by often walking or running to the park rather than driving there.

“Piedmont Park is one of the single biggest assets we have in the neighborhood,” said Ginny Kennedy, director of urban design for the Midtown Alliance. “In everything we do, we encourage and try to reinforce access and visibility to the park.”

Perhaps most significant, the Midtown Alliance—whose goal is to make midtown Atlanta an “exceptional place to live, work, learn, shop, and play”—spearheaded the area’s 2001 rezoning. The changes enabled many more people to live and work near Piedmont Park and benefit from its health-promoting effects.

Midtown Greenway, Minneapolis. Health-promoting park systems locate parks and trails so as to benefit from other uses. Credit: Freewheel Bike Center.

Since its opening in 2000, Minneapolis’s Midtown Greenway has quickly become one of the best-used bike routes in the country, largely because it combines a park-like experience with true functionality. The mostly below-grade former rail line is quiet to ride, bordered with green, and unbroken by street intersections. Yet its almost six-mile length parallels a major commercial street only one block away, offering easy access to grocery and hardware stores, restaurants, video rentals‚ and pharmacies. “Fast, safe, and pleasant” is how Midtown Greenway Coalition Director Tim Springer describes the linear park—but it is also convenient. Instead of returning home from a bike ride and climbing into the car for errands, many Midtown Greenway users are able to multitask. The greenway leads them to their needs, and their needs lead them to the greenway.

The city has consciously helped. When a massive old Sears warehouse was converted into the Midtown Global Market, officials built a connection from the greenway and also landed a federal loan to create the Freewheel Bike Center‚ which provides storage, repair, rentals‚ and sales. Next door is a coffee shop. Nearby, the new Sheraton hotel has an outdoor patio overlooking the trail (and directs guests to rent bikes from Freewheel). The greenway also intersects with transit along the Hiawatha light-rail line, giving some Minneapolitans a car-free commute with morning and evening exercise to boot. All in all, the collocation of the park with diverse destinations has made this not only a greenway, but a “healthway.”

Want to know more ways urban park systems can best promote health and wellness?  Read this publication from The Trust for Public Land.

Park conservancies are an outgrowth of private citizens wanting to do more for public spaces than government can do on its own.  Gaining steam across the U.S. over the past three decades, conservancies of varying sizes and models have been established out of concern for parks that government entities had neither the capacity nor the resources to maintain, program or enhance adequately.

This is part one of a three-part series looking at the histories of six different city park conservancies.

Buffalo Bayou Partnership, Buffalo Bayou, Houston

The Common in Sesquicentennial Park, Buffalo Bayou, Houston. Credit: Jim (Flickr Feed).

In 1976, after a lawsuit forced Houston to begin a massive upgrade of its sewer system, the water quality slowly began to improve in the city’s streams (known locally as bayous). By 1984 Buffalo Bayou, the city’s main waterway, was clean enough for visionaries to begin thinking of it as a valuable natural resource complete with parks and other waterfront opportunities – and as a node for downtown economic development.  Under the leadership of Mayor Kathy Whitmire, a blue-ribbon panel spent two years producing the Buffalo Bayou Task Force Report which outlined a concept for redevelopment as well as a proposal to create a non-profit entity to implement the plan.

Mayor Whitmire then exerted further leadership by stimulating an implementing entity, the Buffalo Bayou Partnership (BBP), a group of civic, environmental, business and governmental representatives, to transform and revitalize 10 miles of Buffalo Bayou into a park system “that joins land and water to become the green heart of Houston.”

The Partnership’s jurisdiction follows Buffalo Bayou from Shepherd Drive to the Ship Channel Turning Basin.  It includes approximately 250 acres of parkland on either side of the waterway.

The Partnership was created in 1986 to work on a major park project for Houston’s 150^th birthday, but for its first nine years it operated as only a volunteer group.  In 1995, staff was hired and more projects were initiated, including acquiring easements for a hike and bike trail. The Partnership didn’t intend to purchase large tracts of property but that approach was thwarted when the majority of landowners rejected selling or donating easements in favor of full fee simple sales.  BBP had to rethink its strategy and undertake major fundraising.  Since its inception, the Partnership has raised and leveraged nearly $150 million for bayou enhancements, including $23 million for Sesquicentennial Park, $4 million for Allen’s Landing, $12 million for Sabine Promenade, and $20 million for land acquisition.  Being a property owner has allowed the Partnership to be a significant player in development decisions along the bayou.

Currently, BBP is leading a $55-million park improvement project to transform a 158-acre, 2.3-mile-long city park just west of downtown.  The vision is to develop a beautiful, natural green space with vistas of the downtown skyline, user-friendly access points and recreational areas.  A strong public-private partnership, including Houston’s Kinder Foundation, Buffalo Bayou Partnership, City of Houston and Harris County Flood Control District has been formed to carry out the ambitious project.  A Kinder Foundation catalyst gift of $30 million will fund basic park improvements. The Harris County Flood Control District is sponsoring a $5 million flood reduction/eco-system restoration project.  The remaining $20 million are being sought by the BBP.  Once completed in 2015, the park will be maintained and operated by BBP.

Detroit 300 Conservancy, Campus Martius Park, Detroit

Campus Martius Park, Detroit. Credit: Detroit 300 Conservancy.

A bright spot in the challenging economic situation in Detroit is Campus Martius, the new center-city park that attracts two million visitors a year and has helped stimulate almost $1 billion in nearby redevelopment. The entity operating Campus Martius is the Detroit 300 Conservancy.

Campus Martius (which means “Field of Mars” or “military ground”) had existed since 1788 but had not had a glorious history, eventually being asphalted over for streetcars and automobiles. In the late 1990s, when Mayor Dennis Archer was casting about for a suitably major project to serve as the centerpiece of the city’s tricentennial celebration in 2001, he selected it for re-creation. Detroit 300, Inc., the non-profit organization leading the celebration, adopted the Campus Martius reconstruction as part of its Legacy Project, and the park opened in 2004.

Only 2.5 acres in size, Campus Martius is a hub of activity with two retractable stages; the Woodward Fountain; waterwalls; monuments; lawns and gardens; a seasonal ice skating rink; a bistro café; seating for more than 3,000 people on walls, benches, steps, and movable chairs; and the “point of origin,” a medallion embedded in the stone walkway that sits over an early 1800s survey marker of Detroit’s coordinate system. Campus Martius plays host to over 200 concerts, events, and festivals each year, including the Motown Winter Blast and the Detroit Jazz Festival, each of which draws more than 100,000 people.  The innovative programming, pedestrian accessibility, strong connection to the surrounding neighborhoods, and availability of public transit make Campus Martius a distinct destination and a landmark downtown public space for residents, workers and visitors alike.

Designing and constructing the park cost $20 million. (There was no cost for land acquisition, and all roadway infrastructure expenses were covered by the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation.)  Funding came largely from corporations and the philanthropic community led by The Kresge Foundation.

The major reinvestment around Campus Martius includes street level cafés, retail shops and the new one-million-square-foot world headquarters of the Compuware Corp. (which told the city it would not have relocated if the park had not been built). Other companies are following suit: in 2010, Quicken Loans moved 3,000 employees into the area and has purchased over 2 million square feet of adjacent historic high-rise buildings. Additionally, GalaxE.Solutions announced it would spend $4.2 million to restore part of a nearby building and create 500 jobs over the next four years.  Other investments in the area include the restoration of the historic Westin Book Cadillac Hotel and Residences, new restaurants, a CVS Pharmacy, and residential lofts and condos on Woodward Avenue.

“Campus Martius is a huge economic driver of development,” said Detroit 300 Conservancy President Robert Gregory. “The park has transformed a desolate area into a vibrant, active and year-round space with residential, retail, and restaurants along its borders.  It’s a great place to be socially, right in the core of the business community.”

In 2010, Campus Martius received the inaugural Urban Land Institute Amanda Burden Urban Open Space Award and was also named one of the “Top Ten Great Public Spaces” by the American Planning Association.

In every city there are hundreds of acres of streets and roadways potentially available as park and recreational facilities. While parks make up about 20 percent of New York City’s total area, streets make up about 30 percent. In Chicago, 26 percent of the land is devoted to streets compared to only 8 percent for parks. Converting some street capacity for recreational activity–either full-time or part-time–is a underrealized opportunity.

Atlanta closed three miles of roads in Piedmont Park in 1983. The park now attracts more than four million visitors a year. Credit: Piedmont Park Conservancy.

Wresting space away from automobiles is never easy, but if any opportunities constitute “low-hanging fruit” they are the hundreds of miles of roads within city parks. Naturally, all large parks need some streets for access to facilities as well as to allow motorists to get from one side to the other, but most city parks have a surfeit of auto corridors. The National Mall in Washington, D.C., formerly had four parallel drives running for about a mile between the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument. Not only was the green Mall thoroughly intersected every few dozen yards by asphalt, but the drives themselves were permanently clogged with tourists (and government workers) looking for parking spaces. In 1976, just in time for the national bicentennial celebration, Assistant Interior Secretary Nathaniel Reed decided to abolish the two central roads and replace them with pebble-covered walkways reminiscent of those in Paris parks. The aggregate amount of space–about 4 acres–was relatively small, but the impact on park usability, ambience, safety, and air quality was monumental. Similarly, in Atlanta, following a raft of crime and nuisance issues that were negatively affecting Piedmont Park, Parks Commissioner Ted Mastroianni and Mayor Maynard Jackson announced test weekend road closures. Despite protests, the results led to dramatic increases in other uses of the park, such as running, walking, and cycling, and, in 1983 the closures were made total and permanent. (Piedmont Park is today the most car-free major city park in the United States.)

Other examples abound (see below table). San Francisco’s longtime Sunday closure of 2 miles of John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park was extended in 2007 to Saturdays as well. The program, which makes available one of the only hard, flat, safe areas for children in the entire hilly city, according to the San Francisco Bike Coalition, effectively added about 12 acres of parkland without any acquisition or construction costs. Park usage during car-free hours is about double that of when cars are around. Even cities that are thoroughly oriented to cars are finding an enthusiastic constituent response to park road closures. Kansas City, Missouri, bans automobiles on beautiful Cliff Drive within Kessler Park from Friday noon until Monday morning during the summer. San Antonio permanently closed Brackenridge Park’s Wilderness Road and Parfun Way in 2004. And Los Angeles has permanently closed 10 miles of Via del Valle and Mt. Hollywood Drive in Griffith Park to protect wildlife, reduce the risk of fire, and provide a safe, quiet venue for walkers, runners, and cyclists.

It’s not just large parks. Many small parks which were disfigured by roads can be re-greened, too. New York City’s Washington Square, famous as a Greenwich Village movie set and also for street theater, rallies, and as a de facto quad for New York University, had been bisected by Fifth Avenue until 1964. Ironically, a proposal to expand that avenue into a freeway led to the uproar that made the park entirely car-free–and a much more successful space. In Washington, D.C., Thomas Circle had gradually been sliced down in size almost to the diameter of the statue of General George Henry Thomas and his horse, with traffic consuming the entire area. In 2007 the National Park Service and the District of Columbia reinstituted the original circle and rebuilt pedestrian walkways to allow people to use it. Earlier, a similar project re-unified 2.5-acre Logan Circle and helped ignite a renewal of its neighborhood.

In 2007, Houston got itself a park addition by trading away a street. It happened in Hidalgo Park, a venerable 12-acre greenspace in the city’s hard-bitten East End, near the Turning Basin on Buffalo Bayou where Houston started. When a small sliver between the park and the bayou came up for sale, the city secured federal funds to buy it through an obscure federal program called Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation. The sliver had two drawbacks: It was separated from Hildago Park by a street, plus there is a federal requirement that coastal funds be matched one-to-one by non-federal dollars. Park Director Joe Turner took a tour of the site and had a “Eureka!” moment–why not close the street, have it transferred from the Public Works Department to Parks and Recreation, and use its land value as the local match for the federal grant. The politics and geography happened to be perfect: There were no houses on the street, it had no through access, and the one industrial user at the far end had another plant entrance it could use. And since no one before Joe Turner had ever offered to use the value of a street as a local match, the federal bureaucrats were surprised enough to say yes. (They’ve since rethought it and forbidden the maneuver, but the Houston handshake was grandfathered in.) Today Hidalgo Park is a much-improved 14 acres with unbroken access to the channel and views of the stupendous ships coming up to the Turning Basin.

Closing and beautifying streets that are not in parks is more difficult. Many cities, including Boston, Santa Monica, and New Orleans have turned one of their key downtown streets into a car-free zone, although in nearly all cases the motivation is less for casual, free recreation and clean air than for upscale shopping and dining. Portland, Oregon, however, did pull off a famous and extraordinarily successful “road-to-park” conversion. It involved the 1974 elimination of four-lane Harbor Drive, an expressway along the Willamette River that had been rendered redundant by a new interstate highway. Most cities would have given in to the strenuous remonstrances of their traffic engineers and kept highways along both sides of their river, but under the leadership of Mayor (later Governor) Tom McCall the old roadway was dug up and replaced by 37-acre Waterfront Park. The park opened in 1978, exactly three-quarters of a century after the concept was first proposed by planner and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., in his plan for Portland. Built for about $8.5 million, the park in its very first year was credited with stimulating an estimated $385 million in retail, office, hotel, and residential development in the vicinity. Later named after the visionary governor, Tom McCall Waterfront Park has since become Portland’s focal point for all kinds of activities and festivals.

Baltimore's 14-mile Gwynns Falls Trail used about six miles of underused roads along a scenic stream valley that are now popular with bikers, runners and other non-car users. Credit: Maria Carola.

Some cities, including Baltimore, El Paso, Chicago, New York, and Miami, have recently begun experimenting with the idea of once-a-summer or once-a-month road closures on regular city streets, following the example of the “ciclovias” that have become immensely popular in Bogota, Colombia; Quito, Ecuador; and several other Latin American cities. Called such things as “Summer Streets,” “Scenic Sundays,” “Walk and Roll,” and “Bike Days Miami,” the events often take place on cities’ most park-like streets (Park Avenue in New York, Scenic Drive in El Paso) and bring forth tens of thousands of people in an electrifying, community atmosphere in a domain normally dominated by cars. (The events are often initially organized and promoted by bicyclists but soon become so congested that they evolve into street festivals.)

Cities can permanently convert streets into park-like “Woonerfs,” a Dutch concept for neighborhood ways where pedestrians, bicyclists, and children are given priority over cars. (The name translates to “Home Zone,” which is what it is called in Great Britain.) While the concept has yet to fully establish itself in the United States, variants have surfaced. On downtown Asheville, North Carolina’s, Wall Street, the city installed brick pavers, bollards, benches, and lights so intertwined that they become an obstacle course that greatly reduces automobile speeds. Seattle is doing similar traffic calming in certain neighborhoods and is also adding numerous pervious areas and water-capturing features to add ecological benefits to these “street-parks.”

Forecasts suggest cities will continue to grow over the next several decades, as empty-nesting baby-boomers retire to cities and the Millennials, who are known to prefer urban living, move into their first homes.

All of this is good news for city parks.  As American cities continue to grow, so will the demand for high-quality parkland accessible to urban neighborhoods.  Density creates park demand, and parks attract density.  Perhaps for these reasons, notable downtown residential growth in recent years has occurred in tandem with major investments in urban parks, from Cincinnati to Denver to Houston.

Central Park, New York
Credit: NYC.gov

While there are certain park functions for which density creates challenges, such as habitat preservation, park environments are largely improved by dense and diverse activity and use.  Urban observer and advocate Jane Jacobs was the first to suggest that parks are vacant spaces enlivened by the presence of urban activity.  Over the subsequent decades, the broader community of urbanists has continued to pursue this axiom, as well as its counterpart, that density requires the presence of open space. In his recent book, Walking Home, Ken Greenberg writes:

Greater density paradoxically goes hand in hand with the preservation of nature, giving urban dwellers easier access to the natural world than is the case for their suburban counterparts. Great urban parks like Central Park and Prospect Park in New York, the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, Chapultepec Park in Mexico City, and the Toronto Islands have historically been possible because of the larger populations nearby that have built and maintained them.

In addition to creating demand for parks, density also provides opportunities for parks to sustain themselves financially.  Park advocates and philanthropists, many of whom live or work near their parks, support park-friendly policies and contribute funding and volunteer hours. Dense activity also provides a market for fee-based park programs, from concessions to special events to carousels and skating rinks. These program elements in turn contribute to parks’ success, providing community amenities and reasons to travel to and linger in public space.

Residential density and open space have proved mutually supportive over time. Central Park and the growth of Manhattan are perhaps the best-known example of this trend.  Developed in the 1860s when the population of New York City was almost entirely concentrated downtown, the Central Park was located in public land (acquired through eminent domain) in a 3 by 47 block section of the City’s newly laid out grid.

The park’s designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, suggested that the residential development Central Park would attract would create enormous economic value to the city, creating a rationale for public investment. According to The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan 1811-2011:

Despite the lack of uptown residents, Olmsted anticipated that when the street grid eventually filled out, property near the park would increase in value, and he defended the park’s size on these grounds. When the construction of the grid was complete, Olmsted expected that an ‘artificial wall, twice as high as the Great Wall of China, composed of urban buildings’ would circle the park…

More recently, Santa Fe Railyard Park and Plaza was created in response to demand from the community to preserve the historic railyard site near the downtown core. Between 2000 and 2010, Santa Fe’s population grew by 8%, and this growth increased demand for open spaces for recreation and public gathering.

The Master Planning process for the site, which involved over 6,000 members of the local community, preserved 12 of the site’s 50 acres as a destination downtown park with an immensely popular farmers’ market. The remainder of the site was divided between cultural and community uses, commercial art galleries, office space, retail and restaurant venues, live-work units, and purely residential units. This vibrant mix of uses generates diverse activity and creates a natural constituency to support the new park.

Note: The Greatest Grid exhibit is on view at the Museum of the City of New York through July, 2012.

Sunset on the pier. Photo Credit: Julienne Schaer

The resulting master plan mixes active and passive recreation in a sustainably designed site that incorporates vestiges of its industrial past and capitalizes on the singular vistas to the harbor, bridge and Lower Manhattan skyline. With a 50-yard-line view of nearly every architectural marvel and monument New York City has to offer, it’s no wonder the park averages 60,000 visitors per summer weekend, even though its first phase of development won’t be fully completed until 2013.

Beyond the views, the park has also drawn favorable attention for its lush plantings and innovative playgrounds. The park is further distinguished by its self-sustaining financial model, which uses carefully selected development sites within the boundaries to generate revenues for its ongoing maintenance.

At this summer’s Greater & Greener: Re-Imagining Parks for 21st Century Cities, the international urban parks conference being presented by the City Parks Alliancefrom July 14 to 17, park professionals, environmental advocates and attendees from all over the world will get to see all this first hand, with several featured events taking place at Brooklyn Bridge Park to show off its various aspects, including a guided tour with planners and designers, and an outdoor screening of the documentary “Olmsted and America’s Urban Parks.”

Jane's Carousel.
Photo Credit: Julienne Schaer

New York City Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe has stated a particular fondness for Brooklyn Bridge Park, referring to it as a “true 21st Century park model,” and praises the partnership behind it. “It [the public-private model] doesn’t work in all applications, but particularly in the case of Brooklyn Bridge Park [and Hudson River Park on Manhattan's west side], the properties were formerly shipping piers, so they used to be income-producing. So when the city and state no longer needed them, the land could have been just sold off to the highest bidder. But we didn’t.  We have parks instead…. Hundreds of millions of dollars in public investment [was spent] to build fabulous waterfront parks. And when you see a beautiful park, you also see growth in property values, and then that spurs more new development.”

To learn more about Brooklyn Bridge Park, visit www.brooklynbridgeparknyc.org

For more information on how to register for Greater & Greener: Re-Imagining Parks for 21^st Century Cities, please visit www.urbanparks2012.org.

That being the case, there may not be a better way to combine leisure with learning then the Hudson River Greenway Bike Tour that the Commissioner will lead, and which promises to be a highlight for a lucky few early registrants for the International Urban Parks Conference, Greater & Greener: Re-Imagining Parks for 21st Century Cities, being held from July 14 to 17 in New York City.

The three-hour tour on the afternoon of Sunday July 15 will traverse the longest continuous car-free bicycle and pedestrian path in New York City: the Hudson River Greenway, an uninterrupted 11-mile route between Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, and north beyond the George Washington Bridge. The trail passes through Hudson River Park, Riverside Park South, Riverside Park and Fort Washington Park.

New York City’s historical legacy as a pioneer of urban park innovation in America will be both on visual display — and on display in the accompanying ruminations of the Commissioner. Bicycles and helmets will be provided and the stunningly scenic and informative ride will be at a relaxed pace with, Benepe promises, about a half dozen or so stops. “Hopefully the weather will cooperate, and there’s usually a breeze along the river and many places to stop, talk, get water and get a bite along the way.”

Sunblock and cool clothing are good ideas. Perhaps only an excessive fear of helmet hair should be a deterrence.

“I haven’t figured out the exact route yet that we’ll take,” the Commissioner says, “but we’ll see Battery Park and Battery Park City,  Hudson River Park and the new park that connects Hudson River Park and Riverside.  We’ll see some new parks on the Upper West Side and Harlem…we’ll pass by the state park on top of the sewage treatment plant in West Harlem, and [maybe] will see some of the improvements [underway] to Fort Washington Park.  If we have the energy, we can go as far north as the Little Red Lighthouse — the iconic structure underneath the great bridge, the George Washington Bridge. You know, the story as told in the children’s book is more or less true. The river didn’t come to life and we don’t know if it was exactly called back into action on one dark and stormy night — but we do know it was saved from demolition and restored.”

Hudson River Greenway, New York

Benepe points out that the necklace of parks and the continuous bike paths that now adjoin them, “the opening up of the formerly industrial waterfront for recreational use,” is felt by many to be one of the city’s two or three greatest urban planning accomplishments of recent decades. “I’m a recreational cyclist. I get out and ride on weekends,” he says, “and you can now do a continuous ride without ever having to cross a street, from the Battery [on the south end of the island] all the way up to Dyckman Street [in the Inwood neighborhood of most northern Manhattan] because all the missing links have now been filled in. That’s a distance of almost the entire length of Manhattan.”

This has all occurred during the biggest period of park investment, construction and expansion for New York City since the 1930s. “The waterfront parks and re-purposing the post-industrial and post-maritime landscape for public recreation has been a major focus in particular,” Benepe explains. “This is being done around the world and has been a particular emphasis here in New York.” As a signature program of the Bloomberg mayoralty, Benepe estimates the city has invested in excess of $1 billion dollars on waterfront parks alone, $3 billion on parks in total over the last 10 years. “Just look at Brooklyn Bridge Park and Hudson River Park — those alone are half a billion. Plus [the development] along the Bronx River, the Harlem River, the East River waterfront park south of South Street Seaport…so I think a billion is probably accurate. Certainly no one else in the United States is doing this much.

“New York City has become both a lab and a bellwether for urban park design, development, construction and management [with] all permutations of creative public-private partnerships,” he explains. Conference attendees will be able to see first hand “many examples of terrific landscape design by talented architects, and more varied models of park management in one place then you can find in 10 other cities.”

Presented by City Parks Alliance, Greater & Greener: Re-Imagining Parks for 21st Century Cities will feature over 100 tours and workshops.  Space for the Commissioner’s bike tour is very limited, so be sure to sign up soon.

Please visit www.urbanparks2012.org for full program and registration details.

A sneak peek at the High Line Phase III. This view shows the future 10th Avenue Spur. Credit: Brian Kusler (Flickr Feed)

New York’s High Line has been generating buzz since before its 2009 opening, and the overwhelming success of its first two phases (there were 3,000,000 visitors in 2011) have kept the public anxiously awaiting the last and final phase.  Held up by land ownership issues and fundraising nightmares in a struggling economy, Friends of the High Line scored an amazing win last fall with a record-setting $20 million donation from the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, the single largest donation ever made to a New York City park.  The generous gift helped build up the park’s endowment and also paid for the design of the last section.

Phase III of the High Line, the last half-mile segment of the abandoned rail line, differs from the first two phases in that it is being constructed simultaneously with Hudson Yards, the 12 million square foot office and residential complex.  The park will be fully built out on the majority of the eastern section of the historic railway, and an interim walkway will be built over the western section.  The park will wrap about the redevelopment and will feature either amphitheater-style seating or an open gathering space with plantings, a spiraling “Guggenheim-esque” staircase providing access to the street level, Play Beams for children, walking paths, and the ever popular “peel-up benches” that are in the first two phases.

The estimated total cost of capital construction on the High Line at the rail yards is $90 million, with $38 million already raised by the conservancy.  A zoning text amendment is already in the works to set a framework and cover approximately 30% of the estimated total cost.  Construction is expected to begin this year and finish by the end of 2013, with a full public opening in spring 2014.

The Bloomingdale Trail and Park. This rendering shows a separate pedestrian zone and bike path.

Unlike the High Line, Chicago’s Bloomingdale Trail and Park will be a multi-use trail as well as a destination linear park.  Steadily moving ahead despite fundraising challenges, the design plan for the entire 2.7-mile elevated rail trail was released last week, and included addressing the conflicting needs between speeding cyclists and slow-moving pedestrians.  While the High Line bans dogs, skateboarders, cyclists, and runners, the Bloomingdale Trail and Park will be an arterial connecting four different neighborhoods and providing alternative modes of transportation for commuters.

In addition to its urban views, the Bloomingdale Trail and Park would keep its retaining walls as a linear gallery with colorful murals and gritty graffiti.  There will be eight access points to the trail, spaced roughly a half-mile apart, and five of the entryways will be from ground-level parks.  Instead of modernistic stairways, berms would form gentle upward slopes from two of the parks, another two parks would have entries as ramps, and the last park would be an L-shaped berm at the trail’s western end.  The multi-use path would be 14 feet wide and have gentle curves and dips to serve multiple purposes, including ever-changing views for pedestrians and speed bumps for cyclists.  Trees and shrubs would also serve triple duty by providing shade, habitat for birds, and a separation zone for the pedestrians and bike path.  In fact, Chicagoans are so concerned about this separation (to avoid a repeat of the pedestrian-cyclist disasters that plague the Lakefront Trail), that there is a proposal for 1.5 miles of pedestrian pathways that would run parallel to the multi-use trail.  Of course there still needs to be room for the benches, art, and lighting on the 30-foot-wide trail.

So far more than $37 million has been secured in federal anti-congestion and air-quality funding for the project’s $46 million first phase, with the remaining $7 million to come from the private sector (Exelon Foundation is said to be giving $5 million, their largest single grant, while Boeing and CNA are each donating $1 million) and $2 million from the Chicago Park District.  Construction is expected to begin as early as next year, with the park opening in phases in fall 2014.

The High Line may only be 1.45 miles long, but it offers New York residents and visitors a completely different park perspective, a tranquil escape from the hustle and bustle of urban living.  The Bloomingdale Trail and Park, twice as long as the High Line, will be Chicago’s first elevated park and the longest elevated park anywhere in the world, and will offer its residents and visitors a connection to different neighborhoods and transportation opportunities toward and out of downtown.