Mixing uses in parks has its challenges and requires good design, adequate signage, and clear rules. Trail use, for example, can create conflict between walkers, skaters, and fast cyclists. Many cities appropriately prohibit fast cycling on trails shared by pedestrians. On the other hand, hard pedaling and fast running provide more health benefit than casual spinning and jogging. Other than putting bikes on roadways, the only safe solution is to provide parallel treadways for fast and slow users—and to clearly mark the allowed uses by location or time of day. Then, too, the alternate trails need occasional enforcement.

Even if a park system offers varied spaces for physical activity, not everyone will know how to take advantage of them. Some users need to learn new skills, some need encouragement, some need an exercise regimen, some need social support. Even with all this, many require other assistance—partners, equipment, referees, timekeepers, music, safety paraphernalia, and more. In a word, programming. Good programming can increase park use many times over, make activity more enjoyable, and increase its benefits to health and fitness.

Credit: Phil Schermeister.

Traditional park  programming consists of league sports, exercise routines, children’s camps, and oldies-but-goodies such as ballroom dancing. More recent additions have been Jazzercise, tai kwon do, tai chi, rock climbing, and bicycle “roadeos.” But in response to changing technologies and new immigrant cultures, innovative ideas come along all the time. In Minneapolis, the park department offers open gym periods to play sepak takraw, a remarkable kick volleyball game brought to this country by Hmong immigrants from Cambodia. Raleigh, North Carolina, uses the reward of a free pedometer for diabetic children who sign up for special athletic programming that includes nutrition instruction. Seattle has launched monthly Women of the World swims at two pools at the request of Muslim women whose faith bars them from recreational activities with men. Women of all faiths are welcome, and the sessions are privately funded. Overseen by female lifeguards and held at pools without street-facing windows, the swims provide some women with exercise they otherwise would not get.

Of course, programming has a health impact only if people know about it, and that requires promotion and marketing through advertisements, program pamphlets, TV and radio public service announcements, flyers, email‚ and social networking services such as Twitter. Outreach is difficult in times of tight budgets, but creative park departments attempt to find private sector collaborators in fields such as health, media, banking, and public utilities to help them spread the word.

Finally, every new program and every new facility needs to be evaluated, particularly when dealing with health, since this approach is standard in the medical community. It is not enough to assume that an activity has a positive impact. The only real way to know is through monitoring and before-and-after measurement. Sometimes the research can be done by the park agency itself. But when this is prohibitively time-consuming or expensive, it may be possible to partner with a local university, college‚ or high school whose student researchers can observe usership and even measure such health indicators as body mass index, heart rate‚ or muscle strength.

Credit: Susan Lapides.

When it comes to programming, Cincinnati—the nation’s 56th-largest city—packs a wallop. On a per-capita basis, Cincinnati ranks in the U.S. top ten for its number of ball diamonds, recreation centers, swimming pools, tennis courts, basketball courts‚ and golf courses. More important for public health, the Cincinnati Recreation Commission’s programs attracted over 3.2 million participant-visits in 2009, some 691,000 of which were visits by youth. All this in a city of barely 330,000 residents—giving Cincinnati the highest per-capita recreation participation rate of all cities reporting information to The Trust for Public Land.

Among the hundreds of programs offered are youth and adult league sports ranging from soccer and basketball to track and field and kickball; senior programs such as golf, swimming, tennis‚ and the Senior Olympics; programs for the disabled, including wheelchair football and basketball; and such offerings for youth as afterschool programs, summer day camps, and bike outings. In addition to the formal programming, most of the recreation commission’s 29 recreation centers offer fitness centers and open gym hours. Residents can use the recreation centers and the city’s 26 pools for a yearly membership fee of $25, or $10 for seniors and youth.

The Cincinnati Park Board—a landowning and land management agency separate from the recreation commission—plays a part, too, by working to make Cincinnatians feel safer in their parks. In Burnet Woods, a place with a mixed reputation, the board thinned out invasive vegetation and installed a disc golf course through the forest. The sport, which is growing in popularity throughout the country, drew so many more people into Burnet Woods that the park became safer and more appealing even for visitors not there for the game.

Credit: Rich Reid.

Fitness zones are easy-to-use, accessible outdoor gyms designed to promote general  health within a park experience, creating a supportive social context for getting fit. Using only a gravity- and-resistance weight system, fitness zones require no electricity and employ their users’ body weight to engage different muscle groups. The exercise equipment is durable, vandal- and weather-resistant, and appropriate for people 13 years of age and older of all fitness levels.

Working under the leadership of The Trust for Public Land and with funding from health insurer Kaiser Permanente and the MetLife Foundation, the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Department have installed 30 fitness zones across the region, including six in existing Los Angeles city parks.

Fitness zones are often placed in areas of high need, including communities with high rates of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. Some are located adjacent to playgrounds to encourage adults to exercise while keeping an eye on children. Others are placed near administrative offices to reduce safety worries.

The El Cariso Regional Park in Sylmar is one example of a successful fitness zone. It includes nine pieces of easy-to-use outdoor gym equipment along with bilingual health and fitness information panels.

“The bottom line is that fitness zones attract new users to parks,” says Dr. Deborah Cohen, a researcher with the RAND Corporation who carried out an exhaustive before- and-after study of the facilities in 12 parks. “We also know that fitness zones are used throughout the day, that fitness zone users increase the amount they exercise, and that they use the parks more frequently than other park users.”

2011 City Park Facts

Despite aggregate increases in acreage and facilities across the U.S., many city park departments are struggling with funding shortages. Operational spending shrank by 0.6 percent overall, with close to half of cities experiencing cuts.  Full-time employee counts fell by 3.9 percent, a loss of 935 jobs nationwide. The impact on seasonal jobs was particularly severe, with a decrease of 11.04 percent, or more than 8,000 jobs. Overall though, the rate of employment cuts has slowed since the previous year, which witnessed a 7 percent drop in employment.

The 22,493 city parks profiled in the report serve 62 million urban residents with a wide array of facilities, including 419 public golf courses, 569 dog parks, 9,633 ball diamonds, 11,678 playgrounds, and 14,415 basketball hoops.

Budgets grew slightly overall, but not enough to sustain jobs or overcome increasing – and often deferred – maintenance costs. Peter Harnik, director of the Center for City Park Excellence, noted that “cities are still saddled with a reported $5.8 billion in deferred repairs and improvements.” That figure is only slightly smaller than the total parks expenditure of the 92 cities that provided financial data for FY 2009, which equaled $6.1 billion.

The enthusiasm for great parks among city dwellers hasn’t suffered. Nearly half the primary park and recreation agencies reported more than 1 million visits during the year, and 14 boasted more than 10 million annual visits. Topping the list were New York (123 million visits), San Diego (72.3 million), and Chicago (50 million). Park directors welcome this popularity, though heavy usership can also be a burden, with 1,261 parks categorized as “overused.”

Madison, Wisconsin has the most parks per capita, with 12.7 per 10,000 residents, followed by Cincinnati, St. Petersburg, Anchorage, and Buffalo. Madison also has more playgrounds per capita than any other city, with seven for every 10,000 residents. The next five are Virginia Beach, Corpus Christi, Cincinnati, and Norfolk.

For the set of cities which provided data in both FY 2009 and FY 2010, the only major facility type to decrease in number was swimming pools, dropping from 1,337 to 1,227.

There are almost 20,000 community garden plots in the parks of the 100 largest cities. Despite being two of the coldest cities, St. Paul, Minnesota and Madison, Wisconsin were tops in the number of garden sites per 10,000 residents, with 35.6 and 32.9, respectively.

Spread-out cities such as Anchorage and Albuquerque usually offer the most park acreage per resident. Older, denser cities that still manage to offer residents large swaths of open space include Minneapolis (13.3 acres per 1,000 residents), Oakland, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. But operating quality parkland in dense cities does not come cheap – Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., and Seattle each spent $200 or more per resident, compared to a median of $84.

Read the entire 2011 City Park Facts report here.

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Windsor, a town of 27,000 almost 30 miles north of San Pablo Bay, is the site of one of the newest central parks in the Bay Area. Interestingly, the Windsor Town Green grew not from the needs of a park-starved citizenry, but from a community’s desire to reclaim a largely abandoned downtown, provide a public gathering place – and, not least, compete with nearby towns for Sonoma County wine country tourists.

Even before Windsor incorporated in 1992, there was momentum behind the idea of transforming the underutilized downtown area into a public plaza. That vision, first articulated by Sonoma County in 1986, remained in place after incorporation and served as the foundation for turning the downtown, once a wine processing and railroad hub, into a true walkable civic center anchored by shops and residences.

A crowd gathers on a summer night in Windsor's Town Green. Photo courtesy Windsor Department of Parks and Recreation.

Windsor decided to develop the Town Green, as well as its new municipal center, on the grounds of a vacant junior high school campus, thus fortunately eliminating any opposition from neighbors.  Owned by the Sonoma County Office of Education, the 21-acre site was broken into two parts and sold — 7.5 acres of buildings to the town (for a new town hall), and 13.5 acres to a private developer, subject to a town planning process.

In 1999, after the exact location of the Town Green had been selected, the Windsor Redevelopment Agency purchased the 4.84-acre park site for $1,142,670, which included more than $450,000 in matching grants from the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation Open Space District. The remaining funds came from the agency’s capital fund, which is replenished by the collection of the tax increment in the growing area. Two years earlier, the Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District had acquired another small part of the property to protect a stand of historic oaks. The remainder of the land has been (or is in the process of being) redeveloped for housing and retail around the park.

Finding a private developer willing to gamble on a unique project in an area of traditional subdivisions was not easy, even with the redevelopment agency spending $2,900,000 to build the park, widen sidewalks, bury utilities, and improve the surrounding streets.

“The town had been promoting the concept of mixed use for a long time,” says Senior Planner Rick Jones, “but no one was willing to take the risk” on a new urbanist development. Finally, in 2001, a developer named Orrin Thiessen took the plunge. In addition to the park, Windsor provided Thiessen with some other incentives. He was given the right to develop his three properties at higher densities than code allowed, and also to encroach on sidewalks for restaurants and commercial use. He was also given an expedited planning review process and reduced parking requirements. By now, almost 14 acres of colorful three-story townhomes with commercial space below have been built.

The Town Green itself features a stage, covered pavilions, a playground, a plum tree orchard, a fountain, reflecting pools, and a historical time-line walk. (The historic oak grove is directly adjacent.) The park, as well as the adjacent restaurants and businesses, are supplied with a Wi-Fi network. In 2008, a community member offered to help underwrite the expansion of the stage, which is now outfitted with a sound system, used for the numerous programs held on the green. Programming is varied and popular, and all events are free. The Summer Nights on the Green concert series is expected to attract 40,000 attendees in 2011. Other regular summer events include the Farmers Market, Tuesday Night Kid Movies and the outdoor Shakespeare Theater on the Green.

From Fitness Zones to the Medical Mile: How Urban Park Systems Can Best Promote Health and Wellness.

We’ve written before about the need for urban parks to do more for public health. A new report by the Center for City Park Excellence, From Fitness Zones to the Medical Mile: How Urban Park Systems Can Best Promote Health and Wellness, looks at how individual parks and entire city park systems help people be healthier and more fit.  The report details more than 75 innovative features and programs, including 14 case studies, that maximize a park’s ability to promote physical activity and improve mental health.

Today’s post, a reprint of an op-ed that appeared in yesterday’s The Philadelphia Daily News, serves as an overview of that report.  We will highlight specific best practices in a series of future posts.

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When it comes to health and fitness, the U.S. is in crisis.

Forty-nine percent of Americans get less than the minimum recommended amount of physical activity, and 36 percent of U.S. adults engage in no leisure-time physical activity at all. These people are not all obese, of course, but lack of exercise is certainly a risk factor for being overweight, and we are the most overweight nation on earth. On average, an obese American racks up nearly $1,500 more a year in health-care costs than one of normal weight, for a national total of $147 billion in direct medical expenses.

It’s well-established that physical activity helps prevent obesity and related medical problems. And there’s mounting evidence that providing places for urbanites to exercise (parks, primarily) can improve health.

But the mere presence of a park doesn’t guarantee a healthier population. Thousands of acres of city parks are not, for one reason or another, serving the purpose of helping people become healthier. With a growing clamor from doctors, parents, overweight people and even those who just want to strengthen muscles, lungs, and hearts, it’s time for parks to be more than just pretty places. Individual parks, and entire city park systems, should be designed and programmed to help people be more fit.

The overriding principle for a park system to foster mental and physical well-being is that it must be well-used by the public. But many parks don’t make it easy to exercise. Some are too small, some too big and confusing, some too far away, some too frightening, or too unattractive and unimaginative. Some are mainly athletic complexes for special users – baseball, soccer or tennis players as far as the eye can see. Others are primarily natural areas with occasional trails, too boring for many competitive people.

In the starkest terms, most parks simply don’t offer enough choices for activity. The more facilities and spaces layered onto a park, the more use it can get from people with different interests and skills. A golf course can serve a couple of hundred people a day; add a running track around it and it can serve thousands. (The one encircling Memorial Park Golf Course in Houston hosts 10,000 runners a day and is said to be the most heavily used exercise trail in the country.)

A playground is a nice spot for kids to practice motor skills, but adding a fitness zone of adult exercise equipment lets grown-ups get into shape while watching the kids. A softball field is a great place for 18 players, while unstructured space nearby means twosomes and threesomes can kick a ball, toss a Frisbee, play catch, throw sticks to a dog, and much more. Forests are wonderful sanctuaries for wildlife and the occasional intrepid bushwhacker; woods with manicured trails, an occasional bench and grassy openings can attract many more users.

Even if parks didn’t provide all the urban benefits they are known for – improving the environment, attracting tourists, building community, enhancing property values – they’d still be critically important because of their potential contribution to public health and wellness. But platitudes about healthy parks aren’t enough. If park agencies are to truly justify all the land and tax money they use, they must actually serve their health functions as powerfully as do doctors, hospitals and health agencies.

In the mid-19th century, Frederick Law Olmsted and others called for the creation of parks as refuges from the unhealthful air and stresses of urban life. Today’s urban air quality may be improved, but Americans have found other ways to put their bodies and spirits in jeopardy. Parks continue to be among the best places to offer solace and solutions to public-health problems.

New York City's no smoking sign. Credit: Susan Sermoneta (Flickr Feed).

In early February, the New York City Council (36-12) approved, and Mayor Bloomberg signed, a ban on smoking in the city’s parks, beaches, pedestrian malls and plazas. Effective as of May 23^rd, the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation can now impose $50 fines on rule breakers. Given what we know about the health value of parks, addressing the issue of smoking bans in parks is salient. What restrictions may a city or municipality place on park users in order to achieve some health or environmental value?

As residents of New York know, administrative code already bans smoking in bars, the subway, retail stores, and several other indoor and outdoor locations. But the most recent amendment, as codified in New York City Administrative Code § 17-503(c)(3), expands the scope of the ban to “any park or other property under the jurisdiction of the department of parks and recreation.” Exceptions to this ban extend to sidewalks immediately adjoining parks and public places, pedestrian routes through any park strip, median or mall adjacent to traffic, parking lots, and theatrical productions.

Two common lines of reasoning characterize the smoking ban debate. Arguments against bans on smoking in public parks often reference the overreach of government into the lives of private citizens, whereby the governmental entity unreasonably infringes upon an individual’s right to undertake a particular behavior. Arguments for bans invoke the government’s role to promote public goods, such as health, and to ensure non-smokers are free of a harmful nuisance. The following overview addresses the legal and policy issues implicating both sides of the argument.

Examples of Outdoor Bans

The New York ordinance is not new; towns and cities across the country have enacted outdoor smoking bans. There are 1,313 states, commonwealths, territories, cities, and counties with a law that restricts smoking in public outdoor places such as parks and beaches.[1] Levels of stringency vary from town to town, but the rationale underlying the bans are generally the same – there are environmental and health issues so important as to justify prohibiting individuals from lighting up in a public outdoor area.

Santa Monica, California no smoking sign. Credit: Flickr Feed.

An ordinance in Bellaire, Texas, a suburb of Houston, forbids smoking within the city’s public parks, in part to prevent children from exposure to smoke.[2] The ban, however, does not prohibit smoking on the public streets or sidewalks.[3] Santa Monica, California, passed an ordinance restricting smoking on its public beaches to address the environmental issue of cigarette butts littering the beaches and water.[4] In fact, the ordinance comprehensively prohibits smoking in a variety of outdoor places: public parks, public beaches, anywhere on city pier except in designated areas, outdoor service areas, or within two feet of any entrance, exit or window of a public building.[5] Both cities may impose fines on violators of the ban.

In 2006, the city of Calabasas, a small community northwest of Los Angeles, enacted one of the toughest anti-smoking ordinances in the nation.[6] It characterized its anti-smoking efforts as an attempt to limit exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS), as opposed to an outright ban on the act of smoking itself. The ordinance prohibits smoking in all public places where an individual may be exposed to secondhand smoke, including parks, sidewalks, outdoor cafés, bus stops, and athletic fields.[7] Fines for violation are imposed up to $500 with a misdemeanor criminal classification.

The New York ordinance allows for some smoking outlets if you are at a public park. Like Bellaire park users, visitors to New York parks are still able to light up on sidewalks bordering the outside of the park.

A Right to Smoke?

A man smoking in a Chicago plaza. Credit: Mary Anne Enriquez (Flickr Feed).

A ban on smoking in a public park raises an interesting question: are there particular rights that ensure that adults may freely undertake a legal act using a legal substance or item in a taxpayer-funded public space that may have a marginal detrimental health impact on other people using that space? Think of drinking a bottle of wine with your special lady friend as you lounge about on a picnic blanket (or grasping onto a flask of whiskey for dear life as you curl up underneath a bench to shield yourself from the brutal chill of a relentless winter wind). What about lighting fireworks? Yelling into an oversized bullhorn to warn of an impending apocalypse? Swinging a metal bat to smash a tightly wound baseball?

A court will invalidate law that, either on its face or in its application, violates a constitutional right. The Constitution does not explicitly reference a right to smoke, so any claim to a right to smoke will fall under the auspices of another constitutional right.[8] Here are just a few examples of avenues that right to smoke advocates have pursued to challenge smoking bans.[9]

Fourteenth Amendment. The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that a state government will not treat similar groups of people differently without good reason. However, there are classes of people based on race, alienage, national origin and gender that receive greater protection against discriminatory government acts than do other classes – say, women under 5’2” or bald men. Courts review a law that applies to a protected class under a strict or intermediate level of scrutiny. Strict scrutiny requires a state or local law to be necessary to achieve a compelling government interest.

The Supreme Court has rejected the notion that a classification is suspect when the scope of the class is based on voluntary action.[10] Since smoking is a discretionary act, it does not merit greater scrutiny for equal protection purposes. A smoking ban will be constitutionally valid if there is a reasonably conceivable set of facts that provides a rational basis for the classification, such as the promotion of public health.[11]

First Amendment. Conduct alone, such as smoking, is not generally considered speech and thus not afforded First Amendment protections. Smoking bans not targeted at suppressing speech content, and not favoring a particular group, are deemed “content-neutral.”[12] For content-neutral regulations to be valid, they need only be substantially related to an important governmental interest. For example, the federal court in NYC C.L.A.S.H., Inc. v. City of New York upheld the smoking ban in restaurants and bars, finding that smoking in such venues is not a sufficiently expressive conduct to merit First Amendment protection and that the ban was a valid, content-neutral regulation with an important health interest.[13]

In the 2005 case, Roark & Hardee LP v. City of Austin, a federal district court held that an Austin ordinance prohibiting smoking in enclosed public places did not violate bar owners’ First Amendment right to be free from compelled speech.[14] The city “compelled” bar owners to take “necessary steps” to stop patrons from smoking in order to protect the city’s population from the effects of SHS. Since the ordinance regulated conduct and not actual speech, and the owners were free to express views on the ordinance, the city was within its bounds to regulate smoking.

As long as a smoking ban is rationally related to a legitimate government goal, the Constitution will not stand in the way of its passage.[15] Smoking bans have been uniformly upheld against a variety of challenges to their validity.[16] Courts embrace such legislation because of the time-honored acknowledgement that protecting the public’s health is one of the most essential functions of government.[17]

Legislative Rationale

When smoking bans are challenged on constitutional grounds, legislators must justify the ban by demonstrating a legitimate government interest. A frequent argument is that public health concerns justify infringements on smoking.[18] But the effect of public outdoor exposure to SHS is not conclusive. On the one hand, proximity to smoking, even outdoors, may lead to SHS exposure. A recent Stanford University study indicates that tobacco smoke within three feet of a smoker outside is comparable to inside levels. But, as Michael Siegel stated in a New York Times Op-Ed, there is no evidence demonstrating outdoor exposure causes substantial health damage.

Legislators may also cite “annoyance costs” related to smoking, such as cost of cleaning up cigarette butts.[19] Right to clean air advocates often compare smoking to nuisances regulated by the state, such as noisome factories.[20] There is also an argument for treating smoking like sex—as a legal activity relegated to the private sphere.

Public Support

Attitudes towards smoking bans vary depending on locale. Since 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics has conducted a nationwide survey asking participants if and where in outdoor parks smoking should be allowed.[21] The latest results, from a 2008 survey of nearly 1,500 people, showed that roughly 20 percent of respondents thought smoking should be banned outright in parks, 39 percent thought it should be permitted, and 42 thought it should be banned in some areas of parks. This differs slightly from the 2000 survey, in which support for some form of restriction was roughly 60 percent (although, at that time, 40 percent supported an outright ban). The same survey also addressed support of smoking bans in Mississippi. It indicated that over 50 percent of Mississippians do not believe smoking should be banned in parks.

Attitudes do differ. A 2006 survey showed that 70 percent of over 1,500 randomly selected Minnesota respondents favored tobacco-free park policies in parks.[22] Supporting rationale for such policies included reducing litter (71%) and reducing youth opportunities to smoke (65%). Prior to the New York’s outdoor ban, the Coalition for a Smoke-Free City commissioned a 2009 Zogby poll that surveyed 1,002 residents and showed that 65 percent supported a smoking ban in parks and beaches.

Smoking and Public Parks

A woman smokes in a park. Credit: Ripton Scott (Flickr Feed).

Cities and municipalities must weigh the benefits of placing restrictions on potentially harmful behavior to help cultivate healthy outdoor environments against the rights of residents in a public venue. For example, part of the context for the New York park smoking ban was a 2009 New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene study showing that a greater proportion of New York adults, despite lower levels of smoking, are exposed to secondhand smoke than are adults nationally.[23] While there are rights issues involved with smoking bans, such restrictions generally fall within the ambit of legitimate governmental action. And, ideally, enactments to restrict smoking in a park will be borne out of people’s support for the restriction in a publicly funded venue.

The question then is whether the government action achieves its objective. If New York is attempting to improve air quality for park users, pushing smokers to the sidewalks outside parks may not accomplish that goal. It seems that where a park is quite small, such an outlet renders the ban moot because smoke can still get up into park users’ faces. And whether a park is large or small, or one smokes inside or outside the bounds of the park, the impact on the overall ambient air quality of the park would presumably be the same. However, as we learn more about the impact of secondhand smoke on individuals in an outdoor area, it may be the case that the ban, in its current state, is justified.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 percent of Americans are fully sedentary. They are not all obese, of course, but lack of exercise is certainly a risk factor for being overweight. On average, an obese American racks up nearly $1,500 more per year in health care costs than an American of normal weight, for a national total of $147 billion in direct medical expenses.

Urban park facilities are a resource to help city-dwellers be active. As Jason Cissell, administrator of community relations of Louisville Metro Parks puts it, “we’re the largest gym in the city, and we’re free!” But the system only works if people know about it. A 2002 study for the American Journal of Preventative Medicine showed that community-wide fitness campaigns can help, succeeding in encouraging, on average, 4.2 percent of residents to begin engaging in regular physical activity.

If even one in ten of those newly active people transitions from obesity to a healthy weight, medical costs would fall by $6.30 for each man, woman and child in the city per year. In Washington, D.C., with 600,000 residents, that translates to $3.7 million – an amount that dwarfs what is spent on park marketing in Washington.  In fact, that is more than the country’s largest park marketing budget, the $2.7 million spent by the Chicago Park District (for a city of 2.8 million people).  Compared to expected benefits, every city park marketing effort in the country is underfunded.

San Antonio's marketing effort set the standard for cost efficiency. Credit: San Antonio Parks and Recreation Department.

In July 2009, San Antonio, Texas launched a marketing campaign that must have set a record for frugality. The city-wide, multi-media “Get Active. Get Fit. Step Up to Recreation” campaign cost only $28,000, thanks to the use of public service placement rather than paid advertising and the use of city officials and local athletes instead of paid actors. To stir excitement the department used prizes as rewards, handing out free “Step Up to Recreation” water bottles and tee shirts. But since there’s no money to count users, it’s not known if the campaign actually increased park use or fitness.

Louisville's parks and health departments cooperated to raise awareness of the city's "best parks for exercise." Credit: Louisville Metro Parks.

The truth is that marketing parks is too difficult, too expensive and too important to be left only to park and recreation agencies.  The effort needs and deserves to be a partnership between the parks community – with its land and facilities – and the health community – with its science, its funding and its outreach. A few of these partnerships do exist, but they are challenging enough to require strong leadership from above. In Louisville, where Mayor Jerry Abramson was determined to combat Louisville’s high levels of obesity and inactivity, Metro Parks joined with the Department of Health and Well-Being to launch the “Healthy Hometown Movement” in September 2009. The city-wide initiative encourages citizens to get 30 minutes of physical activity at least five times per week. The health department, going further to focus on the eight neighborhoods with the most serious obesity-related risks, granted Metro Parks $25,000 to provide free fitness classes in recreation centers.

The powerful and well-heeled insurance industry has not yet done much cross-marketing with parks, but United Healthcare may be the harbinger of a new approach, having partnered with the City of Denver, Colorado to advertise parks. The company gave the Department of Parks and Recreation $60,000 to print and distribute 75,000 copies of its programming guides, more than three times the number printed in 2008. In addition to recreation centers, libraries and the Sunday Denver Post, the guides are distributed in United Healthcare offices.

With Colorado boasting the lowest obesity rate in the nation, it is either ironic or emblematic that this kind of partnership is coming out of Denver. Regardless, it is the kind of creativity that park departments, health departments and mayors will increasingly utilize in the future: according to The Trust for Public Land’s analysis of 2008 (the most recent year available), the marketing budgets of city park agencies fell by another 11 percent.

The full text of this article, which ran in the August 2010 issue of Parks & Recreation magazine, can be accessed through The Trust for Public Land.

Do you park in your park? Does it seem to be a parking lot more than a park, a lot?

Urban park advocates struggle mightily to create new green space through a precious parcel here and an irreplaceable acre there. But a large swath of existing parkland is given over to the prosaic task of automobile storage, complete with its side impacts–impermeable surface, water runoff and erosion, oil drippings, heat island effect, displacement of trees and meadows, and loss of playing area.

A 2007 study by the Center for City Park Excellence of 70 major city parks in the United States revealed that, collectively, they devote a total of 529 acres to the very technology that many people seek to escape when they head into their local patch of nature. That’s an area larger than Schenley Park in Pittsburgh, City Park in Denver, Lake Harriet Park in Minneapolis, or Franklin Park in Boston. In Chicago, where the city spent $475 million to create 24-acre Millennium Park, almost twice that much land–46 acres–is given over to auto storage within nearby Lincoln Park.

Hard to find parking spaces in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Credit: Google Earth.

On average, CCPE found that signature urban parks provide slightly more than one auto space for every acre of parkland. The range is from almost zero spaces in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park to more than 6,000 in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, more than 7,000 in St. Louis’s Forest Park, and 10,000 in Flushing Meadow/Corona Park in New York.

Storing an unused car requires approximately 330 square feet (.008 acres), according to Donald Shoup, professor of Urban Planning at University of California at Los Angeles and author of The High Cost of Free Parking. This factors in the actual surface area of the auto plus the extra space for aisles required to maneuver in and out of an enclosure. For a 500-car lot, that comes to four acres. Of course, Americans assume they have the right to drive, one person per car, from home to a space directly next to a tennis court, rose garden, or picnic table–at least until it’s pointed out that 100 percent auto access means 0 percent park.

Despite the popular assumption, auto storage doesn’t correlate directly with visitation. The nation’s most heavily used park, Central Park in New York, has only 130 parking spaces yet gets 25 million visits per year. Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, receives 6 million visits while providing only forty spaces for skaters at Wollman Rink–and that lot is open only periodically. On the other hand, in Houston, about 15 of Hermann Park’s 445 acres are devoted to 2,000 spaces for automobile storage. Interestingly, although it gets about 2.3 million visits per year, Hermann is less heavily used than Riverside Park in New York, which has almost no auto storage.

“On about fifty days per year there is no possible way to meet the demand, and on another fifty we’re right at the limit for capacity,” says Rick Dewees, administrator of Hermann Park. Nevertheless, he points out, “It’s hard to add spaces when the lots are empty three-fourths of the time.” Dewees has been forced to become a bit thick-skinned about the issue: “You’re always going to have people complaining there isn’t enough parking during peak times,” he says.

Parks surrounded by low-density housing with little or no mass transportation and filled with high-intensity sports facilities are under relentless pressure to provide large amounts of space for cars. But not every park is held hostage by the automobile. Parks with many people living or working in close proximity and a range of good transit options nearby are able to succeed with little or no car storage.

Of the nation’s big-city signature parks, Atlanta’s Piedmont Park is relatively small, making an internal auto repository particularly undesirable. Not only is there no open-air lot, there aren’t even curbside spaces, since the city closed all Piedmont’s internal roadways to cars in 1983. The park is fairly well-served by transit, but overflow autos end up in the surrounding neighborhood. Also in Piedmont Park is the Atlanta Botanical Garden which has the same automobile problem. The Garden’s original proposal to construct a multilevel garage in an underused portion of the park generated shock and opposition, but gradually a broad compromise was crafted, and in 2008 an 800-car garage was built relatively inconspicuously in a steep, wooded hillside. In return, the Piedmont Park Conservancy removed the existing open-air lot and also added more park entrances for walkers and cyclists. Serving both Botanical Garden visitors and Piedmont Park users (with the Garden covering the costs of construction and operation), the garage charges $1.75 per hour.

There are three ways to reduce the problem of car storage in city parks. By far the simplest and most effective is to charge a parking fee. Storing a car in a park is a service with value. Doing so also places many human and environmental costs on the park system. With an equation like that, a payment should work.

Most of the high-population-density cities rely on residents to walk, use transit or bikes, or pay to use private garages nearby. Most of the low-density cities don’t necessarily get enough usership in any one park for it to be an overwhelming problem. It is in the mid-density cities that the issue often comes to a head. Minneapolis has taken the lead in charging for cars. After a failed 10-year experiment with an honor system in the busiest of its six regional parks, the Park Board installed meters, charging between 50 cents and $1.25 per hour, depending upon demand. Because the Park Board receives all the meter revenue, it can determine how the money ($795,000 in 2005) is used, with some of the funds going to park maintenance and some to youth athletics.

Aerial shot of Hermann Park looking south with light-rail in the foreground. Credit: David J. Schmoll.

The flip side of the coin, of course, is to provide park users with transit options. Eight of the ten most heavily used city parks have subway or light-rail access within one-quarter mile, and all of them have bus service that comes even closer. Outside of New York City (where almost all parks have subway service), among the parks best-served by rail are Boston Common, Forest Park in St. Louis, Grant Park in Chicago, Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Naturally, instituting transit service, especially rail, to major parks is expensive. But it is not out of the question. In Houston, the city’s first light-rail line, opened in January 2004, features two stops in Hermann Park.

At Washington Park in Portland, Oregon, home to the popular Rose and Japanese Gardens, cars and buses regularly exceed the auto storage capacity from May through September. The city is unwilling to add to the 86 spaces (though it is unwilling to charge for them, either). In response to the crunch, Tri-Met, the regional transit agency, has added a peak-season bus that shuttles between eight stops within the 130-acre park and the closest MAX light-rail stop. The service, which runs every 15 minutes and costs $1.70 (or is free with a transfer) is aggressively advertised by the park department, Tri-Met and by event promoters. The route gets about 500 riders per day on weekends and 420 on weekdays.

Which leads to the third way of reducing auto storage problems in parks: increasing population density nearby. For every person who lives within walking distance of a park, one fewer needs to drive and deal with a car when he or she gets there. Comparison in point: New York’s Riverside Park and Fresno’s Woodward Park. Both are approximately the same size (325 and 300 acres, respectively) but Riverside has only 120 parking spaces while Woodward has 2,500. The difference is in the surrounding neighborhoods. Riverside has the Hudson River on one side and a solid row of twelve- and sixteen-story buildings on the other. Woodward is bordered by single-family homes, most of which have lots large enough for pools, on cul-de-sac street layouts. The residential population density around Woodward is about 6.5 persons per acre, virtually guaranteeing heavy reliance on autos to get to the park. The density around Riverside Park is about 150 persons per acre, and most users of the park walk from within about four blocks.

Obviously, adding residential (or commercial) density around parks is not a short-term project. Nor is it noncontroversial. People who live in single-family homes on large lots around parks enjoy their quality of life and understandably want to maintain it. However, a case can be made that increasing density unlocks a great deal of value for the benefit of the whole city, including more property tax revenue, the likelihood of healthier citizens because of park views and use, and the ability to reduce the presence of stored automobiles in parks.

This is a complex question. An individual’s willingness to walk varies greatly depending on age, health, time availability, quality of surroundings, safety, climate, and many other factors. On top of the variability in walking patterns, a city’s density has a bearing on what is considered a reasonable distance and where it is cost effective to add new parks.

The majority of walking studies are for and about commuters. Broadly speaking, they indicate that most people are only willing to walk a quarter-mile as part of a commute. A New York Regional Plan Association study, for example, found that residents within a quarter-mile of a transit facility are 5 to 7 times more likely to walk to the station than other passengers.[1]

Credit: Lynn D. Rosentrater (Flickr Feed).

The quarter-mile standard is also supported by park equity research. Jennifer Wolch, now at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote in 2002 that a quarter-mile is reasonable “for parents taking toddlers and small children to a park for everyday outings and playground opportunities.”  In the context of Los Angeles, she noted, “trips of more than a quarter mile (especially in high-traffic areas or neighborhoods where parents have safety concerns) are unlikely to be acceptable to parents.”[2] 

Conversely, several studies show that a half-mile walk is well within a reasonable distance for most people. The 2002 National Survey of Bicyclist and Pedestrian Attitudes and Behavior, by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, surveyed almost 10,000 people over the age of 16 and found that only 5 percent of walking trips were for getting to work. [3] (This suggests that transit studies should not be too heavily relied upon to determine a reasonable distance to a park.) Of the other trips, 38 percent were for personal errands, 28 percent were for exercise, and 21 percent were for recreation or leisure. The average trip length was 1.3 miles.

A 1976 study of the Bay Area transit system found that only 50 percent of riders who walked to the facility came from within a six-minute walk, but 80 percent came from within ten minutes, or approximately a half-mile.[4] This data supports cities that set a standard of a half-mile (and in some cases, more) as a reasonable distance to walk to a park. Perhaps the crux of the issue is: do people consider walking to the park a chore, or is the walk part of the recreational experience itself?

This isn’t as funny as it sounds. A 1997 study from Austin, Texas stated that “utilitarian and recreational walk activities have been found to have distinct structural characteristics.…Walk distance and duration for commuting, shopping, and reaching transportation are shorter, and recreational walks for exercise, walking the dog, and socializing are longer.”[5] 

Transit-based studies also underscore people’s variability: most won’t walk much more than a quarter-mile to a bus stop, but most will walk up to a half-mile to a commuter rail station. Parks, too, draw pedestrians from “catchment areas” of various sizes, depending on their quality and amenities offered. In a 2002 article, Van Herzele and Weidemann note that “the maximum walking distance may differ according to the function a green space fulfils.”[6]

In summary, research supports the validity of both quarter-mile and half-mile distance goals, depending on perceptions of the built environment, safety, and time constraints. Of course, people’s preferences and habits are only part of the equation for planners, who must also take into account the cost effectiveness of expanding the park system versus improving current parks or focusing on connectivity.

Density is a major factor. Building a new park in a low-density area (5 units per acre) provides access to only about 1,500 people within a quarter-mile range.  In a very dense area (90 units per acre) it serves close to 30,000. So even if planners in, say, Charlotte found a reluctance to walk more than a quarter-mile to a park, the city still probably could not afford to build a park for every 1,500 residents.

The following table illustrates the total population within quarter-mile and half-mile buffers in areas of varying density:

Forest Park, Portland, Ore.

The USDA Forest Service – Northern Research Station (NRS) released a report entitled Sustaining America’s Urban Trees and Forests, offering an overview of the current status and environmental, financial and health benefits of America’s urban forests and how these forests vary in different regions of the country. The report defined urban forest as “all publicly and privately owned trees within an urban area – including individual trees along streets and in backyards, as well as stands of remnant forest.” Providing essential services to more than 220 million people (supporting 79 percent of the population), urban forests in the U.S. are estimated to contain about 3.8 billion trees and worth an estimated $2.4 trillion.

According to the report, urban forest services and benefits include (but are not limited to):

• Local climate and energy use—Trees influence thermal comfort, energy use, and air quality by providing shade, transpiring moisture, and reducing wind speeds. The establishment of 100 million mature trees around residences in the United States is said to save about $2 billion annually in reduced energy costs.
• Air quality—Trees improve air quality by lowering air temperatures, altering emissions from building energy use and other sources, and removing air pollutants through their leaves. Urban trees in the conterminous United States remove some 784,000 tons of air pollution annually, with a value of $3.8 billion.
• Climate change—Urban trees can affect climate change by directly storing carbon within their tissues and by reducing carbon emissions from power plants through lowered building energy use. Urban trees in the conterminous United States currently store 770 million tons of carbon, valued at $14.3 billion.
• Water flow and quality—Trees and soils improve water quality and reduce the need for costly storm water treatment (the removal of harmful substances washed off roads, parking lots, and roofs during rain/snow events), by intercepting and retaining or slowing the flow of precipitation reaching the ground. During an intense storm in Dayton, OH, for example, the tree canopy was estimated to reduce potential runoff by 7 percent.
• Noise abatement—Properly designed plantings of trees and shrubs can significantly reduce noise. Wide plantings (around 100 ft) of tall dense trees combined with soft ground surfaces can reduce apparent loudness by 50 percent or more (6 to 10 decibels).
• Wildlife and biodiversity—Urban forests help create and enhance animal and plant habitats and can act as “reservoirs” for endangered species. Urban forest wildlife offer enjoyment to city dwellers and can serve as indicators of local environmental health.
• Soil quality—Trees and other plants help remediate soils at landfills and other contaminated sites by absorbing, transforming, and containing a number of contaminants.
• Real estate and business—Landscaping with trees—in yards, in parks and greenways, along streets, and in shopping centers—can increase property values and commercial benefits. One study found that on average, prices for goods purchased in Seattle were 11 percent higher in landscaped areas than in areas with no trees.
• Individual well-being and public health—The presence of urban trees and forests can make the urban environment a more aesthetic, pleasant, and emotionally satisfying place in which to live, work, and spend leisure time. Urban trees also provide numerous health benefits; for example, tree shade reduces ultraviolet radiation and its associated health problems, and hospital patients with window views of trees have been shown to recover faster and with fewer complications than patients without such views.
• Community well-being—Urban forests make important contributions to the economic vitality and character of a city, neighborhood, or subdivision. Furthermore, a stronger sense of community and empowerment to improve neighborhood conditions in inner cities has been attributed to involvement in urban forestry efforts.

The specifics of how urban trees provide these benefits have been discussed at length, but this report adds value by comparing different urban forestry areas and their management, which vary by size and region across the United States.

The report determines which urban forestry areas provide the greatest relative canopy cover, as well as the areas that have the most potential for future tree coverage. Results indicate the area of tree cover in cities within naturally forested areas was nearly twice the percentage of cities in grassland regions, and more than three times the cover of cities in desert regions. Regional climate and landscape is not the only influence on urban forests, as land-use activities such as development play a large role. Overall, the regions with the greatest amount of tree cover for urban areas are the Southeast and New England states.

These findings would lead some to believe that it is the rest of the country that urban forest advocates need to focus on, however certain precautions need to be taken into account, such as fire risk, energy cost and water usage. Therefore, “maximum tree coverage may not be optimal tree coverage.”

Even though there is a widespread acknowledgment of the benefits of urban forests, the level of resources allocated to the management of these areas varies greatly by region. The report suggests a long-term comprehensive urban forest management plan for cities, though it recognizes that these plans can be complicated, especially for forested areas that cross multiple government jurisdictions.

Cities that choose to increase their urban forests face many challenges with comprehensive management, such as lack of funding, volunteer time and initiation, completion or implementation of a management plan. Most of the innovation comes in the form of software and websites, such as i-Tree and CITYgreen, a program used to calculate the monetary values of the economic and ecological benefits provided by trees in specific locations.

In this report, the USDA Forest Service shows how urban forestry decisions made today impact the future of cities and the well-being of their residents. It shows that only by collaboration between local governments and communities, as well as planners and landowners, can we hope to make urban areas more sustainable and desirable places to live.

According to Coletta, “58 percent of a city’s economic success can be attributed to the percentage of the adult population with a college degree. In Chicago, there is a $7.2 billion annual increase in personal income when college attainment rises by one percentage point. This is greater than the payroll of the largest employer in the city.”

In New York, according to Dr. Nancy L. Zimpher, Chancellor of SUNY and Chair of the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities, “for every one percentage point increase in college graduation rate of the city’s population, New Yorkers will earn an additional $17.5 billion each year.”

CEOs for Cities believes there are three driving factors that influence the growth of cities: quality of talent, quality of place and quality of opportunity. We at City Parks Blog are most interested in quality of place, the parks and green spaces that attract and retain people to cities in the first place. The Center for City Park Excellence has identified seven measurable attributes of city park systems – property value, tourism, direct use, health, community cohesion, clean water, and clean air – that provide economic value to municipalities. These economic value studies have been done in 10 cities and two counties across the country.

It would be interesting to see if there is a direct link between college attainment and the quality of urban park systems. The idea is that more college graduates in a city could lead to more advocates for parks, which in turn leads to more funding and stewardship for parks, thus creating an overall stronger and healthier park system.

CEOs for Cites and its partners will host a launch event for cities that register for the Talent Dividend Prize competition on May 10, 2011 in Chicago, and the winner will be announced in September 2014.

The Talent Dividend Prize competition is open to all U.S. cities with a metropolitan population of 500,000, or the largest metropolitan area in a state based on 2009 American Community Survey data. (This equates to 108 municipalities.) Each metropolitan area is required to register and submit annual documentation of its educational attainment efforts in order to be considered for the prize.

Eligible cities may register here. As of Friday, four cities had completed the application: Little Rock, Louisville, Memphis and Milwaukee. Twenty-five other cities have begun the application process.

Urban leaders from any sector are eligible to register; however, each city is required to appoint a key liaison and a 6-8 member advisory panel composed of leaders from multiple sectors.

CEOs for Cities is a national network of urban leaders who are committed to sustaining and advancing the greatness of America’s cities. The group conducts research and advocacy and develops strategic partnerships on behalf of urban centers.

The prize competition is an outgrowth of City Dividends, CEOs for Cities research that calculated the monetary value to cities and the nation of increasing college attainment rates by one percentage point (Talent Dividend); reducing vehicle miles traveled by one mile per person every day (Green Dividend); and reducing poverty rates by one percentage point (Opportunity Dividend).

The Talent Dividend Prize competition is supported by The Kresge Foundation and Lumina Foundation for Education. Registration for the prize is now open and will close on May 1, 2011.