6.01.2012

ParkScore: How Good are Your City's Parks?



ParkScore is a project developed by The Trust for Public Land, one of the nation’s largest national nonprofit organization working to create and improve neighborhood parks.  There are  many other similar neighborhood/park accessability ranking systesms (WalkScore and BikeScore) and ParkScore is the newest of those systems.

Covering 40 major cities in the U.S., ParkScore enables any park lover to create customized maps for each city, evaluate park access by neighborhood, and determine where parks are still most needed, writes Peter Harnik, ASLA, Director, Center for City Park Excellence at TPL. The goal of the project is to help communities lobby for more parks and better parks. “We hope that city leaders, park providers and park advocates will use the information at ParkScore as a valuable tool to help plan park improvements. Over the long run, a rising ParkScore will mean healthier people, higher property values, and more vibrant and livable communities.” (1)

The new tool is not as comprehensive as the others in that it  ranks the park systems of the 40 most populous U.S. cities on a scale of 0-100, with an easy rating system of 0-5 park benches. The top 10 cities:(1)

1. San Francisco (74.0)
2. Sacramento (73.5)
3. New York (72.5)
3. Boston (72.5)
5. Washington, D.C. (71.5)
6. Portland (69.0)
7. Virginia Beach (68.5)
8. San Diego (67.5)
9. Seattle (66.5)
10. Philadelphia (66)

And the five cities at the bottom of the list:
35. San Antonio (35)
36. Indianapolis (31.0)
36. Mesa (31.0)
38. Louisville (29)
39. Charolotte (28.5)
40. Fresno (21.5)

For the methodology related to ParkScore, click HERE and make up your own mind about it's usefulness.

(1) http://dirt.asla.org/2012/05/31/how-do-the-parks-in-your-city-rank/




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