How well do the nation’s large city park systems meet the needs of residents? In an effort to explore that question, The Trust for Public Land recently launched a new website. The Trust for Public Land ParkScoreTM
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provides an overview of how well 40 city park systems offer close- to-home parks as well as each system’s level of investment in park services. The website offers dynamic maps and informa- tion that will help park leaders improve park systems.
Underlying the new website are two sets of data. TPL’s award-winning GIS program has mapped park locations in the 40 cities to show how many residents live within a ten-minute walk of a park or playground. TPL believes that everyone—especially every child—should have at least this level of park access. The data on park services come from the online report City Park Facts, which TPL’s Center for
Pat Mazzera Photography
The Trust for Public Land’s new ParkScore website offers information about park access and investment in 40 cities nationwide, including San Francisco, where TPL recently launched an effort to refurbish sections of Balboa Park.
City Park Excellence has been collecting in an annual survey of park systems since 1998. ParkScore joins a family of Trust for Public Land research websites that provide special- ized information about parks and conservation nationwide and often allow users to display data on interactive maps. These include Land- Vote, TPL’s online database of all state and local conservation finance measures since 1988, and the Conservation Almanac, which offers data on how much land is protected in each state by which agencies, as well as describing the state’s conservation policies and programs. In partner- ship with other conservation organizations, TPL also supplies data to the National Conservation Easement Database, which maps acres conserved through easements. To find out how your park system scores, go