#1: MINNEAPOLIS
This year, The Trust for Public Land expanded the ParkScore index to include the top 50 largest U.S. cities (up from 40 in 2012). The shift enabled Minneapolis—the 47th-largest city in the nation—to nab the top spot. “We are unique from the standpoint that the park system was built as an economic driver for the city,” says Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board superinten- dent Jayne Miller. “The city was built around the park system, not the other way around.”
Jon Spayde History buff, culture hound
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here do you begin a day of park-hopping in a city with
close to 7,000 acres of options? My pick is a place that celebrates how the city got its start: Mill Ruins Park, a monument to the factories that once made Minneapolis the flour capital of the world. I descend the stairway onto metal catwalks with views of the millraces—the great stone inlets,
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now dry, that diverted river water to power the mills. Much of the park is dotted with history placards and great chunks of stone—it’s the ideal place for reading, thinking, and meditating on things past. I clamber back up to street level for a two-bus jaunt to the Walker Art Center’s Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, home to more than 40 works by internationally famous artists. A series of serene, tree-lined outdoor galleries featuring smaller pieces yields to open fields and more massive artworks, like the city’s iconic Spoon- bridge and Cherry sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. And I can’t visit the garden without stopping by Brower Hatcher’s Prophecy of the Ancients, a whimsical wire dome over four stone pillars, under which I was married 16 years ago. The Walker is one of many sites in town where you can rent a bike through the city’s Nice Ride pro- gram, so I hop aboard one of the
little green machines for a ride down to Lake Harriet, my favorite of the great urban lakes that give parts of the city a seacoast feel. Here boats bob at anchor, bicyclists glide on hilly park paths, and I lunch on another Minnesota icon—a walleye sandwich, done and sauced to perfection, from locavore hotspot Bread and Pickle, the official park commissary. I hop back on my bike for a trip
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into the heart of inner-city Minne- apolis and the unexpectedly vast and gorgeous green space of Powderhorn Park. Powderhorn is best known as the site of the colorful Return of the Sun pageant that caps the city’s funky
The Trust for Public Land ParkScore®
index
measures how well the largest U.S. cities are meeting the need for parks. Our experts rank city park systems based on three criteria. ACCESS: The percentage of residents living within a ten-minute walk of a park ACREAGE: The median park size and the percentage of total city area dedicated to parks SERVICES AND INVESTMENT: The number of playgrounds per 10,000 city residents and per capita spending on parks
Learn more—and see how your city measures up—at
parkscore.tpl.org.
40 · LAND&PEOPLE · FALL/WINTER 2013
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clockwise from top left: flickr users dougtone, jumbledpie, eric wilcox
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